in 1640. He received his education at Caius College, Cambridge, and then, for some time, studied law in the Middle Temple; after which he passed some years on the continent. On his return from his travels, Shadwell applied himself to dramatic writing, and soon became conspicuous. He was the author of seventeen comedies, in all of which he affected to follow Ben Jonson. Though only known to us as the Mac-Flecknoe of Dryden's satire, still Shadwell possessed no inconsiderable degree of comic power. His pictures of society are too coarse for quotation, but they are often true and welldrawn. When the Revolution threw Dryden and other excessive loyalists into the shade, Shadwell was promoted to the office of poet laureate. His death occurred on the ninth of December, 1692, and a marble monument was afterward erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey by his son, Sir John Shadwell.

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY, the greatest of the comic dramatists of this class, was of a genteel family, and was born at Cleve, Shropshire, in 1640. When in the fifteenth year of his age, he was sent to France, and continued to reside in the western part of that country until a short time before the Restoration, and then returned to England and entered Queen's College, Oxford, a gentleman commoner. From the university he passed, without taking a degree, and immediately after entered the Middle Temple, as a student of law. Wit and gayety were unfortunately, at this period, the favorite roads to distinction, and Wycherley, therefore, quitted his legal pursuits, and followed the inclination of his own genius, and the taste of the age. He lived gayly upon town,' and, according to Pope, had a true nobleman look." He wrote a number of comedies, between 1672 and 1677, the principal of which are, Love in a Wood, the Gentleman Dancing Master, the Country Wife, and the Plain Dealer. In 1704, he published a volume of miscellaneous poems, the style and versification of which are below criticism—and the morals, those of Rochester. In advanced age, Wycherley continued to indulge in all the follies and vices of youth. His name, however, stood high as a dramatist, and even Pope was proud to receive the notice of the author of the Country Wife.' At the age of seventy-five he married a young girl, in order to defeat the expectations of his nephew, and died eleven days afterwards, in December, 1715.

The subjects of most of Wycherley's dramas are borrowed from French and Spanish plays. He wrought up his dialogues and scenes with great care, and with considerable liveliness and wit, but without sufficient attention to character or probability. Destitute himself of moral feeling or propriety of conduct, his characters are equally objectionable, and his once fashionable plays may now be said to be 'quietly inurned' in their own profligacy and corruption.

MRS. APHRA BEHN, a contemporary of Wycherley, was a native of Canterbury, but the period of her birth is unknown. Her father being appointed

governor of Surinam, she accompanied him thither, and there became acquainted with Prince Oronoko, on whose story she founded a novel, that supplied Southerne with materials for a tragedy on the unhappy fate of the African prince. She afterwards returned to England, and was employed by Charles the Second as a political spy. While residing at Antwerp in this capacity, she was enabled, through the aid of one of her lovers, to give information to the British government with regard to the intended attack of the Dutch upon Chatham. Her death occurred on the sixteenth of April, 1689, and she was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

The comedies of Mrs. Behn are so grossly indelicate, that of the whole seventeen which she wrote, not one is now read, or even remembered. She was the authoress of various novels and poems also, and some of her songs, as the following, display much genius:

FROM THE MOOR'S REVENGE.

Love in fantastic triumph sat,

Whilst bleeding hearts around him flow'd,
For whom fresh pains he did create,

And strange tyrannic power he show'd.
From thy bright eyes he took his fires,
Which round about in sport he hurl'd;
But 't was from mine he took desires

Enough t' undo the amorous world.

From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty;
From me his languishment and fears,
And every killing dart from thee:
Thus thou, and I, the god have arm'd,
And set him up a deity;

But my poor heart alone is harm'd,
Whilst thine the victor is, and free.

JOHN CROWNE, another dramatic writer of this period, was the son of a clergyman of the independent church of Nova Scotia, and was born in that province, about 1640. Being a man of some genius, he resolved to go to England and try to make his fortune by his wits. At first he was unsuccessful, but eventually his writings recommended him to the notice of the court, and he was employed by Charles the Second, on the recommendation of Rochester, to write the Masque of Calipso. He afterwards produced seventeen dramas, two of which, the tragedy of Thyestes and the comedy of Sir Courtly Nice, evince considerable dramatic talent. The latter is founded on an old Spanish play, and was recommended to Crowne by King Charles himself, as containing a good plot for an English comedy; and the former is based upon the following repulsive classical story :-Atreus invites his banished brother, Thyestes, to the court of Argos, and there, at a banquet, sets before him the mangled limbs of his own son, of which the father

unconsciously partakes. The return of Thyestes from his retirement with the fears and misgivings that follow, are thus vividly described :—

THYESTES-PHILISTHENES-PENEUS.

Thy. O wondrous pleasure to a banish'd man,
I feel my lov'd long-looked-for-native soil!
And oh my weary eyes, that all the day

Had from some mountain travell'd towards this place,
Now rest themselves upon the royal towers
Of that great palace where I had my birth.
O sacred towers, sacred in your height,
Mingling with clouds, the villas of the gods,
Whither for sacred pleasures they retire:
Sacred, because you are the work of gods;
Your lofty looks boast your divine descent;
And the proud city which lies at your feet,
And would give place to nothing but to you,
Owns her original is short of yours.

And now a thousand objects more ride fast

On morning beams, and meet my eyes in throngs:

And see, all Argos meets me with loud shouts!

Phil. O joyful sound!

Thy. But with them Atreus too

Phil. What ails my father that he stops, and shakes,
And now retires?

Thy. Return with me my son,

And old friend Peneus, to the honest beasts,

And faithful desert, and well-seated caves;
Trees shelter man, by whom they often die,
And never seek revenge; no villany

Lies in the prospect of a humble cave.

Pen. Talk you of villany, of foes, of fraud?
Thy. I talk of Atreus.

Pen.

What are these to him?

Thy. Nearer than I am, for they are himself.

Pen. Gods drive these impious thoughts out of your mind.

Thy. The gods for all our safety put them there.

Return, return with me.

Pen.. Against our oaths?

I can not stem the vengeance of the gods.

Thy. Here are no gods; they 've left this dire abode.

Pen. True race of Tantalus! who parent-like

Are doom'd in midst of plenty to be starved,

His hell and yours differ alone in this:

When he would catch at joys, they fly from him;
When glories catch at you, you fly from them.

Thy. A fit comparison; our joys and his
Are lying shadows, which to trust is hell.

'Of Otway,' says Johnson, 'one of the first names in the English drama, little is known; nor is there any part of that little which his biographer can take pleasure in relating.'

THOMAS OTWAY was the son of the Reverend Humphrey Otway, rector of Woolbeding, and was born at Trotting, in Sussex, on the third of March, 1651. He received his early education at Winchester school, and thence entered a commoner of Christ Church College, Oxford; but he left the university without a degree. In 1672 he made his appearance as an actor on the London stage. To this profession his talents were not adapted, and the result, therefore, was an entire failure. His connection with the stage was, however, attended with this advantage-that he thus acquired a knowledge of the dramatic art, which proved of great service to him when he began to write for the theatre. Otway produced, in rapid succession, three tragedies, Alcibiades, Titus and Berenice, and Don Carlos, all of which were successfully performed; but the proceeds from them were not sufficient to meet the demands of his extravagant habits, or shield him from poverty. In 1677, the Earl of Plymouth procured for him an appointment as cornet of dragoons, and Otway went with his regiment to Flanders. He was, however, soon cashiered for his irregular conduct, and returning to London, resumed dramatic authorship. In 1680 he produced two tragedies, Caius Marcius, and the Orphan; and in the following year the Soldier's Fortune, a comedy. In 1682 he brought out his last and greatest drama, Venice Preserved.

Together with the dramas we have mentioned, Otway. wrote a number of poems, and translated from the French the History of the Triumvirate,' and this immense literary labor was all performed before he was thirty-four years of age. His death occurred on the fourteenth of April, 1685, and in a manner too painful to relate. Having been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a public-house on Tower-hill, where he died of want; or, according to one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of bread which charity had supplied. After long concealment he left his retreat in the rage of hunger, and almost naked; and finding a gentleman in a neighboring coffee-house, he asked him for a shilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea; and Otway going away bought a roll, and was choked with the first mouthful.' Poverty and its attendants, sorrow and despondency, pressed hard upon poor Otway in life, and his grave closed a career of almost un paralleled wretchedness.

The dramatic fame of Otway rests almost entirely on his two tragedies, the 'Orphan,' and 'Venice Preserved;' but on these it is immovably fixed. 'His scenes of passionate affection,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'rival, at least, and sometimes excel, those of Shakspeare: more tears have been shed, probably, for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia, than for those of Juliet and Desdemona.' The plot of the 'Orphan,' from its inherent indelicacy and painful associations, has driven this play from the stage; but 'Venice Preserved' is still one of the most popular and effective tragedies in the language. The stern plotting character of Pierre is well contrasted with the irresolute, sensitive, and affectionate nature of Jaffier; and the harsh, unnatural cruelty of Priuli serves as a dark shade, to set off the bright purity

and tenderness of his daughter. The pathetic and harrowing plot is well managed, and deepens toward the close; and the genius of Otway particularly shines in his delineation of the passions of the heart, the ardor of love, and the excess of misery and despair. The versification of these dramas is sometimes rugged and irregular, and there are occasional redundancies and inflated expressions, which, had the author's life been longer spared, he would doubtless have corrected. From Venice Preserved' we select the following scene:

Scene.-St. Marks.

[Enter Priuli and Jaffier.]

Priuli. No more! I'll hear no more! begone and leave me!
Jaffer. Not hear me! by my sufferings but you shall!

My lord-my lord! I'm not that abject wretch

You think me. Patience! where's the distance throws

Me back so far, but I may boldly speak

In right, though proud oppression will not hear me?
Pri. Have you not wrong'd me?

Jaf. Could my nature e'er

Have brook'd injustice, or the doing wrongs,

I need not now thus low have bent myself

To gain a hearing from a cruel father.

Wrong'd you?

Pri. Yes, wrong'd me! in the nicest point,
The honour of my house, you 've done me wrong.
You may remember (for I now will speak,
And urge its baseness) when you first came home
From travel, with such hopes as made you look'd on
By all men's eyes, a youth of expectation;
Pleas'd with your growing virtue, I receiv'd you;
Courted, and sought to raise you to your merits;
My house, my table, nay, my fortune too,
My very self, was yours; you might have us'd me
To your best service; like an open friend

I treated, trusted you, and thought you mine;
When, in requital of my best endeavours,
You treacherously practis'd to undo me;
Seduc'd the weakness of my age's darling,
My only child, and stole her from my bosom.
Oh! Belvidera!

Jaf. 'Tis to me you owe her:

Childless had you been else, and in the grave
Your name extinct; no more Priuli heard of.
You may remember, scarce five years are past,
Since in your brigantine you sail'd to see
The Adriatic wedded by our duke;
And I was with you; your unskilful pilot
Dash'd us upon a rock; when to your boat
You made for safety: enter'd first yourself;
Th' affrighted Belvidera, following next,
As she stood trembling on the vessel's side,
Was by a wave wash'd off into the deep;