And with a pleas'd and deep attention hear
A voice and spirit ah how like their own!
Far was that spirit from our regions flown.
But Dante's self, the aweful, the severe,
Bends to thine accents the approving ear:
Nor SHAKESPEARE breathes his energies alone.

2.

Light-rob'd SIMPLICITY, and keen-ey'd ART,
And high-ton'd GENIUS, in thy labours join,
And philosophic VIRTUE calm and free.

PITY and AWE fill the expanding heart;
Exalt and purify !—such works divine

Merit the glorious name of TRAGEDY.

Troston, 21 Oct. 1808.

Die NELSONI ultimâ Victoria & Morte insigni.

C. L.

ART. DCCCLXXVI. The Ballad of an Idle Hour.

WHEN pensive, cold and wan,

The world oppressing me,

Life seem'd a lengthen'd span

Of hard necessity;

Then hope sought where to find,

Who heeds not cloudy morn,

That marks the lowly born,

And there to ease my mind;

'Twas woman, woman kind!

On travel worn and faint,

Mine host the surly lord,

With brow of harsh restraint,

Unbidding to the board;

O'er rough uncostly rind,
As blossoms fair expand ;
Some timid maiden, bland,
In the circle pleas'd my mind;

With woman, woman, kind!

'Tis not the monarch's smiles
Alone make courtiers gay!
Nor toys of splendour's wiles
That envy's course bewray?
Though fortune scatters blind
The little gifts of state,

Where beggar pride may wait;

Pomp must with humble mind,

Seek woman, woman, kind!

"Tis not the forged chains,

The noisome dreary walls,
Where tyrant power reigns,
And solitude appals;
Let wrath vain galling bind,-
The soul in freedom starts,
Truth undismay'd imparts;
Nought can depress the mind,

Save woman, woman, kind!

Let early-tufted spring

Bring joys by linnets told;

And little crickets sing

Within their beds of gold;

They ne'er would please the hind,
Nor village bells ring blythe,
When resting on his scythe,

Save fleeting o'er the mind

Comes woman, woman, kind!

When sound the notes of joy,
When giddy pipe and drum,
Gives eccho new employ

To bid rude labour come:
Though wreaths the May pole bind,
What foot will mock the ground,
To rustic measure bound,
Till the swain's delighted mind,

Joins woman, woman kind!

Why sound the magic lute,

Or theme the wayward song ; If love, as blind, were mute, Nor passion's notes prolong? Why fancy's form design'd Invoking Muse divine,

To swell Promethean line; "Tis one enthrals the mind,

Of woman, woman, kind!

ART. DCCCLXXVII.

Notices respecting Mas

singer's Works.*

MR. GIFFORD, in the late edition of this author, has indulged himself in some severe notes on the preceding editors. Their supposed incapacity may be equalled in one instance by his own hasty inattention, and a future editor, with less spleen than himself, might fairly attach a note of ridicule upon his elaborate labour. The Virgin Martyr, the first play edited according to the new arrangement, has at p. 65 the following note. "The first two quartos have a stage direction here, which Coxeter and M. Mason follow: Enter ARTEMIA laughing. But Artemia continues on the stage: the ERROR was seen and removed by the quarto 1661, which reads as I have given it." After this triumvirate of editorial investigation, who have not been able to discover and correct, what was originally a glaring error in the press; I shall take the liberty, with all deference, of requesting the reader to insert Enter ANGELO laughing. This will be found necessary from the ancient custom of all characters making an entrance upon the stage before they utter a speech; a task, as the text now

"The fire of Massinger's genius, compared with Shakspeare, is like a wax-taper beside an Argand lamp. He has beauties, and those beauties have not yet obtained the full advantage usually derived from the attention of an editor." The remainder of an opinion sent me by a theatrical friend, it seems prudent to omit.

Of this play there were four editions in quarto; the omitted date is 1651.

Angelo, the good spirit, enters immediately on the exit of Harpax the evil one. "Not for hills of diamonds" could they meet; and that circumstance only occurs at the conclusion, upon the final triumph of Angelo. It is sometimes necessary to support, even proof by argument.

stands, unfortunately given to Angelo, who is not present, within about eight lines from the number referring to the above note. Momentous trifle!*

The story of the Picture, upon which Massinger founded his play with that title, is also related by George Whetstone in "the Arbour of Virtue," or third part of the "Rocke of Regard," 1576. In the dedication he says, "I haue faithfully (though not curiously) translated the modest and noble life of a Bohemian lady, with the fall of two Hungarian barons which vnaduisedly wagered the spoyle of her chastitie."

Vlrico is the name of the Bohemian knight who marries Lady Barbara, and “the cunning Negromancer, is called Polacco. Vlrico serves under "the King of Hungarie," and the barons are Lord Alberto and Lord Vdislao, and the wager being laid with the knowledge of the King and Queen, when,

"Indentures to assure this match, ingrossed were in haste,
The couenants as before exprest, were in the parchment plaste;
The King and Queen gsve free consent, the wager should be laid,
Th' indentures seal'd, by either part, and all things sure are made."

Alberto arrives first, and being confined, in hopes of liberty discovers the tenor of the wager to Barbara, who plots a similar imprisonment for Vdislao immediately on his arrival. Upon this being accontplished servants are dispatched to court with the news, when it becomes the office of the "Chauncelour and

* Some future editor may refer in act iv. s. ii. upon the speech of Hircius "I'll come upon her with rounce robble hobble and twick-twack thirlery-bouncing," to the well known lines of Stanyhurst's Virgil. This is not tracing a common epithet to "its imaginary source," according to Mr. Gifford's note on same play, at p.

10.