ART. I. The Plays of Philip Massinger, with Notes critical and explanatory, by William Gifford, Esq. 8vo. 4 Vols. 21. 8s. Nicol, &c. IT T is with considerable satisfaction that we receive a new edition of the plays of a great dramatic Poet, who was the cotemporary of Shakspeare, of Jonson, of Beaumont, and of Fletcher; and with whom his own name may be joined as giving lustre to the times in which they lived. Yet never within our memory, scarcely more than at the present moment, have the compositions of this writer been so generally known as their merit has deserved; although neither their phraseology will appear uncouth or obsolete, nor their humour be disrelished, while the plays of Shakspeare are studied and esteemed. They possess similar characteristics of the age which gave them birth, and are distinguished by kindred genius: but it must at the same time be remarked that they often offend equally, or in a greater degree, against the laws of probability in their incidents and the rules of decorum in their language. They must be admired for the invention, for the poetry, for the knowlege of mankind, for the powers of satire, of ridicule, and of wit which they discover, and even for the moral which they are designed to inculcate: but the alloy of indecency is so great that they can never be indiscriminately recommended, nor be read in a circle in which the modesty of youth or the delicacy of sex should be held sacred. The dramatists might find an apology for their licentiousness in the grossness of their days: but if we are not now in reality more virtuous, we are at least more refined. Of Massinger's life, but little seems to be known. He was born in the year 1584 at Salisbury, or, as it is conjectured, at Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, in whose service his father lived, and where he himself appears to have received his early instruction. His education was liberal; and in his eighteenth year, he was sent to the University of Oxford, where he be VOL. L.II ! came a Commoner of St. Alban's Hall. We find him after. ward obliged by his necessities, and perhaps by the peculiar bent of his talents, to dedicate himself to the service of the Stage; and here we are sorry to see him struggling with difficulties, in common with others whose subsistence depended on the emoluments to be derived from dramatic writings. He died on the 17th of March, 1640. He went to bed in good health, says Langbaine, and was found dead in the morning in his own house on the Bankside. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, and the comedians paid the last sad duty to his name, by attending him to the grave. It does not appear, from the strictest search, that a stone, or inscription of any kind, marked the place where his dust was deposited even the memorial of his mortality is given with a pathetick brevity, which accords but too well with the obscure and humble passages of his life: "March 20, 1639-40, buried Philip Massinger, A STRANGER"! No flowers were flung into his grave, no elegies "soothed his hovering spirit," and of all the admirers of his talents and his worth, none but Sir Astone Cockayne dedicated a line to his memory. It would be an abuse of language to honour any composition of Sir Aston with the name of poetry, but the steadiness of his regard for Massinger may be justly praised. In that collection of doggrel rhymes, which I have already mentioned, (p. xiii.) there is "an epitaph on Mr. John Fletcher, and Mr. Philip Massinger, who lie both buried in one grave in St. Mary Overy's church, in Southwark : "In the same grave was Fletcher buried, here The number of Massinger's plays which are known to be extant, and which are printed in the present collection, is eighteen but one of these, The Parliament of Love, now first committed to the press, is in an imperfect state. Several others, by some strange negligence, were destroyed among the manuscript plays, collected with such care by Mr. Warburton (Somerset Herald) and applied with such perseverance by his cook to the covering of his pies.' Concerning this piece of destruction, Mr. Gifford shall speak for himself. The number of these plays, said to be written by Massinger alone, was not less than twelve, but probably two of them did not belong to him. Their titles, as given by Mr. Warburton, arc-Minerva's Sacrifice The Forced Lady. Antonio and Valia. The Woman's Plot. The Tyrant. Philenxo and Hippolita. The Judge. Fast and Wel come. The Noble come. Believe as you List. The Honour of Women. Choice. And, The Parliament of Love. When it is added that, together with these, forty other manuscript plays of various authors were destroyed, it will readily be allowed that English literature has seldom sustained a greater loss than by the strange conduct of Mr. Warburton, who becoming the master of treasures which ages may not reproduce, lodges them, as he says, in the hands of an ignorant servant, and when, after a lapse of years, he condescends to revisit his hoards, finds that they have been burnt from an economical wish to save him the charges of more valuable brown paper! It is time to bring on shore the book hunting passenger* in Locher's Navis Stultifera, and exchange him for one more suitable to the rest of the cargo. Tardy, however, as Mr. Warburton was, it appears that he came in time to preserve three dramas from the general wreck; The Second Maid's Tragedy. The Bugbears. And The Queen of Corsica. These, it is said, are now in the library of the marquis of Lansdowne, where they will probably remain in safety till moths, or damps, or fires mingle their "forgotten dust" with that of their late companions. When it is considered at how trifling an expense a manuscript play may be placed beyond the reach of accident, the witholding it from the press will be allowed to prove a strange indifference to the ancient literature of the country. The fact however seems to be, that these treasures are made subservient to the gratification of a spurious rage for notoriety; it is not that any benefit may accrue from them either to the proprietors or others, that manuscripts are now hoarded, but that A or B may be celebrated for possessing what no other letter of the alphabet can hope to acquire. Nor is this all. The hateful passion of literary avarice (a compound of vanity and envy) is becoming epidemick, and branching out in every direction. It has many of the worst symptoms of that madness which once raged among the Dutch for the possession of tulips: -bere, as well as in Holland, an artificial rarity is first created, and then made a plea for extortion, or a ground for low-minded and selfish exultation.. I speak not of works never intended for sale, and of which, therefore, the owner may print as few or as many as his feelings will allow, but of those which are ostensibly designed for the publick, and which, notwithstanding, prove the editors to labour under this odious disease. Here, an old manuscript is brought forward, and after a few copies are printed, the press is broken up, that there may be a pretence for selling them at a price which none but a collector can reach: there, explanatory plates are engraved for a work of general use, and, as soon as twenty or thirty impressions are taken off, destroyed with gratuitous malice, (for it deserves no other name,) that there may be a mad competition for the favoured copies! To conclude, for this is no pleasant subject, books are purchased now Spem quoque nec parvam collecta volumina præbent Calleo nec verbum, nec libri sentio mentem, |