literary ability. He undertook to revise the punctuation of Milton's poems, on the ground that Milton being blind, and writing by dictation, did not see, and was not responsible for, the punctuation.

SIR SAMUEL GARTH, 1719, was an eminent practising physician. On the occa sion of a quarrel between two physicians and two apothecaries, about the plan for furnishing the poor with medical advice gratis, and with medicines at cost, a project which originated with the physicians and was opposed by the apothecaries, Garth, who had some poetical ability, published a satirical poem, The Dispensary, in which the apothecaries were held up to ridicule. The poem passed through numerous editions, and in each edition received finishing touches from the author. The poem was famous in its day, but it has not been able to hold its place in the permanent literature of the nation. "The wit of this slight performance may have somewhat evaporated with age, but it cannot at any time have been very pungent."- Craik,

GILBERT WEST, LL. D., 1705-1756, a nephew of Sir Richard Temple, and a relative of William Pitt and of Lord George Lyttleton, attracted considerable attention among his contemporaries by his writings. He wrote A Canto of the Fairy Queen, in imitation of Spenser; The Order of the Garter, a drama; The Odes of Pindar, translated in verse; The History and Evidences of the Resurrection of Christ, prose.

WILLIAM BROOME, 1745, was a poet of ability, employed by Pope to translate certain portions of Homer. Pope assigned eight books of the Odyssey to be translated by Broome, and four to be done by Fenton, and translated the remaining twelve himself. The whole passes as "Pope's Homer." Broome was dissatisfied with the amount of money allowed him for his share of the work, and charged Pope with avarice. Pope repaid the charge by putting Broome in the Dunciad.

"Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say

Broome went before, and kindly swept the way."- Henley.

"Of Broome, though it cannot be said that he was a great poet, it would be unjust to deny that he was an excellent versifier; his lines are smooth and sonorous, and his diction is select and elegant." - Johnson.

ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE, 1705-1760, was a poet of some celebrity. The work of his which is supposed to display most genius is a poem in Latin, On the Immortality of the Soul. His most successful hit was The Pipe of Tobacco, in which he imitates with great effect the peculiarities of Pope, Swift, Young, Thomson, Cibber, and Ambrose Philips. He wrote also a poem on Design and Beauty. He was elected to Parliament, but took no part in its debates. "We must not estimate a man's power by his not being able to deliver his sentiments in public. Isaac Hawkins Browne, one of the first writers of this country, got into Parliament, and never opened his mouth." - Dr. Johnson.

THOMAS COOKE, 1702-1756, was one of the poets ridiculed by Pope in the Dunciad. Standing on that pillory, however, is no evidence of ill-desert, as Pope wrote for revenge rather than in the exercise of a judicial spirit. Cooke was undoubtedly a poet and a man of learning, and his chief offence was that he published a translation of certain passages in the Iliad, showing the errors in Pope's translation. The following are some of Cooke's publications: The Knights of the Bath; The Triumph of Love and Honor; The Eunuch, a Farce; The Mournful Nuptials; Translations from Hesiod, Plautus and Cicero; Life and Writings of Andrew Marvell.

II. THE DRAMATISTS.

A school of dramatists prevailed in the period now under consideration, who were equally distinguished by their abilities and their licentiousness. The writers of this class belong partly to the previous century, as they began their career during the life of Dryden, and took their character from the general corruption of manners which prevailed after the restoration of the Stuart dynasty. The four most conspicuous of these writers were Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, of whom Wycherley was the earliest, and Congreve was, by general consent, the greatest. With these writers is indissolubly connected the name of Jeremy Collier, the man who, almost single-handed, undertook to stem this general torrent of licentiousness, and who so effectually exposed the enormous immoralities of the stage as to arouse the nation to a sense of shame, and to bring back dramatic literature once more within the decencies and proprieties of life.

Wycherley.

William Wycherley, 1640-1715, was a prominent dramatist of the age of the Restoration, and the founder of the school of licentious and immoral plays which then prevailed.

Career. Much of Wycherley's early life was passed on the continent, where, by the influence of Madame Rambouillet, he was induced to embrace the Catholic religion. Having returned to England, he entered Oxford and rejoined the Anglican communion, but under James II. turned back again to the Catholic Church.

Wycherley's career was a chequered one. At the age of forty, having already produced his most celebrated plays, he married a wealthy countess, whose jealousy kept him away from Court, and lost him the royal favor. After his wife's death, her fortune was consumed in a heavy lawsuit, and the property which he inherited from his father was mortgaged and entailed. He was kept in prison for debt seven years. In his seventy-sixth year, eleven days before his death, he married a young girl, merely to defeat the inheritance of his nephew, whom he disliked.

Character. Wycherley as a man and as a writer is a fit representative of the age in which he lived. Handsome, shiftless, prodigal, dissolute, he was the object of envy, and yet dragged out an uncomfortable, if not an unhappy existence. There seems to have been no real substance in his character, although we cannot call him a bad man at heart.

Works.-The best known of his dramas are Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer. He also published a volume of Miscellaneous Poems, which Macaulay disposes of by the trenchant phrase, "this bulky volume of obscene doggerel." His comedies also partake of the immorality of the age, but to a less extent than some others, and are relieved by touches of wit and broad humor.

It is generally assumed by critics that Congreve is much superior to Wycherley as a dramatist. Hazlitt, however, holds that the latter has a broader humor, more natural characters, and more striking incidents; that in Congreve the workmanship overlies the material, and that we forget Congreve's characters and remember only what they say; whereas in Wycherley we remember better the characters themselves and the action. A collection of Wycherley's posthumous works, in prose and verse, was published by Theobald. Wycherley was very intimate with Charles II, and with the Duke of Buckingham and other profligate wits of the day. The anecdotes told of him are curious as illustrative of the manners of the times.

"Wycherley was a very handsome man.

His acquaintance with the famous Duchess of Cleveland commenced oddly enough. One day, as he passed that Duchess's coach in the ring, she leaned out of the window and cried out, loud enough to be heard distinctly by him, 'Sir, you're a rascal! you're a villain!' Wycherley from that instant entertained hopes. He did not fail waiting on her the next morning, and, with a very melancholy tone, begged to know how it was possible for him to have so much disobliged her Grace. They were very good friends from that time."- Spence's Anecdotes. "Wycherley was in a bookseller's shop at Bath, or Tunbridge, when Lady Drogheda came in and happened to inquire for the Plain Dealer. A friend of Wycherley's, who stood by him, pushed him toward her, and said, 'There's the Plain Dealer, madam, if you want him.' Wycherley made his excuses, and Lady Drogheda said that 'she loved plain dealing best.' He afterwards visited that lady, and some time after married her. This proved a great blow to his fortunes; just before the time of his courtship he was designed for governor to the late Duke of Richmond, and was to have been allowed fifteen hundred pounds a year from the Government. His absence from Court in the progress of this amour, and his being yet more absent after his marriage (for Lady Drogheda was very jealous of him), disgusted his friends there so much that he lost all his interest with them. His lady died, and his misfortunes were such that he was thrown into the Fleet, and lay there seven years. It was then that Colonel Butt got his Plain Dealer to be acted, and contrived to get the King (James the Second) to be there. The colonel attended him thither. The King was mightily pleased with the play,- asked who was the author of it; and, upon hearing that it was one of Wycherley's, complained that he had not seen him for so many years, and inquired what was become of him. The colonel improved this opportunity so well that the King gave orders that his debts should be discharged out of the privy purse."-Spence`8 Anecdotes.

"His fame as a writer rests wholly on his comedies, and chiefly on the last two. Even as a comic writer, he was neither of the best school, nor highest in his school. He was, in truth, a worse Congreve. His chief merit, like Congreve`s, lies in the style of his dialogue. But the wit which lights up The Plain Dealer and The Country Wife is pale and flickering when compared with the gorgeous blaze which dazzles us almost to blindness in Love for Love and the Way of the World. In truth, his mind, unless we are greatly mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only by great labor and outlay to bear fruit, which, after all, was not of the highest flavor. He had scarcely more claim to originality than Terence. It is not too much to say that there is hardly anything of the least value in his plays of which the hint is not

to be found elsewhere. The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could furnish from his own mind în inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It is curious to observe how everything that he touched, however pure and noble, took in an instant the color of his mind. We pass a very severe censure on Wycherley when we say that it is a relief to turn from him to Congreve."-Lord Macaulay, Comic Dramatists of the Restoration.

Congreve.

William Congreve, 1666-1729, a native of Ireland, excelled all the men of his generation as a writer of the licentious and immoral plays then in fashion. He was one of those whose indecencies were exposed so unceremoniously by the doughty Jeremy Collier.

At the bringing out of his first play, The Old Bachelor, which could not now be read aloud in any family circle, Congreve had the support of all the great theatrical celebrities, Mr. Betterton, Mr. Powel, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Barry; his play was commended by Dryden, as being the best he had ever heard; he received official recognition from the Government, in the bestowal by Lord Halifax of a lucrative office in the Customs; the public were in ecstasies.

Congreve's plays are published in 3 vols., 8vo. The names of some of those best known are The Double Dealer; The Mourning Bride; The Way of the World; The Judgment of Paris. He wrote some other things, but excelled only in the drama. "The powers of Congreve seem to desert him when he leaves the stage, as Antæus was no longer strong than when he could touch the ground." -Johnson.

"We have seen in Swift a humorous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have in Congreve a humorous observer of another school, to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time comes.". - Thackeray.

Vanbrugh.

Sir John Vanbrugh, 1666-1726, another of those corrupt dramatists, was about equally distinguished as a writer and an architect.

Career.- Vanbrugh was the descendant of a Flemish Protestant family, settled in England. Early in life he entered the French army, but did not remain in it a great while. Returning to England he gained distinction both as an architect and a writer of comedies. In the former capacity he erected Castle Howard for the Earl of Carlisle, and Blenheim for the Duke of Marlborough, besides many other man

P

sions for the nobility. In 1714 he was knighted and made Comptroller of Public Works.

Writings. In 1697, Vanbrugh published the first of his comedies, The Relapse, which was very successful. This was followed by The Provoked Wife, which met with even greater success. The Confederacy, The Country House, The Journey to London, together with some adaptations of Molière's pieces to the English stage, comprise his other plays. He left one, The Provoked Husband, unfinished.

Character as a Writer.- Vanbrugh possessed all the merits and demerits of his age. His plays abound in wit and strokes of comic delineation, but are all disfigured by their tone of profligacy. Like Wycherley and Congreve, Vanbrugh failed to rise superior to the manners of the reign of Queen Anne, although he is perhaps not so wholly abandoned to them as were many of his contemporaries.

"The Relapse and The Provoked Wife of Vanbrugh have attained a considerable reputation. In the former, the character of Amanda is interesting; especially in the momentary wavering and quick recovery of her virtue. This is the first homage that the theatre had paid, since the Restoration, to female chastity; and, notwithstanding the vicious tone of the other classes, in which Vanbrugh has gone as great lengths as any of his contemporaries, we perceive the beginnings of a reaction in public spirit which gradually reformed and elevated the moral standard of the stage. The Provoked Wife, though it cannot be said to give any proofs of this sort of improvement, has some merit as a comedy: it is witty and animated, as Vanbrugh usually was; the character of Sir John Brute may not have been too great a caricature of real manners such as survived from the debased reign of Charles; and the endeavor to expose the grossness of the elder generation was itself an evidence that a better polish had been given to social life."- Hallam.

Farquhar.

George Farquhar, 1678-1707, was another dramatic writer of note.

Farquhar was an Irishman by birth, and entered Trinity College, Dublin, but abandoned study and turned player. After playing for some time, he began writing for the stage, and with marked success. His plays are all in the comic vein, either Comedies or Farces, and like the other dramas of those days are licentious and immoral.

Works.-The following are the principal: Love and a Bottle, a Comedy; Constant Couple, a Trip to the Jubilee, a Comedy; Sir Harry Wildair, a Comedy; The Inconstant, or the Way to Win Him, a Comedy; The Stage-Coach, a Farce; The Twin Rivals, a Comedy; The Recruiting Officer, a Comedy; The Beaux Stratagem, a Comedy; Poems, Letters, and Essays.

COLLEY CIBBER, 1671-1757, Poet Laureate to George II., began his career as an actor, but afterwards wrote plays of his own, and acquired great applause both for his authorship and his acting.

Cibber received from George I. a pension of £200, and was made Laureate by George II., in 1730, after which he did not appear on the stage except on rare occasions. A