these women pages in it, following in the train of some preengaged lover.'

69. 10. Mr. Dyce, in his excellent edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (1844), enumerates the following plays as certainly, or almost certainly, the joint work of the two :

Philaster.

The Maid's Tragedy.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

King and no King.
Cupid's Revenge.
The Coxcomb.

Four Plays in One.

The Scornful Lady.

The Honest Man's Fortune.
The Little French Lawyer.
Wit at several Weapons.
The Laws of Candy.

Three others-Wit without Money, The Custom of the Country, and Bonduca-he is disposed to add to the above list, but with less confidence. The other plays, in number about thirty-nine, published under their joint names, he would assign either to Fletcher alone, or to Fletcher assisted by some other dramatist, not Beaumont.

71. 9. The Discoveries, not published till after Jonson's death, are like the contents of a commonplace book, and of very unequal merit; here occurs the well-known criticism on Shakspere as having 'never blotted out a line.' The praise which Dryden gives to the book is excessive. To go no further, the 'Examens' annexed by Corneille to his dramas are incomparably more valuable than anything in the Discoveries.

13. Epicæne, or the Silent Woman, appeared in 1609. 73. 14. Tò yeλoîov (to geloion), the laughable or ridiculous element.

26. 00s, disposition; πáðos, passion (ēthos, pathos). 75. 25. Hor. Epist. ii. 1. 168.

76. 19. The prose comedy of Bartholomew Fair was produced in 1614.

77. 17. Of the piece on which our author has given so high

6

an encomium, Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson's contemporary and friend, has left the following anecdote: 'When his play of The Silent Woman was first acted, there were found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that the play was well named The Silent Woman, because there was never one man to say plaudite to it.' (Malone.) 78. 18. Hor. de Arte Poet. 90.

25. Vell. Paterc. ii. 36.

80. 13. Macrob. Saturnalia, ii. 13. The other poet' was Publius Syrus.

81. 1. Aristotle's Poetics, iv. 18.

24. Virg. Ecl. vii. 4.

83. 9. M. Seneca, Controv. ix. 5, quoting from Ovid, Met. xiii. 503-5.

II. Ovid, Met. i. 292. This line is quoted by Lucius, not by Marcus Seneca.

29. The Indian Queen and The Indian Emperor were the only plays, altogether in rhyme, which Dryden had produced before this was written. The Rival Ladies is partly prose, partly rhyme.

84. 3. Sir Robert Howard (Malone); in the preface to his plays, published in 1665.

85. 29. 'prevail himself,' se prévaloir, a Gallicism.

87. 10. ' Vide Daniel, his Defence of Rhyme.' (Dryden's note.) This short tract was written by Daniel in 1603, in reply to Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie.

88. 4. The Siege of Rhodes (1656) was one of the plays produced by Sir William Davenant under the Protectorate; a kind of nondescript entertainments, as they were called, which were dramatic in everything but the names and form; and some of them were called operas.' (Hazlitt.)

90. 3. Virg. Georg. iii. 9; for possum should be read possim. 19. Geo. Sandys, son of an archbishop of York, published

a metrical version of the Psalms in 1636.

90. 24. Our author here again has quoted from memory. Horace's line is [Epist. ii. 1. 63]:

:

'Interdum vulgus rectum videt; est ubi peccat.'

(Malone.)

30. Mustapha was a popular tragedy of the day, by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery. There was an earlier play of the same name by Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke. 91. 27. Hor. A. P. 90; and below, ib. 231.

95. 11. This simple avowal of the true poetic workman, that his work does not appear to him perfect till he has clothed it in rhyme, is highly instructive; it is a chapter in the Natural History of Poetry.'

96. 2. The Water-poet, John Taylor, was so called from his having been long a waterman on the Thames. He seems to have been a rhymester of the same order as 'Poet Close,' a character well known to all who visit Windermere. Wood gives an account of him in the Athenae, and Hazlitt devotes rather a lengthy article to him in his edition of Johnson's Lives. Taylor enjoyed a great popularity. If it were put to the question,' says Ben Jonson (Discoveries, Routledge, p. 746), 'of the water-rhymer's works against Spenser's, I doubt not but they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments, and like that which is naught.'

7. Cicero in his Brutus (cap. 73) quotes this as a maxim laid down by Caesar in his work 'on the method of speaking in Latin,' to which the name 'De Analogia' was given.

13. Seneca's tragedy of Hippolytus, 1. 863.

97. 28. Sir Robert Howard, in the Preface to his Plays, before referred to.

99. 22. 'Somerset House,' says Stow in his History of London (ed. Strype, 1720), ‘hath been used as the Palace or Court of the Queen Dowagers; it belong'd of late to Katharine Queen Dowager, the wife of King Charles the Second. At the entrance into this Court out of the Strand is a spacious square court garnished on all sides with rows of freestone buildings, and at the Front is a Piazza, with stone Pillars which support the buildings, and a pavement of freestone.' He goes on to say that there were steps down to the river, and a 'most pleasant garden which runs to the water side.' This way from the river bank up into Somerset House has long been closed.

105. 28. Hor. A. P. 362.

30. Ib. 50.

106. 10. 'lazar' sometimes='lazar-house'; and the reference seems to be to Bartholomew's Hospital, which is the scene of the play of Bartholomew Fair.

111. 9. Lucan, Phars. i. 12.

114. 3. Hor. de Art. Poet. 338.

115. 5. Il. viii. 267.

118. 4. See above, pp. 6 and 8.

THE END