To conjure, for I am, look to't,
An Oxford scholar, and can do't.
Then with three sets of mops and mows,
Seven of odd words, and motley shows,
A thousand tricks that may be taken
From Faustus, Lambe, or Friar Bacon;
I should begin to call my strings
My catlings, and my minikins;
And they re-catted, straight should fall
To mew, to purr, to caterwaul;
From puss's belly, sure as death,
Puss should be an engastrumeth.
Puss should be sent for to the king,
For a strange bird or some rare thing.
Puss should be sought to far and near,
As she some cunning woman were.
Puss should be carried up and down,
From shire to shire, from town to town,
Like to the camel lean as hag,
The elephant, or apish nag,

For a strange sight; puss should be sung
In lousy ballads' midst the throng,
At markets, with as good a grace
As Agincourt, or Chevy Chace.
The Troy-sprung Briton would forego
His pedigree, he chanteth so,
And sing that Merlin (long deceased)
Return'd is in a nine-lived beast.

Thus, puss, thou see'st what might betide thee;
But I forbear to hurt or chide thee.
For't may be puss was melancholy,
And so to make her blithe and jolly,
Finding these strings, she'd have a fit
Of mirth; nay, puss, if that were it,
Thus I revenge me, that as thou
Hast play'd on them, I on thee now;
And as thy touch was nothing fine,

So I've but scratch'd these notes of mine.

THIS writer has a cast of broad humour that is amusing, though prone to extravagance. The idea in The City Match of Captain Quartfield and his boon companions exposing simple Timothy dead drunk, and dressed up as a sea-monster for a show, is not indeed within the boundaries of either taste or credibility; but amends is made for it in the next scene, of old Warehouse and Seathrift witnessing in disguise the joy of their heirs at their supposed deaths. Among the many interviews of this nature by which comedy has sought to produce merriment and surprise, this is not one of the worst managed. Plotwell's cool impudence is well supported, when he gives money to the waterman (who tells that he had escaped by swimming at the time the old citizens were drowned,)

There, friend, there is

A fare for you: I'm glad you 'scaped; I had
Not known the news so soon else.

Dr. Mayne was a clergyman in Oxfordshire. He lost his livings at the death of Charles I. and became chaplain to the Earl of Devonshire, who made him acquainted with Hobbes; but the philosopher and poet are said to have been on no very agreeable terms. At the Restoration he was reinstated in his livings, made a canon of Christ-church, archdeacon of Chichester, and chaplain in ordinary to the king. Besides the comedy of the City Match, he published a tragicomedy called The Amorous War; several sermons; dialogues from Lucian; and a pamphlet on the Civil Wars.

In great extremity of tooth-ache. This is True, Mr. Timothy, is't not!

Tim. Yes: then linen

To us was stranger than to Capuchins.
My flesh is of an order, with wearing shirts
Made of the sacks that brought o'er cochineal,
Copperas, and indigo. My sister wears
Smocks made of currant-bags.

Sea. I'll not endure it ;

Let's show ourselves.

Ware. Stay, hear all first.

New. Thy uncle was such another.
Bright. I have heard

He still last left th' Exchange; and would commend
The wholesomeness o' th' air in Moor-fields, when
The clock struck three sometimes.

Broke in estate, and then broke from the Counter,
Where Mr. Seathrift laid him in the hole
For debt, among the ruins of the city,

And trades like him blown up, take thee from dust,
Give thee free education, put thee in

My own fair way of traffic; nay, decree
To leave thee jewels, land, my whole estate,
Pardon'd thy former wildness, and couldst thou sort
Thyself with none but idle gallants, captains,
And poets, who must plot before they eat,
And make each meal a stratagem? Then could none
But I be subject of thy impious scoffs?

I swoon at sight of meat; I rise a glutton
From half an orange: Wretch, forgetful wretch!
'Fore heaven I count it treason in my blood
That gives thee a relation. But I'll take
A full revenge. Make thee my heir! I'll first
Adopt a slave, brought from some galley; one
Which laws do put into the inventory,

And men bequeath in wills with stools, and brasspots;

One who shall first be household-stuff, then my heir.
Or to defeat all thy large aims, I'll marry.
Cypher, go find me Baneswright; he shall straight
Provide me a wife. I will not stay to let
My resolution cool. Be she a wench
That every day puts on her dowry, wears
Her fortunes, has no portion, so she be
Young and likely to be fruitful, I'll have her :
By all that's good, I will; this afternoon!
I will about it straight.

Sea. I follow you.

[Ex. WARE. CYPHER.

And as for you, Tim, mermaid, triton, haddock,
The wond'rous Indian fish caught near Peru,
Who can be of both elements, your sight
Will keep you well. Here I do cast thee off,
And in thy room pronounce to make thy sister
My heir; it would be most unnatural

To leave a fish on land. 'Las! sir, one of your
Bright fins and gills must swim in seas of sack,
Spout rich canaries up like whales in maps;
I know you'll not endure to see my jack
Go empty, nor wear shirts of copperas-bags,
Nor fast in Paul's, you. I do hate thee now,
Worse than a tempest, quicksand, pirate, rock,
Or fatal lake, ay, or a privy-seal.

Go let the captain make you drunk, and let
Your next change be into some ape, ('tis stale
To be a fish twice) or some active baboon.
And when you can find money out, betray
What wench i' th' room has lost her maidenhead
Can mount to th' king, and can do all your feats,
If your fine chain and yellow coat come near
Th' Exchange, I'll see you; so I leave you.

(Ex. SRA.

Plot. Now
Were there a dext'rous beam and two-pence hemp,
Never had man such cause to hang himself.
Tim. I have brought myself to a fine pass too.
Now

Am I fit only to be caught, and put
Into a pond to leap carps, or beget
A goodly race of pickrel.

A MAN there was who had lived a merry life
Till in the end he took to him a wife,
One that no image was, for she could speak,
And now and then her husband's costrel break;
This drove the poor man to a discontent,
And oft and many times did he repent
That e'er he changed his former quiet state;
But 'las! repentance then did come too late,
No cure he finds to heal this malady,
But makes a virtue of necessity.
The common cure for care to every man,
A pot of nappy ale, where he began
To fortify his brains 'gainst all should come,
'Mongst which the clamour of hiswife's loud tongue.
This habit grafted in him grew so strong,
That when he was from ale an hour seem'd long,
So well he liked the potion. On a time,
Having staid long at pot-for rule or line
Limits no drunkard-even from morn to night,
He hasted home apace by the moonlight,
Where as he went what phantasies were bred,
I do not know, in his distemper'd head,

But a strange ghost appear'd and forced him stay,
With which perplext he thus began to say:
"Good spirit if thou be, I need no charm,
For well I know thou wilt not do me harm;
And if the devil, sure thou shouldst not hurt:
I wed thy sister, and am plagued for't.”

The spirit, well approving what he said,
Dissolved to air and quickly vanished.

[* There is, perhaps, no work in English which illus trates more fully and amusingly the manners, occupations, and opinions of the time when it was written than Brathwaite's Strappado; but it is a strange, undigested and ill-arranged collection of poems, of various kinds and of different degrees of merit, some of them composed considerably before the rest, but few without claims to notice. The principal part consists of satires and epigrams, although the author purposely confounds the distinction between the two:

I call't an Epigram which is a Satire.

He never scruples to use the plainest terms, and though he seldom inserts names, he spares neither rank nor condition.-COLLIER, Bridge. Cat. p. 32.]

If the memory of Milton has been outraged by Dr. Johnson's hostility, the writings of Blackburne, Hayley, and, above all, of Symmons, may be deemed sufficient to have satisfied the poet's injured shade. The apologies for Milton have indeed been rather full to superfluity than defective. Dr. Johnson's triumphant regret at the supposed whipping of our great poet at the university, is not more amusing than the alarm of his favourable biographers at the idea of admitting it to be true. From all that has been written on the subject, it is perfectly clear that Milton committed no offence at college which could deserve an ignominious punishment. Admitting Aubrey's authority for the anecdote, and his authority is not very high, it points out the punishment not as a public infliction, but as the personal act of his tutor, who resented or imagined some unkindnesses.

The youthful history of Milton, in despite of this anecdote, presents him in an exalted and amiable light. His father, a man of no ordinary attainments, and so accomplished a musician* as to rank honourably among the composers of his age, intended him for the ministry of the church, and furnished him with a private tutor, who probably seconded his views; but the piety that was early instilled into the poet's mind grew up, with the size of his intellect, into views of religious independence that would not have suited any definite ecclesiastical pale; and if Milton had become a preacher, he must have founded a church of his own. Whilst a boy, the intensity of his studies laid the seeds of his future blindness; and at that period the Latin verses addressed to his father attest not only the prematurity of his attainments, but the endearing strength of his affections.

The few years which he spent at his father's house, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, after leaving the university, and before setting out on his travels, were perhaps the happiest in his life. In the beautiful scenery of that spot, disinclined to any profession by his universal capacity, and thirst for literature, he devoted himself to study, and wrote the most exquisite of his minor poems. Such a mind, in the opening prime of its genius, enjoying rural leisure and romantic walks, and luxuriating in the production of Comus and the

* Milton was early instructed in music. As a poet he speaks like one habituated to inspiration under its influence, and seems to have attached considerable importance to the science in his system of education.

Arcades, presents an inspiring idea of human beatitude.

When turned of thirty he went to Italy, the most accomplished Englishman that ever visited her classical shores. The attentions that were there shown to him are well known. We find him at the same time, though a stranger and a heretic, boldly expressing his opinions within the verge of the Vatican. There, also, if poetry ever deigns to receive assistance from the younger art, his imagination may have derived at least congenial impressions from the frescoes of Michael Angelo, and the pictures of Raphael; and those impressions he may have possibly recalled in the formation of his great poem, when his eyes were shut upon the world, and when he looked inwardly for "godlike shapes and forms."

In the eventful year after his return from the Continent, the fate of Episcopacy, which was yet undecided, seemed to depend chiefly on the influence which the respective parties could exercise upon the public mind, through the medium of the press, which was now set at liberty by the ordinance of the Long Parliament. Milton's strength led him foremost on his own side of the controversy; he defended the five ministers, whose book was entitled Smectymnuust, against the learning and eloquence of Bishop Hall and Archbishop Usher, and became, in literary warfare, the bulwark of his party. It is performing this and similar services, which Dr. Johnson calls Milton's vapouring away his patriotism in keeping a private boarding-house; and such are the slender performances at which that critic proposes that we should indulge in some degree of merriment. Assuredly, if Milton wielded the pen instead of the sword, in public dispute, his enemies had no reason to regard the former weapon as either idle or impotent in his hand. An invitation to laugh on such an occasion, may remind us of what Sternhold and Hopkins denominate "awful mirth;" for of all topics which an enemy to Milton's principles could select, his impotence in maintaining them is the most unpropitious to merriment.

The most difficult passage of his life for his biographers to comment upon with entire satisfaction, is his continued acceptance of Cromwell's wages after Cromwell had become a tyrant. It would be uncandid to deny, that his fear of the return of the Stuarts, the symptoms of his having From the initial letters of their names.

S