If a country thus planted and adorned, thus polished and civilised, thus improved to the height by all manner of culture for the support and sustenance and convenient entertainment of innumerable multitudes of people, be not to be preferred before a barbarous and inhospitable Scythia, without houses, without plantations, without corn-fields or vineyards, where the roving hordes of the savage and truculent inhabitants transfer themselves from place to place in waggons, as they can find pasture and forage for their cattle, and live upon milk, and flesh roasted in the sun at the pommels of their saddles; or a rude and unpolished America, peopled with slothful and naked Indians, instead of well-built houses living in pitiful huts and cabins, made of poles set endwise; then surely the brute beast's condition and manner of living, to which what we have mentioned doth nearly approach, is to be esteemed better than man's, and wit and reason was in vain bestowed on him.

The Merry Devil of Edmonton.

ANONYMOUS.

[CHARLES LAMB, who speaks of this play with a warmth of admiration which is probably carried a little too far, and which, indeed, may in some degree be attributed to his familiarity with the quiet rural scenery of Enfield, Waltham, Cheshunt, and Edmonton, in which places the story is laid, says, "I wish it could be ascertained that Michael Drayton was the author of this picce it would add a worthy appendage to the renown of that panegyrist of my native earth; who has gone over her soil (in his 'Polyolbion') with the fidelity of a herald, and the painful love of a son; who has not left a rivulet (so narrow that it may be stepped over) without honourable mention; and has animated hills and streams with life and passion above the dreams of old mythology." Some have attributed this play to Shakspere. "The Merry Devil" was undoubtedly a play of great popularity. We find, from the account-books of the Revels at court, that it was acted before the king in the same year, 1618, with "Twelfth-Night" and "Winter's Tale." In 1616, Ben Jonson, in his prologue to "The Devil is an Ass," thus addresses his audience :

Its popularity seems to have lasted much longer; for it is mentioned by Ed. mund Gayton, in 1654, in his "Notes on Don Quixote." The belief that the play was Shakspere's has never taken any root in England. Some of the recent German critics, however, adopt it as his without any hesitation. Fuller, in his "Worthies," thus records the merits of Peter Fabel, the hero of this play :-"I shall probably offend the gravity of some to insert, and cer tainly the curiosity of others to omit him. Some make him a friar, others a lay gentleman, all a conceited person, who, with his merry devices, deceived the devil, who by grace may be resisted, not deceived by wit. If a grave bishop in his sermon, speaking of Brute's coming into this land, said it was but a bruit, I hope I may say without offence that this Fabel was but a fable, supposed to live in the reign of King Henry the Sixth." His fame is more confidingly recorded in the prologue to "The Merry Devil :”]—

'Tis Peter Fabel, a renowned scholar,
Whose fame hath still been hitherto forgot
By all the writers of this latter age.

In Middlesex his birth and his abode,

Not full seven miles from this great famous city;
That, for his fame in sleights and magic won,
Was call'd the merry Fiend of Edmonton.

If

any

here make doubt of such a name,

In Edmonton, yet fresh unto this day,

Fix'd in the wall of that old ancient church,

His monument remaineth to be seen:

His memory yet in the mouths of men,

That whilst he lived he could deceive the devil.

The prologue goes on to suppose him at Cambridge at the hour when the term of his compact with the fiend is run out. We are not here to look for the terrible solemnity of the similar scene in Marlowe's "Faustus;" but, nevertheless, that before us is written with great poetical power. Coreb, the spirit, thus addresses the magician :

Coreb. Why, scholar, this is the hour my date expires;

I must depart, and come to claim my due.

Fabel. Hah! what is thy due?

Coreb. Fabel, thyself.

Fabel. Oh let not darkness hear thee speak that word,

Lest that with force it, hurry hence amain,

And leave the world to look upon my woe:

Yet overwhelm me with this globe of earth,

And let a little sparrow with her bill
Take but so much as she can bear away,
That, every day thus losing of my load,

I may again, in time, yet hope to rise.

While the fiend sits down in the necromantic chair, Fabel thus solilo quises :

Fabel. Oh that this soul, that cost so dear a price
As the dear precious blood of her Redeemer,
Inspired by knowledge, should by that alone,
Which makes a man so mean unto the powers,
E'en lead him down into the depth of hell;

When men in their own praise strive to know more
Than man should know!

For this alone God cast the angels down.

The infinity of arts is like a sea,

Into which when man will take in hand to sail
Farther than reason (which should be his pilot)
Hath skill to guide him, losing once his compass
He falleth to such deep and dangerous whirlpools,
As he doth lose the very sight of heaven;
The more he strives to come to quiet harbour
The farther still he finds himself from land.

Man, striving still to find the depth of evil,
Seeking to be a god, becomes a devil.

But the magician has tricked the fiend; the chair holds him fast, and the condition of release is a respite for seven years. The supernatural part of the play may be said here to end, and we are introduced to the society of no equivocal mortal, the host of the George, at Waltham. Sir Arthur Clare, his wife Dorcas, his daughter Millisent, and his son Harry, arrive at the inn, where the host says, "Knights and lords have been drunk in my house, I thank the destinies." This company have arrived at the George to meet Sir Richard Mounchensey, and his son Raymond, to whom Millisent is betrothed; but old Clare informs his wife that he is resolved to break off the match, to send his daughter for a year to a nunnery, and then to bestow her upon the son of Sir Ralph Jerningham. Old Mounchensey, it seems, has fallen upon evil days :

Clare, For look you, wife, the riotous old knight
Hath overrun his annual revenue

In keeping jolly Christmas all the year:
The nostrils of his chimney are still stuff'd

With smoke, more chargeable than cane-tobacco;
His hawks devour his fattest dogs, whilst simple,
His leanest curs eat his hounds' carrion.
Besides, I heard of late his younger brother,
A Turkey-merchant, hath sure suck'd the knight,
By means of some great losses on the sea!

That (you conceive me) before gods, all's nought,
His seat is weak; thus, each thing rightly scann'd,

You'll see a flight, wife, shortly of his land.

Fabel, the kind magician, who has been the tutor to Raymond, arrives at the same time with the Mounchensey party. He knows the plots against his young friend, and he is determined to circumvent them:

Raymond Mounchensey, boy, have thou and I
Thus long at Cambridge read the liberal arts,
The metaphysics, magic, and those parts
Of the most secret deep philosophy?
Have I so many melancholy nights

Watch'd on the top of Peter-house highest tower,
And come we back unto our native home,
For want of skill to lose the wench thou lov'st?
We'll first hang Envil* in such rings of mist
As never rose from any dampish fen;
I'll make the brinned sea to rise at Ware,
And drown the marshes unto Stratford-bridge;
I'll drive the deer from Waltham in their walks,
And scatter them, like sheep, in every field.
We may perhaps be cross'd; but if we be,

He shall cross the devil that but crosses me.

Harry Clare, Ralph Jerningham, and Raymond Mounchensey, are strict friends: and there is something exceedingly delightful in the manner in which

* Envil-Enfield.

Raymond throws away all suspicion, and the others resolve to stand by their friend whatever be the intrigues of their parents:

Jern. Raymond Mounchensey, now I touch thy grief
With the true feeling of a zealous friend.
And as for fair and beauteous Millisent,
With my vain breath I will not seek to slubber
Her angel-like perfections: but thou know'st
That Essex hath the saint that I adore :

Where'er didst meet me, that we two were jovial,
But like a wag thou hast not laugh'd at me,
And with regardless jesting mock'd my love?
How many a sad and weary summer's night
My sighs have drunk the dew from off the earth,
And I have taught the nightingale to wake,
And from the meadows sprung the early lark
An hour before she would have list to sing:
I have loaded the poor minutes with my moans,
That I have made the heavy slow-paced hours
To hang like heavy clogs upon the day.
But, dear Mounchensey, had not my affection
Seized on the beauty of another dame,

Before I'd wrong the chase, and leave the love
Of one so worthy, and so true a friend,

I will abjure both beauty and her sight,
And will in love become a counterfeit.

Moun. Dear Jerningham, thou hast begot my life,
And, from the mouth of hell, where now I sate,
I feel my spirit rebound against the stars:
Thou hast conquer'd me, dear friend, in my free soul,
There time, nor death, can by their power control.
Fabel. Frank Jerningham, thou art a gallant boy;
And were he not my pupil, I would say,
He were as fine a metall'd gentleman,
Of as free spirit, and of as fine a temper,
As is in England; and he is a man
That very richly may deserve thy love: