They would have given him generous education, To compliment and cringe, to talk not modestly, Another dialect than was taught me when Aret. Some strong waters,-oh! Lit. Comfits will be as comfortable to your stomach, madam. [Offers his box. Aret. I fear he's spoil'd for ever: he did name Logic, and may, for ought I know, be gone So far to understand it. I did always Suspect they would corrupt him in the college. Will your Greek saws and sentences discharge The mercer or is Latin a fit language To court a mistress in? Master Alexander, If you have any charity, let me Commend him to your breeding; I suspect I must employ my doctor first to purge The university that lies in's head To alter's complexion. Kick. If you dare Trust me to serve him Aret. Mr. Littleworth, Be you join'd in commission. Aret. I have no patience To see him in this shape, it turns my stomach. He shall be yours. I am bound in conscience Fred. What does my aunt mean to do with me? Stew. To make you a fine gentleman, and trans late you Out of your learned language, sir, into Stew. You shall be obey'd, madam. [Exeunt all but FREDERICK and the STEWARD. Stew. More suitable to the town and time. We The case is alter'd since we lived in the country; Fred. My lady keeps a court then? Is Sir Thomas Affected with this state and cost? Stew. He was not, But is converted. But I hope you will not Fred. I shall submit, If this be my aunt's pleasure, and be ruled. FROM CHABOT ADMIRAL OF FRANCE*." The Queen insulting the Wife and Father of the accused Admiral in their misfortunes. Persons. The Constable of France, Queen, Wife and Father of CHABOT. Constable introducing the Wife of CHABOT. Cons. SHE attends you, madam. Queen. This humbleness proceeds not from your heart; Why, you are a queen yourself in your own thoughts; The admiral's wife of France cannot be less; You have not state enough, you should not move Without a train of friends and servants. [* As Chapman had certainly the larger share in this Tragedy, the specimen should have been placed by Mr. Campbell under Chapman. Gifford at first thought Chabot was scarce admissible in a collection of Shirley's Works] Wife. There is some mystery Within your language, madam. I would hope You have more charity than to imagine My present condition worth your triumph, In which I am not so lost but I have Some friends and servants with proportion To my lord's fortune; but none within the lists Of those that obey me can be more ready To express their duties, than my heart to serve Your just commands. Queen. Then pride will ebb, I see; Comes to the balance; he, whose blazing fires Queen. Your high and mighty justicer, Of state, whose honourable titles [mortal ; Would crack an elephant's back, is now turn'd Father. Sir, your pardon. Madam, you are the queen, she is my daughter, The king is just, and a good man; but 't does not Father. 'Cause you are a queen, to trample o'er Queen. Did you hear, my lord? Wife. And it concerns me to begin. I have not made this pause through servile fear, You are my queen, unto that title bows Wife. So just and boldly innocent. I cannot fear, arm'd with a noble conscience, Queen. Forgive? What insolence is like this lanCan any action of ours be capable [guage? Of thy forgiveness? Dust! how I despise thee! Can we sin to be object of thy mercy? Wife. Yes, and have done 't already, and no stain To your greatness, madam; 'tis my charity, I can remit ; when sovereign princes dare Do injury to those that live beneath them, They turn worth pity and their prayers, and 'tis In the free power of those whom they oppress To pardon 'em ; each soul has a prerogative And privilege royal that was sign'd by Heaven. But though, in th' knowledge of my disposition, Stranger to pride, and what you charge me with, I can forgive the injustice done to me, And striking at my person, I have no Commission from my lord to clear you for The wrongs you have done him, and till he pardon The wounding of his loyalty, with which life Can hold no balance, I must talk just boldness To say Father. Nomore! Now I must tell you, daughter, Lest you forget yourself, she is the queen, And it becomes you not to vie with her Passion for passion: if your lord stand fast To the full search of law, Heaven will revenge him, And give him up precious to good men's loves. If you attempt by these unruly ways To vindicate his justice, I'm against you; Dear as I wish your husband's life and fame, Subjects are bound to suffer, not contest With princes, since their will and acts must be Accounted one day to a Judge supreme. Wife. I ha' done. If the devotion to my lord, Or pity to his innocence, have led me Beyond the awful limits to be observed By one so much beneath your sacred person, I thus low crave your royal pardon, madam; [Kneels. I know you will remember, in your goodness, My life-blood is concern'd while his least vein Shall run black and polluted, my heart fed With what keeps him alive; nor can there be A greater wound than that which strikes the life Of our good name, so much above the bleeding Of this rude pile we carry, as the soul Hath excellence above this earth-born frailty. And France shall echo to his shame or innocence. Their way, and crystal Heaven return to chaos; ALEXANDER BROME. [Born, 1620. Died, 1666.] ALEXANDER BROME was an attorney in the Lord Mayor's Court. From a verse in one of his poems, it would seem that he had been sent once in the civil war (by compulsion no doubt), on the parliament side, but had staid only three days, and never fought against the king and the cavaliers. He was in truth a strenuous loyalist, and the bacchanalian songster of his party. Most of the songs and epigrams that were published against the Rump have been ascribed to him. He had besides a share in a translation of Horace, with Fanshawe, Holiday, Cowley, and others, and published a single comedy, the Cunning Lovers, which was acted in 1651, at the private house in Drury. There is a playful variety in his metre, that probably had a better effect in song than in reading. His thoughts on love and the bottle have at least the merit of being decently jovial, ¦ though he arrays the trite arguments of convivial invitation in few original images. In studying the traits and complexion of a past age, amusement, if not illustration, will often be found from the ordinary effusions of party ridicule. In this view the Diurnal, and other political satires of Brome, have an extrinsic value as contemporary caricatures. HERRICK'S vein of poetry is very irregular; but here the ore is pure, it is of high value. His ong beginning, "Gather ye 'rose-buds, while ye ay," is sweetly Anacreontic. Nichols, in his History of Leicestershire, has given the fullest ecount of his history hitherto published, and rerinted many of his poems, which illustrate his mily connexions. He was the son of an emient goldsmith in Cheapside, was born in London, nd educated at Cambridge. Being patronised the Earl of Exeter, he was, in 1629, presented Charles I. to the vicarage of Dean Prior, in evonshire, from which he was ejected during e civil war, and then having assumed the habit a layman, resided in Westminster. After the estoration he was replaced in his vicarage. To his Hesperides, or works human and divine*, he added some pieces on religious subjects, where his volatile genius was not in her ele ment. [* What is Divine' has much of the essence of poetry; that which is human, of the frailty of the flesh. Some are playfully pastoral, some sweetly Anacreontic, some in the higher key of religion, others lasciviously wanton and unclean. The whole collection seems to have passed into oblivion till about the year 1796, and since then we have had a separate volume of selections, and two complete reprints. His several excellences have preserved his many indecencies, the divinity of his verse (poetically speaking) the dunghill of his obscener moods. Southey, admitting the perennial beauty of many of his poems, has styled him, not with too much severity, a coarseminded and beastly writer.' Jones' Attempts in Verse, p. 85; see also Quar. Rev. vol. iv. p. 171.] SONG. GATHER ye rose-buds, while ye may, Old Time is still a flying; And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun, The age is best which is the first, Then be not coy, but use your time, And, whilst ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry. |