want of that consolidating and crowning strength, which alone can establish works of fiction in the favour of all readers and of all ages. This want of strength, it is but justice to say, is either solely or chiefly apparent when we examine the entire structure of his poem, or so large a portion of it as to feel that it does not impel or sustain our curiosity in proportion to its length. To the beauty of insulated passages who can be blind? The sublime description of " Him who with the Night durst ride," "The House of Riches," "The Canto of Jealousy," "The Masque of Cupid," and other parts, too many to enumerate, are so splendid, that after reading them, we feel it for the moment invidious to ask if they are symmetrically united into a whole. Succeeding generations have acknowledged the pathos and richness of his strains, and the new contour and enlarged dimensions of grace which he gave to English poetry. He

is the poetical father of a Milton and a Thomson. Gray habitually read him when he wished to frame his thoughts for composition, and there are few eminent poets in the language who have not been essentially indebted to him.

66

Hither, as to their fountain, other stars

Repair, and in their urns draw golden light." The publication of the Fairy Queen and the commencement of Shakespeare's dramatic career, may be noticed as contemporary events; for by no supposition can Shakespeare's appearance as a dramatist be traced higher than 1589, and that of Spenser's great poem was in the year 1590. I turn back from that date to an earlier period, when the first lineaments of our regular drama began to shew themselves.

Before Elizabeth's reign we had no dramatic authors more important than Bale and Heywood the Epigrammatist. Bale, before the titles of tragedy and

comedy were well distinguished, had written comedies on such subjects as the Resurrection of Lazarus, and the Passion and Sepulture of our Lord. He was, in fact, the last of the race of mystery-writers. Both Bale and Heywood died about the middle of the sixteenth century, but flourished (if such a word can be applied to them) as early as the reign of Henry VIII. Until the time of Elizabeth, the public was contented with mysteries, moralities, or interludes, too humble to deserve the name of comedy. The first of these, the mysteries, originated almost as early as the Conquest, in shews given by the church to the people. The moralities, which were chiefly allegorical, probably arose about the middle of the fifteenth century, and the interludes became prevalent during the reign of Henry VIII'.

'Warton also mentions Rastal, the brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, who was a printer; but who

Lord Sackville's Gorboduc (first represented in 1562), and Still's Gammer Gurton's Needle, which appeared in 1566, were the earliest, though faint, draughts of our regular tragedy and comedy. They did not, however, immediately supersede the taste for the allegorical moralities. Sackville even introduced dumb shew in his tragedy to explain the piece, and he was not the last of the old dramatists who did so. One might conceive the explanation of allegory by real personages to be a natural complaisance to an audience; but there is something peculiarly ingenious in making allegory explain reality, and the dumb interpret for

is believed by the historian of our poetry to have been also an author, and to have made the moralities in some degree the vehicle of science and philosophy. He published a new interlude on the nature of the four elements, in which The Tracts of America lately discovered and the manners of the natives are described.

those who could speak. In reviewing the rise of the drama, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and Sackville's Gorboduc, form convenient resting places for the memory; but it may be doubted if their superiority over the mysteries and moralities be half so great as their real distance from an affecting tragedy, or an exhilarating comedy. The main incident in Gammer Gurton's Needle is the loss of a needle in a man's small-clothes. Gorboduc has no interesting plot or impassioned dialogue; but it dignified the stage with moral reflection and stately measure. It first introduced blank verse instead of ballad rhymes in the drama. Gascoigne gave a farther popularity to blank verse by his paraphrase of Jocasta, from Euripides, which appeared in 1566. The same author's "Supposes," translated from Ariosto, was our earliest prose comedy. Its dialogue is easy and spirited. Edwards's Palemon and Arcite was acted in the same year, to the great