Org. Muskets and cannons !-eat it?

If he dare eat it in contempt of me,

He shall eat something else too that rides here;
I'll try his ostridge stomach.

Aor. Sir, be patient.

Org. You lie in your throat, and I will not.

Aor. To what purpose is this impertinent madness?
Pray be milder.

Org. Your mother was a whore, and I will not put it
Aor. Why should so slight a toy thus trouble you?
Org. Your father was hang'd, and I will be reveng'd.
Aor. When reason doth in equal balance poise

The nature of two injuries, your's to me

Lies heavy, when that other would not turn
An even scale, and yet it moves not me;

My anger is not up.

Org. But I will raise it;

You are a fool!

Aor. I know it, and shall I

Org. You are besides

An arrant knave!

Aor. So are my betters, sir.

Org. I cannot move him-O my spleen, it rises;

For very anger I could eat my knuckles.

Aor. You may, or bite your thumb, all's one to me.
Org. You are a horn'd beast, a very cuckold.

Aor. 'Tis my wife's fault, not mine; I have no reason

Then to be angry for another's sin."

up.

The whole of this play is particularly well worth reading; and as we can thus recommend the whole (a rare instance in Randolph), we feel less compunction at leaving much that is good behind, and in closing our article with the proud Lady Philotimia," of too great nicety in her attire," and her sluggish and indolent husband.

"Phil. What mole drest me to day? O patience!
Who would be troubl'd with these mop-ey'd chambermaids?
There's a whole hair on this side more than t' other,

I am no lady else! come on, you sloven.
Was ever Christian madam so tormented

To wed a swine as I am! make you ready.

Luparus. I would the tailor had been hang'd for me,

That first invented clothes-O Nature, Nature!
More cruel unto man than all thy creatures!

Calves come into the world with doublets on,
And oxen have no breeches to put off:

The lamb is born with her frieze coat about her:
Hogs go to bed in rest, and are not troubled
With pulling on their hose and shoes i' th' morning,
With gartering, girdling, trussing, buttoning,
And a thousand torments that afflict humanity.

Phil. To see her negligence! she hath made this cheek
By much too pale, and hath forgotten to whiten
The natural redness of my nose; she knows not
What 'tis wants dealbation. O fine memory!
If she has not set me in the self-same teeth
That I wore yesterday, I am a Jew;

Does she think that I can eat twice with the same,
Or that my mouth stands as the vulgar does?

What are you snoring there; you'll rise, you sluggard,
And make you ready.

Lup. Rise, and make you ready!

To works of that, your happy birds make one;
They, when they rise, are ready. Blessed birds!
They, fortunate creatures! sleep in their own clothes,
And rise with all their feather-beds about them.
Would nakedness were come again in fashion;
I had some hope then when the breasts went bare,
Their bodies too would have come to it in time.

Phil. Beshrew her for't, this wrinkle is not fill'd.
You'll go and wash-you are a pretty husband.

Lup. Our sow ne'er washes, yet she has a face,
Methinks, as cleanly, madam, as your's is,
If you durst wear your own.

Colax. Madam Superbia,

You're studying the ladies' library,

The looking-glass; 'tis well: so great a beauty
Must have her ornaments. Nature adorns
The peacock's tail with stars: 'tis she attires
The bird of paradise in all her plumes;

She decks the fields with various flowers; 'tis she
Spangled the heavens with all those glorious lights,
Spotted the ermin's skin, and arm'd the fish
In silver mail. But man she sent forth naked,
Not that he should remain so, but that he,
Endu'd with reason, should adorn himself
With every one of these. The silk-worm is
Only man's spinster, else we might suspect
That she esteem'd the painted butterfly

Above her master-piece. You are the image
Of that bright goddess, therefore wear the jewels
Of all the east; let the red sea be ransack'd
To make you glitter; look on Luparus,
Your husband, there, and see how in a sloven
All the best characters of divinity,

Not yet worn out in man, are lost and buried.

Phil. I see it to my grief, pray counsel him.
Colax. This vanity in your nice lady's humours,
Of being so curious in her toys and dresses,
Makes me suspicious of her honesty.

These cobweb-lawns catch spiders. Sir, believe it;
You know, that those do not commend the man,
But 'tis the living; though this age prefer
A cloak of plush, before a brain of art.
You understand what misery 'tis to have
No worth but that we owe the draper for ;

No doubt you spend the time your lady loses

In tricking up her body, to clothe the soul.

Lup. To clothe the soul? must the soul too be cloth'd?

I protest, sir, I had rather have no soul

Than be tormented with the clothing of it."

ART. V.-The History of Britain, that part especially now called England. From the first Traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman Conquest, collected out of the Ancientest and best Authors thereof. By John Milton. London, 1677.

Some apology may be thought necessary for making a work so accessible as the present the subject of criticism. The truth is, however, that it is a work which very few read, and which has for the greater part no attractions for the generality of readers; there are, nevertheless, a few passages of story and sentiment, which are calculated to be universally interesting; and it is with the purpose of separating these from the other matter, and presenting them to the reader in a collected form, that we have adopted it as the subject of an

article.

In reading the latter works of Milton, it is impossible not to be struck with the different view there given of the author's feelings and state of mind, from that exhibited in his earlier

publications. At the former period, we see him moving forward" with thoughts inflamed of highest resolve," in the strength of youth and hope, conscious of unrivalled genius and extraordinary acquirements, and confident in the truth of his yet untried speculations. But the scene was now changed; his public hopes were defeated; the friends of his youth and partners of his expectations, separated from him by death and calamity; himself oppressed with poverty and blindness, bodily suffering, and domestic disquietude; seeking, in the pursuits of literature, like Cicero of old, at once a refuge from personal affliction, and a means of service to his country, and supporting himself with the hope, that his past exertions, if unsuccessful as to their immediate objects, had not been wholly unacceptable to the "Great Task-Master," in whose eye he laboured. Hence his early works are redolent of promise, of lofty design, and confident expectation; while, in his latter, we see the bitterness of disappointed hope, a desire of explaining the confounding events of the time, by causes, which no individual virtue could obviate, and a frequent recurrence to the great unchangeable maxims of political and moral truth, as if to strengthen and support himself amidst the numerous and disheartening misapplications of the former, and violations of both. Such is the character of Samson Agonistes, Paradise Regained, and the prophetic parts of Paradise Lost; and the same strain of feeling is visible throughout this history. He writes evidently with a view to his own and succeeding times; and in the events of his country's early history, he reads a perpetual comment upon his favourite maxims of a visible providential superintendance in the affairs of nations, and the inseparable connection of public liberty with private virtue and religion; a truth, his constant inculcation of which, distinguishes him as widely from those spurious advocates of liberty, who degrade his name by associating it with their own profligate tenets, as his unwearied zeal for the advancement of freedom and public knowledge separates him from those who would confound the cause of bigotry and servility with that of public morals. But we are wandering from our subject: our intention was not so much to draw the attention of our readers to a work, by which the greater portion of them would most probably be disappointed, as to place before them a set of extracts, which might save them the trouble of perusing the original work; we shall, therefore, be excused from making more than a very few remarks on the manner of its execution. The style of narration is neat, concise, and clear, modelled on that of the classical historians, and in the more important and interesting parts rises to a degree of animation. There is not much display of deep philosophical research; but the author's

characteristic freedom of judgement is every where apparent. It would not be easy to point out a better executed précis of early English history, considering its conciseness. The diction is impregnated with classical idioms, to a degree utterly inconsistent with the purity of English style.

The first book, containing the legendary history of Britain from the earliest ages to the invasion of Cæsar, is by far the most entertaining. The author's motives for telling over again the tales of the old chroniclers, are thus stated in the exordium.

"The beginning of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books have spoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many succeeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly unknown, or obscured and blemished with fables. Whether it were that the use of letters came in long after, or were it the violence of barbarous inundations, or they themselves at certain revolutions of time, fatally decaying, and degenerating into sloth and ignorance, whereby the monuments of more ancient civility have been some destroyed, some lost: perhaps dis-esteem and contempt of the public affairs then present, as not worth recording, might partly be in cause. Certainly ofttimes we see that wise men, and of best ability, have forborne to write the acts of their own days, while they beheld with a just loathing and disdain, not only how unworthy, how perverse, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all history the persons and their actions were; who, either by fortune, or some rude election, had attained, as a sore judgement and ignominy upon the land, to have chief sway in managing the common wealth.

"Nevertheless there being others besides the first supposed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for approved story, which the former explode for fiction, and seeing that oft-times relations heretofore accounted fabulous, have been after found to contain in them many footsteps, and relics of something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us, that all was not fained; I have therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales; be it for nothing else but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously.

"I might also produce example, as Diodorus among the Greeks, Livy and others of the Latins, Polydore and Virunnius accounted among our own writers. But I intend not with controversies and quotations to delay or interrupt the smooth course of history; much less to argue and debate long who were the first inhabitants, with what probabilities, what authorities each opinion hath been upheld, but shall endeavour that which hitherto hath been needed most, with plain and lightsome brevity, to relate, well and orderly, things worth the noting, so as may best instruct and benefit them that read. Which, imploring