and all, Pray, sir, can you help me to a wet piece of brown paper?"-The Rehearsal, Act. II., Scene 5. However when the piece was performed, Lacy, who played Bayes mimicked the dull ponderous manner of Dryden in the most unmistakable way, and thus the piece became a kind of patchwork, being partly a satire on Davenant, and partly on Dryden, the plays of both authors being unsparingly parodied and ridiculed. Mention has already been made of THOMAS MAY, the Parliamentary Historiographer, and although it does not appear that he was appointed to the post of laureate by the unpoetical party to which he was attached, yet, as he may be considered to have occupied the throne during the commonwealth, whilst Davenant was absent, or confined in prison, a few notes on his career are here inserted. He was of an ancient family and was born in Sussex in 1594. He wrote several plays, but his reputation rests chiefly on his translation of Lucan's Pharsalia. He was for sometime in great favour with Charles I. at whose command he published in 1635 a poem in seven books, entitled "The Victorious Reign of Edward III.” But Clarendon says that though he received much countenance, and a very considerable donation from the king, he deserted the Court party for that of the Parliament upon His Majesty's refusing to give him a small pension, which he had designed and promised to another very ingenious person. It appears from other authorities that the "pension" alluded to, was the office of queen's poet which May expected to receive but which was given to Davenant. Fuller also accounts for his desertion of the Court on the ground that “his bays were not gilded richly enough,” It does not appear to have occurred to these old writers that a spirit of patriotism might have prompted May, as it did many of the best men of the day, to enlist in the Parliamentary cause. That he was an upright, honourable man is shown by his History of the Parliament which valuable record of a singularly interesting period is written with great courage and impartiality, especially noteworthy when it is remembered that he was the secretary and historiographer of that Parliament whose acts he freely and fearlessly enumerates and criticises. May died suddenly on the 15th November, 1650, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His death was said to have been caused by tying his night cap too tightly under his chin, and he, being very fat, was choked when he turned on his side. On the Restoration his body was removed to St. Margaret's Churchyard, and the monument which had been erected by Parliament to his memory was taken down and thrown aside. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT'S DRAMATIC WORKS. TRAGEDIES. Albovine, King of the Lombards. 1629. The Cruel Brother. 1630. The Just Italian. 1630. The Platonick Lovers. T. C. 1636. The Unfortunate Lovers. 1643. The Fair Favourite. T. C. The Law against Lovers. T, C. The Siege. T. C. The Distresses. T. C. Macbeth. Altered from Shakespeare, 1674. There were also several masques; also, The First Day's Entertainment at Rutland House, by Declamation and Musick, after the Manner of the Ancients, 1656; and The Siege of Rhodes, made a Representation, by the Art of Prospective in Scenes; and the Story sung in Recitative Musick, at the Back Part of Rutland House, in the Upper End of Aldersgate Street. 1656. JOHN DRYDEN. (1670-1688.) "Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join A. POPE. JOHN DRYDEN, who holds the first place in the second rank of our classical poets, was certainly one of the greatest satirists in the language, and the first poet who joined argument with verse-a style of composition which Pope successfully imitated. Living in the stormy days which preceded and followed the Restoration, the revolution which Dryden effected in English literature and taste may be fitly compared to the changes through which our country passed, to emerge, at length, free from the baneful influence and vicious examples of the Stuarts, and richer, purer, and greater for the trials it had endured. "What was said of Rome," remarks Dr. Johnson, "adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry, embellished by Dryden. 'He found it brick, and he left it marble.'" His writings constitute the last of the so-called romantic school of poetry, and the first of the didactic and reasoning style which his pupil and admirer, Pope, brought to the height G of polish and refinement. The strength of intellect and power of language-which Dryden possessed to a far greater extent than Pope--is shown as strongly by his prose-writings as by his poetry. The former consist principally of essays on poetry, and criticism in the form of prefaces, and are characterised by the purity of his English, the fitness of every word he uses to its position, and the originality of his style. He has little or no sentiment, and more humour than wit. His poetry is argumentative or political, seldom fanciful or gay; and scarcely a tender or pathetic passage is to be found in all his poems. His plays (now never performed) are probably but seldom read; yet it must not be forgotten that by his contemporaries they were much admired, and brought him more profit and fame than all his poetry. A new tragedy by Dryden at the King's Theatre was the greatest of all attractions, and king, court, town, and the wits, all flocked to the first day's performance, as we may see by reference to Pepys' chatty “Diary.” In comedy he may be said to have failed; he had not the sparkling wit, the power of repartee, or the graceful epigrammatic turn of expression the audiences of those days looked for in comedy, and which they found in the masterpieces of Congreve, Etherege, and Wycherley. John Dryden was born on the 9th of August, 1631, in the parsonage of the small parish of Aldwincle All Saints, in Northamptonshire. He came of a good family, and this fact, which one would suppose to be of little interest to the general reader, is elaborately detailed in most biographies, with long genealogical notes. Not only is this the case with Dryden, but of every other poet in whose behalf a claim for gentle blood can be put in; as |