And all the residue of the fiends

Did laugh thereat full well, like friends.

But of my friend I saw no whit,

Nor durst not ask for her as yet.

Anon all this rout was brought in silence,
And I by an usher brought to presence
Of Lucifer; then low, as well I could,
I kneeled, which he so well allow'd
That thus he beck'd, and by St. Antony
He smiled on me well-favour'dly,
Bending his brows as broad as barn doors;
Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs;
Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels;
Flashing the fire out of his nostrils;
Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously,
That methought time to fall to flattery,
Wherewith I told, as I shall tell;

Oh pleasant picture! O prince of hell!" &c.

The piece concludes with some good wholesome advice from the Pedlar, who here, as well as in the poem of the Excursion,' performs the part of Old Morality; but he does not seem, as in the latter case, to be acquainted with the " mighty stream of Tendency." He is more full of "wise saws" than "modern instances;" as prosing, but less paradoxical!

"But where ye doubt, the truth not knowing,
Believing the best, good may be growing.
In judging the best, no harm at the least;
In judging the worst, no good at the best.
But best in these things, it seemeth to me,
To make no judgment upon ye;

But as the church does judge or take them,
So do ye receive or forsake them.

And so be you sure you cannot err,
But may be a fruitful follower."

Nothing can be clearer than this.

The Return from Parnassus' was "first publicly acted," as the title-page imports, "by the students in St. John's College, Cambridge." It is a very singular, a very ingenious, and, as I think, a very interesting performance. It contains criticisms on contemporary authors, strictures on living manners, and the earliest denunciation (I know of) of the miseries and unprofit

ableness of a scholar's life. The only part I object to in our author's criticism is his abuse of Marston; and that, not because he says what is severe, but because he says what is not true of him. Anger may sharpen our insight into men's defects; but nothing should make us blind to their excellences. The whole passage is, however, so curious in itself (like the Edinburgh Review' lately published for the year 1755) that I cannot forbear quoting a great part of it. We find in the list of candidates for praise many a name―

"That like a trumpet makes the spirits dance;"

there are others that have long since sunk to the bottom of the stream of time, and no Humane Society of Antiquarians and Critics is ever likely to fish them up again.

"Judicio. Read the names.

Ingenioso. So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.

Edmund Spenser,

John Davis,

Henry Constable,

Thomas Lodge,

Samuel Daniel,

Thomas Watson,

Michael Drayton,

John Marston,

Kit Marlowe,

William Shakspeare;

and one Churchyard,

[who is consigned to an untimely grave.]

Good men and true, stand together, hear your censure: what's thy judg

ment of Spenser ?

Jud. A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po;

A shriller nightingale than ever blest

The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome,

Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,
While he did chaunt his rural minstrelsy.
Attentive was full many a dainty ear:
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,
While sweetly of his Faery Queen he sung,
While to the water's fall he tun'd her fame,
And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name.
And yet for all, this unregarding soil
Unlaced the line of his desired life,

Denying maintenance for his dear relief;

Careless even to prevent his exequy,

Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.

Ing. Pity it is that gentler wits should breed, Where thick-skinned chuffs laugh at a scholar's need.

But softly may our honour'd ashes rest,

That lie by merry Chaucer's noble chest.

But I pray thee proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud of myself, as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with thine. Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.

Jud. Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear,

And lays it up in willing prisonment:
Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage
War with the proudest big Italian,

That melts his heart in sugar'd sonnetting.
Only let him more sparingly make use
Of others' wit, and use his own the more,
That well may scorn base imitation.

For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert,
Yet subject to a critic's marginal:

Lodge for his oar in every paper boat,
He that turns over Galen every day,

To sit and simper Euphues' legacy.

Ing. Michael Drayton.

Jud. Drayton's sweet Muse is like a sanguine dye,

Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye.

Ing. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times; and that is this, he cannot swagger in a tavern, nor domineer in a pot-house. John Davis

Jud. Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,

That jerk in hidden charms these looser times:
Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,

Is graced with a fair and sweeping train.

Ing. John Marston

Jud. What, Monsieur Kinsayder, put up, man, put up for shame.
Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,

Withouten bands or garters' ornament.
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's helicon,

Then royster doyster in his oily terms

Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe'er he meets,

And strews about Ram-alley meditations.

Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms,

Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?

Give him plain naked words stript from their shirts,
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine.

Ing. Christopher Marlowe

Jud. Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd Muse:

Alas! unhappy in his life and end.

Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,

Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.

Ing. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got

A tragic penman for a dreary plot.

Benjamin Jonson

Jud. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.

Ing. A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath by observation, and makes only nature privy to what he endites: so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying; a blood whoreson, as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick.

William Shakspeare.

Jud. Who loves Adonis' love, or Lucrece' rape,

His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life.

Could but a graver subject him content,

Without love's lazy foolish languishment."

This passage might seem to ascertain the date of the piece, as it must be supposed to have been written before Shakspeare had become known as a dramatic poet. Yet he afterwards introduces Kempe the actor talking with Burbage, and saying, "Few (of the University) pens play well: they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and of that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakspeare puts them all down; ay, and Ben Jonson too."-There is a good deal of discontent in all this; but the author complains of want of success in a former attempt, and appears not to have been on good terms with fortune. The miseries of a poet's life forms one of the favourite topics of The Return from Parnassus,' and are treated as if by some one who had "felt them knowingly." Thus Philomusus and Studioso chaunt their griefs in concert.

"Phil. Bann'd be those hours, when 'mongst the learned throng,

By Granta's muddy bank we whilom sung.

Stud. Bann'd be that hill which learned wits adore,

Where erst we spent our stock and little store.

Phil. Bann'd be those musty mews, where we have spent

Our youthful days in paled languishment.

Stud. Bann'd be those cozening arts that wrought our woe,

Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro.

Phil. Curst be our thoughts whene'er they dream of hope;
Bann'd be those haps that henceforth flatter us,
When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye,
From our first birth until our burying day.
In our first gamesome age, our doting sires
Carked and car'd to have us lettered:
Sent us to Cambridge where our oil is spent:
Us our kind college from the teat did tent,
And forced us walk before we weaned were.

From that time since wandered have we still

In the wide world, urg'd by our forced will;

Nor ever have we happy fortune tried;

Then why should hope with our rent state abide ?"

"Out of our proof we speak."-This sorry matter-of-fact retrospect of the evils of a college life is very different from the hypothetical aspirations after its incommunicable blessings expressed by a living writer of true genius and a lover of true learning, who does not seem to have been cured of the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of classic lore, two hundred years after its vanity and vexation of spirit had been denounced in 'The Return from Parnassus :'

"I was not trained in academic bowers;

And to those learned streams I nothing owe,
Which copious from those fair twin founts do flow:
Mine have been anything but studious hours.
Yet can I fancy wandering 'mid thy towers,
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap.

My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap;
And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers.

Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech;
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain,

And my skull teems with notions infinite:

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach

Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein;
And half had stagger'd that stout Stagyrite."*

Thus it is that our treasure always lies where our knowledge does not, and fortunately enough perhaps; for the empire of imagination is wider and more prolific than that of experience.

The author of the old play, whoever he was, appears to have belonged to that class of mortals, who, as Fielding has it, feed upon their own hearts; who are egotists the wrong way, made desperate by too quick a sense of constant infelicity; and have the same intense uneasy consciousness of their own defects that most men have self-complacency in their supposed advantages. Thus venting the driblets of his spleen still upon himself, he prompts the Page to say, "A mere scholar is a creature that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box, put on a pair of lined

* 'Sonnet to Cambridge,' by Charles Lamb