we cannot hesitate a moment in giving the priority to Spenser. Joab is speaking of David :

'Beauteous and bright is he among the tribes,
'As when the sun, attir'd in glistering robe,
'Comes dancing from his oriental gate,

And, bridegroom-like, hurls through the gloomy air 'His radiant beams.'

Spenser's lines, in Fairy Queen, L. i., c. 5, st. 2, are

'At last the golden oriental gate

Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair;

'And Phœbus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate, 'Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy hair, 'And hurl'd his glistering beams through gloomy air.'

There can be no doubt of the identity of the two quotations, and Spenser had in his recollection the well-known passage in the Psalms describing the sun coming forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber.' This is an instance in which Peele has been the plagiary; but in the subsequent example he is clearly the injured party. In the Chorus which probably closed the first Act of David and Bethsabe (for the old copy is not divided), we find this simile :

'Like as the fatal raven, that in his voice

Carries the dreadful summons of our deaths,

Flies by the fair Arabian spiceries,

Her pleasant gardens, and delightsome parks,

Seeming to curse them with his hoarse exclaims,

And yet doth stoop with hungry violence

In Shirley and Chapman's tragedy of Philip Chabot, 1639, Act iv., we meet with precisely the same figure, similarly expressed:

'Like crowes and carrion birds

They fly ore flowrie meades, cleare springs, fair gardens,
And stoope at carcasses.'

One metaphor in this production has received extraordinary praise: it is said by Hawkins, in his Origin of the English Drama, to be worthy of Eschylus.'

'At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt,

And his fair spouse, with bright and fiery wings, 'Sit ever burning on his hateful bones.'

The beauty of this expression consists in terming lightning the spouse' of thunder; and if this be good, which I do not deny, the next line is evidently bad, inasmuch as it would represent lightning as fixed and stationary: the spouse of thunder must be admitted by all to be a very volatile lady. The following speech by David, in favour of Absalom, is a fair specimen of the general style of the piece.

'But now, my lords and captains, hear his voice
That never yet pierc'd piteous heaven in vain;
Then let it not slip lightly through your ears.
For my sake spare the young man Absalon.
'Joab, thyself didst once use friendly words
To reconcile my heart incens'd to him;
If then thy love be to thy kinsman sound,
And thou wilt prove a perfect Israelite,
"'Friend him with deeds, and touch no hair of him;
'Not that fair hair with which the wanton winds
'Delight to play, and love to make it curl,

'Wherein the nightingales would build their nests,

And make sweet bowers in every golden tress,

To sing their lover every night asleep.

'O, spoil not, Joab, Jove's fair ornaments, Which he hath sent to solace David's soul! The best, ye see, my lords, are swift to sin: 'To sin our feet are wash'd with milk of roes,

เ

And dried again with coals of lightning.

Oh, Lord! thou seest the proudest sin's poor slave,

And with his bridle pulls him to the grave *.'

These lines, it will be remarked, are like all the rest of Peele's blank-verse, exhibiting much smoothness, but with a degree of sameness in the rhythm which fatigues the ear. The only variations upon which he ventures (with the exception of the use of a few more trochees at the ends of the lines) are the occasional insertion of a redundant syllable, and the rare employment of a word where the accent varies the ordinary monotony.

This line, as printed by the Rev. Mr. Dyce, exhibits almost the solitary verbal blemish of his edition: it there stands,

And with his bridle pull'st him to the grave:'

as if David, addressing the Lord, said, 'Thou pull'st man to the grave with the bridle of sin;' whereas the meaning is, that 'sin with his bridle pulls man to the grave. The passage would read better, could we alter and in the last line to who.

ON

THOMAS KYD AND HIS WORKS.

THOMAS KYD was an author of great celebrity, and his Spanish Tragedy went through more editions than perhaps any play of the time: it is to be recollected, however, that after 1602, the impressions were accompanied by the supplemental scenes and speeches of Ben Jonson, which added so much to the force and beauty of the play, that Kyd's portion of the tragedy is read to some disadvantage*. Ben Jonson was paid for some of them in September, 1601, and for others in June, 1602 ; but it is clear, from a passage in his Cynthia's

* Hawkins, when he printed this piece in his Origin of the English Drama, was not aware that these additions were penned by so distinguished a poet as Ben Jonson; and he treats them without ceremony, asserting that they were 'foisted in by the players,' and not saying a single syllable in their praise, though he felt bound to subjoin them in a note. It is singular also that Gifford, in his edition of Ben Jonson's Works, should pass over these very striking and characteristic additions almost without notice: they represent Ben Jonson in rather a new light, for certainly there is nothing in his own entire plays equalling in pathetic beauty some of his contributions to The Spanish Tragedy. In his verses upon Shakespeare he calls our author' sporting Kyd,' an epithet to which he seems to have been led, rather by its punning applicability to the name of Kyd, than because it was characteristic of his style.

See Malone's Shakespeare by Boswell, iii. 334. On the 25th of

Revels, played in 1600, that at that date The Spanish Tragedy was not in its original shape, as it came from the hands of Kyd: Another swears down all that sit ' about him, that the old Hieronimo, as it was first acted, was the only best and judiciously penned play "of Europe *. Besides the Jeronimo and The Spanish Tragedy, Kyd was the translator of Cornelia, from the French of Garniert. Whether he was older or younger than Marlow, we are without the means of determining; but it seems likely that he was older, and that before he adopted blank-verse, in pursuance of Marlow's example, he had written some plays either

September, 1601, Ben Jonson was paid 40s. for 'writing his addi tions' in Jeronymo; and on the 22d of June, 1602, 107. 'in earnest ' of a book called Richard Crookeback, and for new additions for Jero'nimo.' Henslowe, in both cases, refers to The Spanish Tragedy as the second part of the older play of Jeronimo. The precise amount of the additions to The Spanish Tragedy is ascertained by comparing the older printed copy of 1599 with that of 1602, which professes to be 'newly corrected, amended, and enlarged with the new additions of the painter's part and others.' The painter's part was, consequently, the last improvement made by Ben Jonson.

* Reed thought that this expression had reference to the play called on the title The first part of Jeronimo, (also, doubtless, the work of Kyd,) and not to The Spanish Tragedy; but the discovery of Henslowe's papers leads to a contrary conclusion, and must set the point at rest.

It has been suggested by Hawkins, (Origin of the English Drama, ii. 198,) that Kyd also wrote Soliman and Perseda, 1599, and Malone has assigned to him, upon conjecture, the old Taming of a Shrew, 1594: they proceed, however, upon no facts, and there certainly is not anything like sufficient resemblance in point of style to warrant the belief, that Kyd was concerned in their authorship.