I KNOW nothing of Richard Brome, except that he once acted in some kind of capacity of " servant" to Ben Jonson; that he wrote a number of comedies, which succeeded; and that one of them, the Jovial Crew, or Merry Beggars, was in possession of the stage not long ago. The following laughable fancy is extracted by Charles Lamb into his "Dramatic Specimens." If Brome wrote many such, he deserves to be better known. The second childhood of the old gentlemen is very ludicrous, especially of the restive one, who tells his young director that he is "none of his father." There was another Brome, Alexander, a jovial attorney and loyalist during the Civil Wars, whose bacchanalian vein is said to have done good service to his cause. I have looked through his volume, but can find little in it except noise and smartness; though there is a tone of sincerity that does him honor. There is nothing so ready to take the will for the deed in matters of wit and song, as conviviality and good-fellowship; and very pardonable is the mistake; though the printed consequences are too apt to resemble the dullness "next morning." OLD MEN GOING TO SCHOOL. Scene from the comedy of the Antipodes, in which the "world is turned upside down," servants ruling their masters, children sending their parents to school, &c. SON, SERVANT, GENTLEMAN, and LADY, natives. ENGLISH TRAVELLER. Servant (to his young master). How well you saw Your father to school to-day, knowing how apt All three (singing). Domine, domine, duster; Son. O this is gallant pastime! Nay, come on. You shall to school. Away with him; and take Indeed 2d Old Man. You sha'n't send us now, so you sha'nt3d Old Man. We be none of your father, so we ben't. Son. Away with 'em, I say; and tell their school-mistress What truants they are, and bid her pay 'em soundly. All three. Oh, oh, oh! Lady. Alas! will nobody beg pardon for The poor old boys? English Traveller. Do men of such fair years Here go to school? Gentleman. They would die dunces else. These were great scholars in their youth; but when And so decays, that if they live until Threescore, their sons send them to school again; English Traveller. 'Tis a wise nation: and the piety Yet give me, as a stranger, leave to beg Their liberty this day. Hold up your heads, and thank the gentleman All three. Gratias, gratias.† * He means they are to scrape, and make a bow. [Exeunt singing. "Thanks, thanks."-They say it in Latin, according to school cus tom, and to show their progress. MARVEL. BORN, 1620-DIED, 1678. ANDREW MARVEL, a thoughtful and graceful poet, a masterly prose-writer and controversialist, a wit of the first water, and, above all, an incorruptible patriot, is thought to have had no mean hand in putting an end to the dynasty of the Stuarts. His wit helped to render them ridiculous, and his integrity added weight to the sting. The enmity, indeed, of such a man was in itself a reproach to them; for Marvel, though bred on the Puritan side, was no Puritan himself, nor a foe to any kind of reasonable and respectable government. He had served Cromwell with his friend Milton, as Latin Secretary, but would have aided Charles the Second as willingly, in his place in Parliament, had the king been an honest man instead of a pensioner of France. The story of his refusing a carte blanche from the king's treasurer, and then sending out to borrow a guinea, would be too well known to need allusion to it in a book like the present, if it did not contain a specimen of a sort of practical wit. Marvel being pressed by the royal emissary to state what would satisfy his expectations, and finding that there was no other mode of persuading him that he had none, called in his servant to testify to his dining three days in succession upon one piece of mutton. Even the wise and refined Marvel, however, was not free from the coarseness of his age; and hence I find the same provoking difficulty as in the case of his predecessors, with regard to extracts from the poetical portion of his satire. With the prose I should not have been at a loss. But the moment these wits of old time began rhyming, they seem to have thought themselves bound to give the same after-dinner license to their fancy, as when they were called upon for a song. To read the noble ode on Cromwell, in which such a generous compliment is paid to Charles the First, -the devout and beautiful one entitled Bermuda, and the sweet overflowing fancies put into the mouth of the Nymph lamenting the loss of her Faun,—and then to follow up their perusal with some, nay most of the lampoons that were so formidable to Charles and his brother, you would hardly think it possible for the same man to have written both, if examples were not too numerous to the contrary. Fortunately for the reputation of Marvel's wit, with those who chose to become acquainted with it, he wrote a great deal better in prose than in verse, and the prose does not take the license of the verse. Hence, as Swift for another reason observes, we can still read with pleasure his answer to his now forgotten antagonist Parker. Of his witty poems, I can only give a single one entire, which is the following. The reader knows the impudent Colonel Blood, who, in the disguise of a clergyman, attempted to steal the crown, in payment (as he said) of dues withheld from him in Ireland. Marvel had not forgotten the days of Laud, and he saw people still on the bench of bishops who were for renewing the old persecutions. Hence the bitterness of the implication made against prelates. ON BLOOD STEALING THE CROWN. * The girdle of a cassock; generally spelt surcingle. |