stored with scholarship, and he was capable of giving powerful descriptions of things, and striking characters of persons. His Supplication of Pierce Penniless to the Devil, 1592, contains a very original and awful picture of the agonies of a repentant spirit, which was followed up, though with less effect, in his Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, 1593. He was dead in the year 1600, as appears by an epitaph upon him in C. Fitzgeoffrey's Affaniæ, printed in that year year*.

Summer's Last Will and Testament would require but a short notice, even if it had not been reprinted in the last edition of Dodsley's Old Plays. It makes no pretension to diversity of character in the persons, nor to interest in the plot: the only part which can lay claim to anything like individuality, is that of Will Summer [or Sommers] the well-known jester of Henry VIII., who inserts interlocutions during the performance, which was intended merely to please by the variety of its shows, and a certain degree of ingenuity

* The following apostrophic character of Nash, from a rare tract by Thomas Dekker, called Newes from Hell, 1606, is worth quoting :' And thou, into whose soul, if ever there were a Pythagorean metem'psychosis, the raptures of that fiery and inconfinable Italian spirit were 'bounteously and boundlessly infused, thou sometime Secretary, to 'Pierce Penniless, and Master of his Requests, ingenious, ingenuous, 'fluent, facetious T. Nash; from whose abundant pen honey flowed to

thy friends, and mortal aconite to thy enemies-thou that made the 'Doctor [Harvey] a flat dunce, and beat him at two sundry tall 6 weapons, poetry and oratory, sharpest satire, luculent poet, elegant orator, get leave for thy ghost to come from her abiding, and to dwell 'with me awhile.'

name.

in its construction. The piece depends upon a sort of pun, or confusion between the name of the jester and the division of the year which corresponds with that As it was acted in the autumn of 1592, Summer is appropriately represented in the last stage of his life, calling all his attendants about him, and by making his will, preparing for death. The other seasons are also conspicuous personages in the exhibition, which is tedious, notwithstanding Nash has shown great skill, and some wit, in introducing every thing ancient and modern learning could supply to aid his purpose. It has, however, few passages of poetical merit, and that only of a secondary description : the best of these is unquestionably the following lines given to Solstitium.

'I never lov'd ambitiously to climb,

'Or thrust my hand too far into the fire.
'To be in heaven sure is a blessed thing,
'But, Atlas-like, to prop heaven on one's back
Cannot but be more labour than delight.

'Such is the state of men in honour placed:

They are gold vessels made for servile uses;

'High trees that keep the weather from low houses,

'But cannot shield the tempest from themselves.

'I love to dwell betwixt the hills and dales, 'Neither to be so great to be envied,

'Nor yet so poor the world should pity me.'

This is a very favourable specimen, also, of Nash's blank-verse; and it contains almost the only instances of the employment of trochees at the ends of lines, from the beginning to the conclusion of the perform

ance.

Nash seems, like most of our early writers of English iambics,' to have held that they ought properly to close with an accented syllable. Neither is he in the habit of varying his measure by other expedients, so that it runs with a degree of sameness that would hardly be endurable if a great part of his production were not in prose, which often comes to the relief of the ear.

It is chiefly the circumstance of the monotony of Nash's versification which enables us to judge what parts of the tragedy of Dido proceeded from his pen, and what other parts from that of his coadjutor, Marlow. In the scenes, however, in which I apprehend the hand of the latter is visible, there is not only greater variety of rhythm, pause, and modulation in the verse, but a nobler and a richer vein of poetry. On these accounts it will be necessary to examine this production with a little more attention than has been bestowed upon Nash's unaided effort.

Taken as a whole, Dido, Queen of Carthage, must be pronounced a very graceful and beautiful poem, although the description of the taking and sacking of Troy is in some places inflated almost to absurdity. This I venture to consider one portion which Nash contributed he has made up for his want of true poetic genius in descriptive passages by the extravagance of his thoughts and images. In these respects it very much rivals the player's speech in Hamlet (Act ii. Scene 2,) on the same subject. Accord

VOL. III.

ing to Nash, Pyrrhus first strikes off old Priam's hands

'At which the frantic queen leap'd on his face,

And in his eyelids hanging by the nails,

A little while prolong'd her husband's life.
At last the soldiers pull'd her by the heels,
' And swung her howling in the empty air,
'Which sent an echo to the wounded king:
'Whereat he lifted up his bed-rid limbs,

' And would have grappled with Achilles' son,
'Forgetting both his want of strength and hands;
Which he disdaining, whisk'd his sword about,
' And with the wind thereof the king fell down:
'Then from the navel to the throat at once
'He ripp'd old Priam, at whose latter gasp
'Jove's marble statue 'gan to bend his brow,
'As loathing Pyrrhus for this wicked act *.'

Here I have substituted wind for wound, as it stands in the old copy, in conformity, probably, with the author's meaning, and with the following corresponding lines in Hamlet—

'Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide,

'But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword

'The unnerved father falls,'

Besides, the wound was given subsequently, as is evident from the lines that succeed.

The whole passage is spoken by Æneas, describing the destruction of Troy to the Queen of Carthage. The story is conducted much as in Virgil (who is even quoted by the characters in two instances), but a

- In my extracts from this most rare play I have employed the original 4to. of 1594, in the library at Bridgewater House.

pretty scene is made out of what is said in the original regarding the substitution by Venus of Cupid for Ascanius: Dido takes him to her arms, and Cupid wounds her with a dart he had concealed for the purpose: she almost instantly begins to loathe her suitor Iarbas, and to doat upon Æneas. This scene, and one or two that follow it, I have little hesitation in assigning to Marlow. Soon after she is secretly wounded, Dido exclaims

Oh, dull-conceited Dido, that till now

'Did never think Æneas beautiful!

But now, for quittance of this oversight,

'I'll make me bracelets of his golden hair;

His glistering eyes shall be my looking-glass,

'His lips an altar, where I'll offer up

'As many kisses as the sea hath sands.

'Instead of music I will hear him speak.

His looks shall be my only library,

And thou, Æneas, Dido's treasury,

In whose fair bosom I will lock more wealth
Than twenty thousand Indias can afford.'

Shortly afterwards she tells Æneas, (who has besought her to repair his ships,) in a similar strain of poetical luxuriance—

I'll give thee tackling made of rivel'd gold 'Wound on the barks of odoriferous trees, 'Oars of massy ivory, full of holes

Through which the water shall delight to play:

Thy anchors shall be hewed from crystal rocks,
Which, if thou lose, shall shine above the waves:
The masts whereon thy swelling sail shall hang,
Hollow pyramids of silver plate;

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Q 2