period,) that the Richard II. of Shakespeare, as far as disposition and habits are concerned, is little more than a counterpart of the Edward II. of Marlow. His "Rich Jew of Malta" has lately become too well known to need particular illustration, but it will require some w remarks in their proper place. But besides Marlow, who has left eight plays behind him either wholly written by his hand, or in the composition of which he assisted some brother (not rival) poet, "according to the noble practice of those times," there were many others who preceded Shakespeare in the very line which he continued if it cannot be established that he borrowed from them as freely as from Marlow, either in plot, character, or language, it will still be curious to ascertain, by critical examination, how far he found dramatic representations such as he left them, or how far he improved upon the system already established. For the purpose of investigating this subject, I shall have occasion to notice, as I proceed, many productions that have scarcely seen the light for centuries, or have remained shut up in the cabinets of the curious: among them will be the plays of Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, John Lily, Thomas Nash, George Peele, Thomas Kyd, John Marston, George Chapman, and others, whose names and works will be afterwards particularised. I should observe, that although many, indeed most, of the plays by these poets were not printed until after Shakespeare began to be known, they were obviously written many years before. Several of those, whose names I have above inserted, died before the year 1593. I shall contrast and compare their earlier and later performances, to mark the changes that had taken place, and, as I said before, to see how far some who lived longest accommodated themselves to Shakespeare, and how far Shakespeare regulated himself by them. A great deal has been written to illustrate the rise and progress of our stage, from the earliest times-to explain and criticise the tedious and unintelligible Mysteries first performed by religious societies, and to show how, in the course of time, they gave place to the scarcely less tedious but more intelligible Moralities, which, in their turn, after a period of mutual prevalence, yielded to the prosing Interludes, which for a long time kept possession of the theatre, if theatre it might be called. Of all the pieces written ander these various titles, those by John Heywood, the witty epigrammatist of the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary, are alone readable; the rest are valuable only as matters of antiquarian research, and have very little connection, and had probably no influence upon the tragedy or comedy of the end of the reign of Elizabeth. Of course, I shall not waste time upon them; but such as feel any desire to look at specimens of the kind, will find several, perhaps too many, in Hawkins' Origin of the Drama, and in Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays. They are merely the relics of expiring barbarism, and are to be esteemed rather for what they are not than for what they are-for the semisavage customs and propensities they omit, than for any polish of style or refinement of manners to be discovered in them. It is fit, however, that I should here cursorily mention a man to whom dramatic poetry is, I think, much more under obligation than is usually imagined; I mean Richard Edwards, who, being one of the gentlemen of the chapel, very early in the reign of Elizabeth, wrote two plays, the one upon the story of Damon and Pythias, and the other upon that of Palamon and Arcite: both were acted before 1566, and were quite new in their kind. The persons in the mysteries, moralities, and interludes, were mere abstractions-non-entities, with whom the auditors could have no feelings in common: thus in the New Custom, among the players' names, we find Perverse-doctrine, God's-felicity, and Light-of-the-Gospel; but in Edwards's pieces the characters are men and women, in whose adventures, sufferings, or success, some interest may be taken the friendship of Damon and Pythias, and the dreadful pause between life and death which the latter in consequence experiences, are truly dramatic subjects, and the language is much superior to the crabbed crank stuff that preceded it. The first is, however, the most important difference, and, if I mistake not, it may be said to have aided materially in producing a revolution in that particular; for, perhaps, there never was a man in his day more popular than Edwards, or who was more looked up to, not only by the men of letters of his own time, but considerably afterwards. I feel an irresistible inclination to make a very short extract from the address of Pythias to Dionysius, when he finds that Damon does not return according to his promise: I am not loth to do whatsoever I said, Ne at this present pinch of death am I dismay'd: The Gods now, I know, have heard my fervent prayer, That they have reserv'd me to this passing great honour To die for my friend, whose faith even now I do not mistrust, My friend Damon is no false traitor-he is true and just! But sith he is no God, but man, he must do as he may, The wind may be contrary, sickness may let him, or some misadventure by the way; Which the eternal Gods turn all to my glory, That fame may resound how Pithias for Damon did die ! He breaketh no oath who doth as much as he can; to the Encyclopædia Britannica, which I happened lately to peruse with a great deal of pleasure, there are some positions laid down in treating of the transmission of heat in ga◄ seous fluids, which seem to me rather questionable, and to have been somewhat hastily adopted. I shall take the liberty of shortly stating such remarks as occurred to me on this interesting topic, for the consideration of such as are more conversant with these subjects than I can pretend to be. The learned author states, that heat is transmitted through a gaseous fluid in two ways, viz. either by means of that circulating current which is excited by the expansion of the particles of the fluid that successively come into contact with the heated body; or by means of a singular undulatory pulsation which the particles of the fluid sustain when excited by a heated body, but without any change of their relative position, and with an intensity which varies with the nature of the heated surface. This hypothesis he illustrates by the experiment of two equal hollow balls of thin bright silver His mind is here! he hath some let-he is containing hot water, one of which was but a man. The sentiments are not only noble, but nobly expressed: the irregularity of the lines is designed, in order to relieve the ear from the recurrence of the rhymes at stated intervals. About this date, it is fit to remark, all dramatic compositions were in rhyme, and it will be necessary for me to inquire by what means, and at what time blank verse was first employed in our poetry, and introduced upon our stage. The question is far from being uninteresting, and I shall follow it by an investigation of still more importance connected with the subject of these articles, viz. the node in which the severe unities of the ancients were exploded, and the romantic unities of the imagination happily established in their stead. These topics are, I believe, quite new, but they must be reserved to a future number. I. P. C. coated with cambric, and which it time that the uncoated ball lost 11 seems lost 20 parts of heat in the same parts. Of this expenditure, he says, (but he does not tell us, and I am unable to conjecture how he ascertained the fact,) that 10 parts are transmitted from each ball by the slow circulation of the heated air; and the remainder, consisting of 1 part from the naked, and 10 from the cased surface, is darted through the medium by the aerial pulses. The same effeet is produced by a coating of several folds of goldbeaters' skin. In order to account for this surprising phenomenon, he supposes, or rather affirms, that "air must approach to a boundary of pellicle or cambric, much nearer than to a surface of metal, from which it 500th part of an inch." is always divided by more than the This bold deduction is rather startling, and would seem to be supported by no sufficient reason. It gives to my mind but an unsatisfactory exOBSERVATIONS ON THE PROPAGA planation of the phenomena, and it TION OF HEAT IN GASEOUS MEDIA. MR EDITOR, IN the very able and ingenious article on "Climate" in the Supplement hardly removes the difficulty a step farther; for it cannot well be conceived how a particle of air, pressed En. Sup. Vol. III. Part I. Page 196. down by its own weight, and that of the incumbent atmosphere, can keep itself more distant from any one surface than from any other, unless by assuming, that different substances exert a repulsive power upon air, and in different degrees; which I cannot imagine any ground for supposing. The phenomenon is a very singular one, but I think several other conjectures may be formed as to the cause of it, and I shall state those which have occurred to myself. When we attend to the conditions of the experiment, we observe, that the substances employed are globes of silver highly polished. Now, these are precisely the surfaces which most powerfully reflect heat and light ;for this reason, I presume, that they are those which of all others are most impenetrable to the latter fluid, seeing that the thinnest leaf of gold or silver, less than the 1-10000th of an inch in hickness, does not admit the passage of the smallest ray of light through its substance; so that where none can be transmitted or absorbed, the whole must be reflected. Considering the experiment in this light, I should have been apt to conjecture, that a portion of the heat was continually reflected inwards by the polished surface of the ball, but that it was not casy to imagine how this internal reflection could be affected by a coating applied externally on the silver. We must therefore look out for another way of accounting for it. And here it is clear, primo intuitu, that the difficult transmission of heat from the uncovered ball, depends in a great measure on the polish of the metal; for I understand it to be a fact that if the polish of the metal be destroyed, or its surface roughened, the transmission will go on much more rapidly. It was on account of this property of polished metallic surfaces, that it was proposed to cover the cylinders of steam-engines and other vessels, in which it is of importance to preserve a high temperature, with a cover or case of polished copper. It is impossible, however, to conceive, how the mere destruction of the polish can have any effect in lessening the assumed repulsion between the surface of the metal, and the particles of air, or in bringing the two substances nearer to each other. The effect which it does produce may, however, I conceive, be accounted for in two ways. In the first place, any roughening of the surface, however slight, exposes, in place of a polished and perfectly equal surface, an infinite number of minute points, from which the heat (on the supposition, that a part of it passes off by radiation) is diffused more freely to the ambient air; just as the electric fluid is attracted and dissipated most powerfully by pointed bodies. There is also, in fact, a larger surface presented by the same body in a rough than in a polished state; on which account, there ought, ceteris paribus, to be proportionally a larger quantity of heat evolved from it in a given time. But, secondly, the polished metallic surface may be conceived to effect the result in another way, and it is this: From the polished silver ball the light will be strongly reflected, in lines diverging and crossing each other in all directions. A kind of atmosphere of bright light may thus be imagined to be powerfully accumulated on the surface of the ball, which becomes weaker at every recession from it, as the rays diverge. It may be conceived, that the minute aërial pulses which form one of the principal means of the propagation of the heat, may be, in some degree, obstructed and deranged by this brilliant conflict of luminous atoms, which may prevent the shell of air surrounding the ball from receiving the full impression of its calorific influence, and, therefore, occasion the pulsations to be more feebly propagated. Again, if the warm pulsations proceeding from a heated body, be supposed to be always connected with a series of equal and opposite cold pulses proceeding from the colder bodies around, which maintain the balance of the transmitting medium, and assist in abstracting caloric from the heated body;— then, whatever diminishes the flow of the one series of pulses will, in an equal degree, lessen that of the other, and thus the total effect will be doubled. Besides, as the aerial pulses are held to be capable of being reflected by a concave polished mirror, which repels both series of pulses without having its own temperature materially affected, the cold pulsations may, in the experiment under discussion, be actually reflected from the polished ball before they have time to produce their full effect. That the reflection of the light from the polished ball has some influence in deranging the regular transmission of heat from its surface, may also be inferred from a parallel fact of a very singular nature. It is well known that the sun's rays, shining brightly upon a strong fire in a room, will, in a short time, absolutely extinguish it. I never heard any attempt to assign a cause for this fact. But if the conjecture just hinted at respecting the action of light should be found to be correct, it may probably be accounted for in a similar manner. That some action of this nature does take place is probable, from the result of the experiment itself. For when the brightness and reflecting power of the metallic ball are in a small degree diminished, by coating it with a single film of goldbeaters' leaf, the transmission becomes a little quicker, and its rapidity is progressively increased by the application of successive coatings of the same material. It might be worth while to examine whether, in the experiment alluded to, the heat will not be more freely transmitted from the naked ball in the dark,-and if this should be the fact, the justness of the conjecture might be verified by some such process as the following. First, try how many coats of goldbeaters' leaf will make the emanation from the polished ball equal to that from a roughened or unpolished one. Next, ascertain by the photometer what quantity of light admitted by a hole in a shutter into a dark room will be reflected from a plate of unpolished silver; and then, how many coats of goldbeaters' skin will reduce the light reflected from a similar plate of polished silver to an equality with the former. If the results should nearly correspond, the conjecture might be judged well founded, and might lead to some curious results respecting the nature and action of light. The preceding observations proceed on the supposition, that heat is propagated through a gaseous medium, not merely by the slow circulation of the medium itself, and by the aerial pulses; but also by the actual radiation of the particles of heat, which had hitherto been conceived to be the mode by which that subtle fluid was principally propagated to considerable distances. That the system of aërial pulses form an important part of the means by which heat is propagated through gaseous media is now certainly rendered highly probable. But to assert that it entirely usurps the functions which were heretofore ascribed to the principle of radiation, is, I think, promoting it to a rank to which it does not appear to be entitled. It is not easy to conceive any other mode in which a heated body suspended in vacuo can throw off heat until it is reduced to the common temperature of the surrounding bodies; for, in such circumstances, no aërial pulses can take place. Again, in a room warmed by a brisk fire, the heat is always propagated most powerfully in a direction perpendicular to the incandescent surfaces, whether the air of the room is agitated or at rest. But suppose the air, in place of being perfectly still, to be flowing slowly in a direction parallel to the side of the room in which the fire is placed, then, if we exclude the principle of radiation in favour of that of aërial pulses, the most intense heat ought to be felt neither in the point towards which the current of air is flowing, nor in the direction perpendicular to the fireplace; because the corpuscle of air nearest to the fire, while it is contracting in the act of surrendering its heat to the next adjoining corpuscle, is, by the supposition, carried sideways in the general current; the same influence pervades the whole series of corpuscles;-and therefore, upon the hypothesis on which we are now reasoning, the most intense propagation of heat should be in a direction compounded of that of the flow of the general current of air, and that in which the most powerful transmission would have taken place if the air had been at rest. The direction resulting from this composition of forces, supposing them both uniform, should be the diagonal of a parallelogram, the dimeusions of which will depend on the relation which the intensity of the pulses bears to the velocity of the current of air. If this should not turn out to be the fact, then I conceive the aid of some other principle, such as radiation, must be called in to account for it. But I think the principle of radiation is quite consonant with the opinion entertained by the learned author as to the nature of heat, namely, that it is "the fluid of light in a state of combination with its substratum." If this be true, it is not unreasonable to suppose that when liberated from this substratum, it should depart, as it entered, in radiating lines. OTIOSUS. COINS OF ROBERT BRUCE. MR EDITOR, UPON reading Mr Morison's letter in your last number, I examined very carefully two coins of Robert, which I had in my possession. The first I shall treat of has the face in profile, with the sceptre surmounted with the fleur-de-lis before the face. The legend is, "Robertus Dei gra. Rex Scottoruin." The reverse is divided into quarters by the cross; near the centre, between the arms of the cross, are four mullets, around which is the legend, "Villa de Perth." There is an exterior legend round the reverse, which I am somewhat doubtful of; but, allowing for abbreviations, I think it may be read, "Dominus Protector Maximus, Liberator Maximus,"-a motto very well according with the transactions of that age with the two Edwards. The other coin is the same, except that the face is full, and the reverse has 12 pellets, (three between each branch of the cross,) instead of the four mullets. There is no letter B on these coins, such as Mr Morison has stated. Should the legend on the reverse be such as I have stated, I have little doubt that the coin must be of Robert de Bruce, from its obvious allusions; the letter B (stated to be behind the head) very naturally may allude to Bruce or Bannockburn, -probably not to any general ascenJancy of that letter in what regarded Robert's history; if it did, Baliol as well as Bohun might be added to the list. The circumstance of the family likeness of the face to that on the coins of his son, David II. would have some weight, were it not from the circumstance, that in those times the dies were often the very same, (with the legend only changed,) for several reigns; even so late as the reign of Henry VIII. his coins have his father's face without the least alteration, the likeness being quite neglected; so that the die of David's coin might de scend to Robert II. as probably as Robert de Bruce's to his son, King Da vid II. It is very true, that from the reign of Elizabeth of England, likeness was considerably attended to; her coins are tolerably like, and so are James's, and those of Charles I. ; those of Charles II. are remarkably so-but during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, the faces were executed without any regard to the similarity with the original. Notwithstanding which, many of the coins of those centuries are of better workmanship and silver than those of the 15th and early part of the 16th centuries. The last of the two coins I have mentioned was found a few years ago, with many others, in the ruins of the Castle of Urquhart, near Loch Ness.-I am your constant_reader, &c. &c. H. R. D. M. - Inverness-shire, 1st Dec. 1818. de Bruce were the first of our Scottish Kings who used surnames, this fact may account for the letter B being placed to denote his surname, in such a questionable way, the thing being a of the birth, or the estate, has been novelty; during this age, the locality adopted in place of the patronymicks, which were used before, as well as designations from trades, or mental and bodily distinctions, in conjunction with the christian name. P. S.-As John Baliol and Robert DR TROMP'S NATURE PERFECTED. Prospectus of the Plan. "The world is in its infancy." DR TROMP having, during a period of forty years of intense study and profound investigation, devoted the powers of his mind to the phenomena of the human understanding, and the best means of bringing this beautiful machine to perfection, has the honour to announce to the inhabitants of Great Britain, that he has made many discoveries, which only require to be propounded that they may be admired; and to be carried into practice, that a new era in the history of intellect may be introduced. Unless the world is so blind to its own interests as to neglect Dr Tromp, it will soon appear, that the disquisitions of Aristotle and |