of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.'

This is the carnival of fashion-its finery, its chatter, its charming repartee, its foolish affectation, the drapery of the world. You are amused, but what thought do you carry away? Yet sensible and striking passages are not wanting, some of which have become proverbial, and whose origin is unknown to many who quote them:

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.'

'Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd,
Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned."

'For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds;
And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.'

'If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see
That heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.'

Reason, the power

To guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp
Of wandering life, that winks and wakes by turns,
Fooling the follower, betwixt shade and shining.'

Vanbrugh is cheerful, confident, robust, easy, natural, various, and, of course, plain-spoken—an impudent dog. Sottishness is still respectable, rakes still scour the streets, ladies are still 'carried off swooning with love from ante-chambers.' Squire Sullen, in Provoked Wife, gets drunk, rolls about the room, like a sick passenger in a storm, howls out, 'Damn morality! and damn the watch! and let the constable be married!' Sir John Brute declares there is but one thing he loathes on earth beyond his wife,—that's fighting.' She would please him, but is tauntingly told that is not her talent. She reflects:

'Perhaps a good part of what I suffer from my husband may be a judgment upon me for my cruelty to my lover. Lord, with what pleasure could I indulge that thought, were there but a possibility of finding arguments to make it good! And how do I know but there may? Let me see. What opposes? My matrimonial vow. Why, what did I vow? I think I promised to be true to my husband. Well; and he promised to be kind to me. But he han't kept his word. Why, then, I am absolved from mine.'

The argument proceeds, but we have to stop. Listen to Lord Toppington in Relapse. He is a newly-created pillar of state:

'My life, madam, is a perpetual stream of pleasure, that glides through such a variety of entertainments, I believe the wisest of our ancestors never had the least conception of any of 'em. I rise, madam, about ten a-clack. I don't rise sooner, because it is the worst thing in the world for the complexion; nat that I pretend to be a beau; but a mau

'must endeavor to looke wholesome, lest he make so nauseous a figure in the side-bax, the ladies should be compelled to turn their eyes upon the play. So at ten a-clack, I say, I rise. Naw, if I find it a good day, I resalve to take a turn in the park, and see the fine women; so huddle on my clothes, and get dressed by one. If it be nasty weather, I take a turn in the chocolate-hause: where as you walk, madam, you have the prettiest prospect in the world; you have looking-glasses all round you.'

He is to be married to a country heiress, 'a plump partridge,' who has never seen him. His brother, simulating him, arrives

'Nurse. Oh, but you must have a care of being too fond; for men now-a-days hate a woman that loves 'em.

Hoyd. Love him! why do you think I love him, nurse? ecod I would not care if he were hanged, so I were but once married to him! No; that which pleases me, is to think what work I'll make when I get to London; for when I am a wife and a lady both, nurse, ecod I'll flaunt it with the best of 'em.'

The true lord comes in at the critical moment, as they think, the imposture is discovered, and her father apologizes:

'My lord, I'm struck dumb, I can only beg pardon by signs; but if a sacrifice will appease you, you shall have it. Here, pursue this Tartar, bring him back. Away, I say! A dog! Oons, I'll cut off his cars and his tail, I'll draw out all his teeth, pull his skin over his head-and-and what shall I do more?'

Toppington marries her, learns that he has married his brother's wife, but covers his aching heart with a serene countenance:

'Now, for my part, I think the wisest thing a man can do with an aching heart is to put on a serene countenance; for a philosophical air is the most becoming thing in the world to the face of a person of quality. I will therefore bear my disgrace like a great man, and let the people see I am above an affront. [Aloud] Dear Tain, since things are thus fallen aut, prithee give me leave to wish thee jay; I do it de bon cœur, strike me dumb! You have married a woman beautiful in her person, charming in her airs, prudent in her canduct, canstant in her inclinations, and of a nice marality, split my windpipe!'

Farquhar is an artist in stage effect, an Irishman, with the Irish sportiveness, and an agreeable diversity. His best comedy is the Beaux' Stratagem. Boniface is still a favorite, one of the extinct race of landlords. The London coach suddenly appears: 'Chamberlain! maid! Cherry! daughter Cherry! all asleep? all dead?''Here, here! why d'ye bawl so, father? d'ye think we have no ears?' She deserves to have none, he thinks, but she redeems herself by a cheering welcome to the guests who are shown to their chambers. Thereupon enter Aimwell and Archer, gentlemen of broken fortunes, travelling, the one as master, the other as servant:

'Bon. This way, this way gentlemen!

Aim. [To Archer.] Set down the things; go to the stable, and see my horses well rubbed.

Arch. I shall, sir.

Aim. You're my landlord, I suppose?

Bon. Yes, sir, I'm old Will Boniface, pretty well known upon this road, as the saying is.

Aim. O Mr. Boniface, your servant!

Bon. O sir! What will your honour please to drink, as the saying is?

Aim. I have heard your town of Litchfield much famed for ale; I think I'll taste that. Bon. Sir, I have now in my cellar ten tun of the best ale in Staffordshire; 'tis smooth as oil, sweet as milk, clear as amber, and strong as brandy; and will be just fourteen year old the fifth day of next March, old style.

Aim. You're very exact, I find, in the age of your ale.

Bon. As punctual, sir, as I am in the age of my children. I'll show you such ale! Here, tapster, broach number 1706, as the saying is. Sir, you shall taste my Anno Domini. I have lived in Litchfield, man and boy, above eight-and-fifty years, and, I believe, have not consumed eight-and-fifty ounces of meat.

Aim.

At a meal, you mean, if one may guess your sense by your bulk. Bon. Not in my life, sir; I have fed purely upon ale, I have eat my ale, drunk my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.

Enter Tapster with a bottle and glass, and exit.

Now, sir, you shall see!

[Pours out a glass.] Your worship's health! Ha! delicious, delicions: fancy it Burgundy, only fancy it, and 'tis worth ten shillings a quart. Aim. [Drinks.] 'Tis confounded strong!

Bon. Strong! it must be so, or how should we be so that drink it?

Aim. And have you lived so long upon this ale, landlord?

Bon. Eight-and-fifty years, upon my credit, sir; but it killed my wife, poor woman, as the saying is.

Aim. How came that to pass?

Bon. I don't know how, sir; she would not let the ale take its natural course, sir; she was for qualifying it every now and then with a dram, as the saying is; . . . the fourth carried her off. But she's happy, and I'm contented, as the saying is.'

One or two higher spirits reach the passions of the other age,Dryden in tragedy; and by his side a younger contemporary, Otway, in whose Venice Preserved we encounter the sombre imagination of Webster, Ford, and Shakespeare. Jaffier, a youth of merit and promise, but the sport of chance, rescues from a watery grave a senator's daughter, a genuine woman, who from that hour loves him; three years have passed since their vows were plighted; she is his wife, against the wishes of her proud sire; misfortune comes; he has just now left the presence of the offended aristocrat with his curse and his heart is heavy between love and ruin:

'O Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife

And we will bear our wayward fate together,

But ne'er know comfort more."

She who has been his dependent and ornament in happier hours, proves his stay and solace in calamity:

'My lord, my love, my refuge!
Happy my eyes when they behold thy face!
My heavy heart will leave its doleful beating
At sight of thee, and bound with sprightly joys.
Oh, smile as when our loves were in their spring,
And cheer my fainting soul!

Were in their spring! Has, then, my fortune changed thee?
Art thou not, Belvidera, still the same,

Kind, good, and tender, as my arms first found thee?
If thou art altered, where shall I have harbour?
Where case my loaded heart? Oh! where complain?
Bel. Does this appear like change, or love decaying,
When thus I throw myself into thy bosom,
With all the resolution of strong truth?

I joy more in thee

Than did thy mother, when she hugged thee first,
And blessed the gods for all her travail past.
Jaf. Can there in woman be such glorious faith?
Sure, all ill stories of thy sex are false!

Oh, woman, lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man; we had been brutes without you!
Angels are painted fair, to look like you."

These are but rare notes. For the most part, he moves, like the rest, in the murky waters of the great current. Like them, he is obscene; and from all, we have found it difficult to extract, without revolting decorum, something to suggest the new rhetoric, the sentiments and maxims of polite society, and the abyss from which that society and our literature have since ascended. Even here there were tokens of a more serious and orderly life, signs of a reaction in literary feelings and moral habits. A great reformer arose to accelerate the revolution, Jeremy Collier, a heroic Anglican, who threw down the gauntlet to the champions of the stage, and was victorious.

Prose. The Restoration may be taken as the era of the formation of our present style. Imagination was tempered, transports diminished, judgment corrected itself, artifice began. Among the most agreeable specimens of the new refinement in form are the conversations of the drama. They foreshadow the Spectator. The easy and flowing manner of Cowley is continued by the polished Temple, a man of the world, a lover of elegance, who, if he assuages grief, must do it with dignity and facility:

'If you look about you, and consider the lives of others as well as your own; if you think how few are born with honor, and how many die without name or children; how little beauty we see, and how few friends we hear of; how many diseases, and how much poverty there is in the world; you will fall down upon your knees, and instead of repining at one affliction, will admire so many blessings which you have received from the hand of God.'

Observe how the following sentence glides along:

'I have indeed heard of wondrous pretensions and visions of men possessed with notions of the strange advancement of learning and science, on foot in this age, and the

progress they are like to make in the next; as the universal medicine, which will cer tainly cure all that have it; the philosopher's stone, which will be found out by men that care not for riches; the transfusion of young blood into old men's veins, which will make them as gamesome as the lambs from which 'tis to be derived; a universal language, which may serve all men's turn when they have forgot their own; the knowledge of one another's thoughts without the grievous trouble of speaking; the art of flying, till a man happens to fall down and break his neck; double-bottomed ships, whereof none can ever be cast away besides the first that was made; the admirable virtues of that noble and necessary juice called spittle, which will come to be sold, and very cheap, in the apothecaries' shops; discoveries of new worlds in the planets, and voyages between this and that in the moon to be made as frequently as between York and London.'

Smoothness was the distinguishing quality of the man, as it is of his manner, which sometimes relaxes into prolixity or remissness. Dryden has sounder taste, as well as more vigor. The rest are inferior in point of ornament, but, for the most part, have the same fundamental character― ratiocination. Hobbes is surprisingly dry, idiomatic, concise, strong. The most celebrated sermons are instruments of edification rather than models of elegance. Barrow is geometrical, revises and re-revises, then revises again, dividing and subdividing, having only one desire to explain and fully prove what he has to say. Tillotson has no rapture, no vehemence, no warmth. He wishes to convince, nothing moreSouth, an apostate Puritan, is colloquial, energetic; more popular than these, because he is more anecdotic, abrupt, pointed,vulgar, having the plain-dealing and coarseness which belong to the stage, and which his insincerity permits.

These sermons, once so famous, are now hardly read at all. They are outlived, in a far humbler sphere, by the little work of a London linen-draper, Izaak Walton, whose Complete Angler has what they have not,-the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. Its natural description, as also its lively dialogue, has seldom been surpassed. A single extract can hardly suggest its abundance of quaint but wise thoughts, its redolence of wild flowers and sweet country air:

Well, scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High Cross, I will, as we walk towards it in the cool shade of this honeysuckle-hedge, mention to you some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met together. And these thoughts shall be told you, that you also may join with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift for our happiness. . . . We have been freed from these and all those many other miseries that threaten human nature: let us therefore rejoice and be thankful. Nay, which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the unsupportable burden of an accusing, tormenting conscience-a misery that none can bear: and therefore let us praise Him for His preventing grace, and say, Every misery that I miss is a new mercy. Nay, let me tell you, there may be many that have forty times our estates, that would give the greatest part