As

"I find (says she in one of her epistles) I live in a carping age; for some find fault with my former writings, because they are not grammar, nor good orthography; and that all the last words are not rime; and that the feet are not in just numbers: for the orthography, the printer should have rectified that, for I think it is against nature for a woman to spell right; for my part, I confess I cannot; and as for the rimes and numbers, although it is like I have erred in many, yet not so much as by the negligence of those that were to oversee it; for, by the false printing, they have not only done my book wrong in that, but in many places the very sense is altered; as for surfets, sercutts; wanting, wanton; like flaming fire to burn, they have printed a fire gunn, and many other words they have left out besides; and there is above a hundred of those faults, so that my book is lamed by an ill midwife and nurse, the printer and overseer; but as for the grammar part, I confess I am no scholar,"

&c.

Those who wish to ascertain the accuracy of her Grace's statement, may look into a copy of the "Poems and Fancies," in the British Museum, enriched with MS. notes in the Duchess's own handwriting.

At the end of the World's Olio, the following rhymes deserve to be noticed: "Of all my works, this book which I have writ,

My best beloved, and greatest favourite,
I look upon it with a pleasing eye,
I pleasure take in its sweet company,
I entertain it with a grave respect,
And with my pen am ready to protect
The life and safety of it, 'gainst all those
That will oppose it, or profess its foes:
But I am sure there's none condemn it can,
Unless some foolish and unlearned man,
That hath not understanding, judgment, wit,
For to perceive the reason that's in it."

Any one who may infer from these exquisite verses, that the Duchess (who was then only Marchioness) preferred "the World's Olio" to all her other writings, will be greatly mistaken. She tells us, in an (6 Epistle to the Reader," prefixed to the "Philosophi

cal and Physical Opinions," published also in 1655, "that in the World's Olio there are such gross mistakes in misplacing of chapters, and so many literall faults, as her book was much disadvantaged thereby ;" and then she adds, "Likewise a short copie of verses at the latter end of the book, is what I intended for this book, as being my beloved of all my works, preferring it. as my master-piece, although I do believe it will not please my readers."

She is very indignant at the supposition, that she had taken feathers out of the universities to enlarge the wings of her fancy." To which she the wooll from his sheeps' backs to answers, no more than David took cloath his poetical phancies of devotion." In disclaiming all obligation to the writings or conversation of two great writers of that age, she expresses herself very awkwardly.

"Some say that my book of philosophy, it seems as if I had converst with Des Cartes or Master Hobbes, or both, or have frequented their studies, by reading their works. I cannot say but I have seen them both, but, upon my conscience, I never spake to Monsieur De Cartes in my life, nor ever understood what he said, for he spake no English, and I understand no other language; and those times I saw him, which was twice at dinner with my Lord at Paris, he did appear

to me a man of the fewest words I ever heard. And for Master Hobbes, it is true, I have had the like good fortune to see him, and that very often, with my Lord at dinner, for, I, conversing seldom with any strangers, had no other time to see those two famous philosophers; yet, I never heard Master Hobbes, to my best remembrance, treat or discourse of philosophy, nor I ever spake to Master Hobbes twenty words in my life. I cannot say I did not ask him a question, for when I was in London I met him, and told him as truly, I was very glad to see him, and asked him if he would please to do me that honour to stay at dinner, but he, with great civility, refused me, as having some businesse, which I suppose required his absence. And for their works, my own foolish fancies do so employ my time, as they will not give me leave to read their books for, upon my conscience, I never read more of Mounsieur Des Cartes than half his book of passion; and, for Master Hobbes, I never read more than a little book called De Cive, and that but once."

;

It is to be recollected, that by her own account, she knew no language but English; and though one of Des Cartes works had been before this time done into English by a person of honour, we are pretty certain that there

dently the creations of accident, and, as her conjugal oracle assured her, that she was infinitely superior to all the old philosophers, it is not wonderful that she should suppose it possible for the most perfect productions to originate from chance. With all her extravagant follies, it must be owned, that she now and then brings forth brilliant ideas. Her prose is incompar ably more poetical than her verse-but if all that she ever wrote were irrecoverably lost, the world would sustain no serious injury from their annihilation.

By an address to the reader, prefixed and signed P. P. it seems that this play had been offered for representation, but refused; and that the MS. had for a long time been on the shelf, from whence it was now removed by the editor, against the will, and even to the hazard of the loss of friendship of the author. "I have so far sinned against the modesty of my friend," &c. And, again, "I have hazarded the loss of his love, only that I may shew my self thy friend and servant. P. P."

Commendatory verses are subjoined by the following Oxford wits of the day, who all appear to have been intimate associates of the author, extolling him to the skies, and equalizing him to Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and Randolph. Their names are, Richard Downey, A.B. è. C. Ex.; Robt Stapylton, A. B. Aul. Alb.; Richard Doderidge of Exeter Coll.; A. Short of Exeter Coll.; S. Hall and Edw. Hall of ditto; and Jos. Hall of St Alban's Hall.

The character of Virginio Ursini seems to have been the favourite object of praise to these friends of the author, and is compared, of course, maintaining its great superiority to the Sejanus, the Alchemist, and the Volpone of Jonson. A short analysis of the plot will be sufficient to prove the nature of its claim to this distinction; at the same time, that it will VOL. V.

tolerably well account for the rejection which this highly honoured child of Isis experienced from the players. But the poetical beauties with which the language abounds, are, at the same time, of an order almost to justify the blind admiration of the graduates of Exeter College, and to create some wonder that the name of the author is left to be guessed at from the initials, and from those of his panegyrists, which are not so illustrious as to throw much light on the subject.

This play is not noticed in the Biographia Dramatica.

The play contains three distinct, and almost entirely independent, fables or actions-the first, and principal, being strictly tragic; the second, according to the old phrase, tragi-comic, that is, tending to tragedy, but having a happy ending; and the third purely comic, or rather farcical. The remaining unities are observed with an attention to be expected from the learned member of a classical university.

The piece opens with the return of the Neapolitan army, under the command of its victorious king, Ferrando, from the conquest of Sicily. From so heroic a beginning, it is proper to advertise the reader that there is no historical foundation for any part of the story, and that the union it celebrates, is that of Eutopia and Atalantis, rather than of Sicily and Naples. But, to

E

proceed methodically, the fable must be traced from its origin to the commencement of the action.

Ferrando, king of Naples, has been betrothed to Calantha, the only child of the old king, and heiress of the crown of Sicily, when, in consequence of some state affairs, which it would be impertinent in us to pry into, the father of the princess suddenly turns round, and refuses his consent to the intended union. Ferrando, like a true suitor of romance, easily yields to the suggestion which bids him "win and wear her;" but, instead of going at first in person at the head of his peers, he sends the Count Alberto, his favourite minister and general, to attempt the conquest of Sicily. The ill success of this officer, furnishes Virginio Ursini (the Machiavel of the piece) with the first step to his own advancement in the overthrow of his rival. Debauchee, as well as politician, this artful villain had previously contrived to overcome the virtue of Felicia, the daughter of Alberto, under the name and in the disguise of the king; and the fear of the father's vengeance adds a fresh stimulus to his ambition. Alberto, on his return, is accused of treachery, and perishes on a scaffold; and Ferrando, after promoting Ursini to fill the vacant place of minister, resolves on a second expedition to Sicily in person. He proves victorious, slays his intended father-in-law on the field of battle, and makes prisoner his amazon bride, Calantha, whom he brings back to Naples in triumph, as the opima spolia of the war. His unfortunate captive, in the struggle between love for her conqueror, shame and grief for her degraded condition, and horror in the reflection that her father had died by the hands of her intended husband, falls into a deep melancholy, grows distracted, and "babbles" of the Elysian fields. A physician undertakes to cure her, by indulging her fancy; and his purpose is effected by an illusive pageant of the "arva beata," which persuades Calantha that she is herself a purified soul. After her recovery, she consents, but with a heavy heart, to the "fatal union."

The scenes now described, constitute the principal part of the second and third acts of the play. So far, with the exception of the whole of the comic part, which is in the very worst style

of low buffoonery, and the confusion produced by the intermixture of the tragi-comic underplot, the story creates a considerable degree of interest, and is even conducted with great skill and judgment. The Pageant of Elysium might be so managed, as to produce an extremely striking effect in the representation; and the dialogue abounds with tender and poetical touches. Thus, in the first scene of the second act, where Calantha appears distracted, she thus addresses her lover:

“We shall all sleep quietly When we are dead-There is no noise of chains;

We shall not dream of prisons, rocks, or ships:
But every night shall see the gods descend
On our soft slumbers, and steal away our
Ladies, you'll see me shrowded decently
miseries.
When I am dead; down in the meads yon,

where

Grim Pluto stole his Proserpine, are still The flowers she scattered; go, bring them hither,

And strew me o'er with them; she was a virgin chaste,

And I have heard, that flowers of their gathering

Will never die."

Her dream, on the eve of her wedding, is beautifully in unison with her character.

"These rites, If we may credit what our dreams foretell, Will turn to funeral obsequies: for such This morning (when your careful art had bound

My senses up) Fancy presented them.
Methought I saw

Aurora from the east come weeping up,

day

Wrapt in night's sables, and the following
Paced slowly on in grief's sad livery.
The pensive winds sigh'd forth a solemn dirge,
And strove to blow our marriage tapers out.
When you, Ursini, join'd in the solemnity,
I saw you look like Sicily's pale ghost,
Broke from the hollow caverns of the earth.
Mouldered to ashes: on your lip there sat
This hand, Ferrando, at your gentle touch,
A frost, which, when I tasted, straight con-
vey'd

An icy chilliness through every joynt;
The stammering Priest, methought, mistook
the rites,

And 'stead of those are used at nuptials, Sung a short requiem to our souls, committed All that was left of 's to the earth, our last Cold bed.

Their odour flies to Heaven in sacrifice, Sweet as the purple smoke ascending from The Phoenix funeral piles, or southern breath Perfumed with all Arabia's spiceries."

The scene opening and discovering the tomb of the king of Sicily, and the funeral dirge, instead of Epithalamium, are in the true spirit of melancholy wildness, which the preceding dialogue is calculated to engender. The song itself is not altogether devoid of that simple pathos so often to be met with in the little lyrical accompaniments of our old dramas.

And dig for diamonds in each eye; Whilst the sceptre-bearing hand Cannot their inroads withstand.

III.

Here doth one in odours wade,
By the royal unction made;
While another dares to gnaw,
On that tongue, the people's law.
Chorus.

And do strive

Fools, ah! fools are we, who so contrive,
In each gaudy ornament
Who shall his corpse in the best dish present."

It is somewhat too evident, however, that the beautiful dirge in the Tempest was before the author's eyes, or in his mind, when he composed this fanciful, though certainly inferior, elegy.

The character of Calantha is as happily introduced to our notice, as it is ably sustained in the scenes which have been just described. The following forms a part of a dialogue between Valenzo and his friend Piero, at the commencement of the play; in which the only circumstance to be regretted is, that it does not perhaps explain to the reader so much of preceding occurrences as is necessary to enable him to enter at once into the nature of those which are to ensue.

"Val. I've seen her, maugre all those

sudden fears

opposes

them

lain, without any sufficient or apparent motive for his villanies. Thus, when Federigo, under the assumed name of Zisco, talks openly to him of his designs against the king, he by general common places upon the divinity of princes, and in such a manner as to leave the spectator himself as totally in the dark as to his real inclinations as the person with whom he is speaking. This might have been prevented, by the common and obvious artifice of a soliloquy; but, as it is, we are ignorant even to the end of the play, how far it was Ursini's wish or design that Zisco's treason should take effect.

"One, upon whom attends a guard of

men

And angels; on whose brow divinity

what sway

Authority can bear, when by this charge They are grown mad and mutinous. Who shall

Compose their private jars and quarrels, When their full cups add fury to their pride?"

When he meets his friend Piero, he thus inquires of him the present state of affairs at Naples.

"What face wears the court? How looks it

On our new dignities? Envy, like the Sun, Darts her beams hottest on the rising banks.'

Federigo, the son of Count Alberto, besides the hatred which he owes his sovereign, on account of his father's death, is abused with a story of his sister Felicia's having been dishonoured, and afterwards murdered by Ferrando, which exasperates his hatred to phrenzy. In the disguise of a Moor, he enters into the service of Virginio Ursini, the court favourite, the same personage whose character (as we have already seen), is held up by the author's panegyrists, as the most prodigious effort of genius, but which is merely that of a most diabolical vil

Fork'd arrows into th' guilty soul, and

sticks

A palsied fear through every limb and joint Of the murderer."

This is a fine specimen of the high prerogative strain of Ursini's argument, and reminds one of Shakspeare's Richard the Second. Those with which Zisco opposes him are equally spirited, and the manner in which they lead to Ursini's discovering his real person, natural and dramatic.