Hunc. Oh! sir, about an hour and half Void is the mistress of the house of care,
ago
While the good cook presents the bill of
fare;

He sallied out to encounter with the foe,
And swore, unless his fate had him misled,
From Grizzle's shoulders to cut off his head,
And serve't up with your chocolate in bed.
King. 'Tis well, I found one devil told us
both.

Come, Dollallolla, Huncamunca, come;
Within we'll wait for the victorious Thumb;
In peace and safety we secure may stay,
While to his arm we trust the bloody fray;
Though men and giants should conspire with
gods,

113 He is alone equal to all these odds.

Queen. He is, indeed, 114 a helmet to us
all;

While he supports we need not fear to fall;
His arm dispatches all things to our wish,
And serves up every foe's head in a dish.

113

"Credat Judæus Appella,
Non ego,'
says Mr. D.
For, passing over the ab-
surdity of being equal to odds, can we pos-
sibly suppose a little insignificant fellow-I
say again, a little insignificant fellow-able
to vie with a strength which all the Samsons
and Herculeses of antiquity would be unable
to encounter? " I shall refer this incredu-
lous critic to Mr. Dryden's defence of his
Almanzor; and, lest that should not satisfy
him, I shall quote a few lines from the speech
of a much braver fellow than Almanzor, Mr.
Johnson's Achilles:

Though human race rise in embattled hosts,
To force her from my arms-Oh!
son of
Atreus!
By that immortal power, whose deathless
spirit

Informs this earth, I will oppose them all.

Victim.

114 "I have heard of being supported by a staff," says Mr. D., "but never of being supported by an helmet." I believe he never heard of sailing with wings, which he may read in no less a poet than Mr. Dryden: Unless we borrow wings, and sail through air. Love Triumphant. What will he say to a kneeling valley? I'll stand Like a safe valley, that low bends the knee To some aspiring mountain. Injured Love. I am ashamed of so ignorant a carper, who doth not know that an epithet in tragedy is very often no other than an expletive. Do not we read in the New Sophonisba of "grinding chains, blue plagues, white occasions, and blue serenity?" Nay, it is not the adjective only, but sometimes half a sentence is put by way of expletive, as, Beauty pointed high with spirit," in the same play; and, "In the lap of blessing, to be most curst," in the Revenge.

Whether the cod, that northern king of fish,
Or duck, or goose, or pig, adorn the dish,
No fears the number of her guests afford,
But at her hour she sees the dinner on the
board.

SCENE VII

A Plain. Grizzle, FoodlE, and Rebels.

Griz. Thus far our arms with victory are crowned;

For, though we have not fought, yet we
have found

115 No enemy to fight withal.
Food.
Yet I,
Methinks, would willingly avoid this day,
110 This first of April, to engage our foes.
Gris. This day, of all the days of the year,
I'd choose,

For on this day my grandmother was born.
Gods! I will make Tom Thumb an April-
fool;

117 Will teach his wit an errand it ne'er knew,

And send it post to the Elysian shades.

Food. I'm glad to find our army is so

120 As if the gods meant to unhinge the world;

And heaven and earth in wild confusion
hurl;

Yet will I boldly tread the tottering ball.
Merl. Tom Thumb!
Thumb.

Merl.

What voice is this I hear?
Tom Thumb!

Thumb. Again it calls.

Merl.

Glum.

Tom Thumb!

It calls again. Thumb. Appear, whoe'er thou art; I fear thee not.

Merl. Thou hast no cause to fear, I am thy friend,

Merlin by name, a conjurer by trade,

And to my art thou dost thy being owe.
Thumb. How!

Merl. Hear then
Tom Thumb.

the mystic getting of

For liberty I fight.
Thumb.
[A bloody engagement between the two
armies here; drums beating, trumpets
sounding, thunder and lightning. They
fight off and on several times.
fall. GRIZZLE and GLUMDALCA remain.

Some

124 The character of Merlin is wonderful part. We find several of these prophecies in throughout; but most so in this prophetic the tragic authors, who frequently take this opportunity to pay a compliment to their country, and sometimes to None but our author (who seems to have detheir prince. tested the least appearance of flattery) would have passed by such an opportunity of being a political prophet.

125 I saw the villain, Myron; with these eyes I saw him. Busiris. In both which places it is intimated that it is sometimes possible to see with other eyes

120 Were heaven and earth in wild confusion than your own. hurled,

Should the rash gods unhinge the rolling
world,

Undaunted would I tread the tottering ball,
Crushed, but unconquered, in the dreadful
fall.
Female Warrior.

121 See the History of Tom Thumb, page 2.
122 Amazement swallows up my sense,
And in the impetuous whirl of circling fate
Drinks down my reason. Persian Princess.
I have outfaced myself.

123

What! am I two?

Is there another me?
King Arthur.

enough to turn one's stomach.
128 This mustard," says Mr. D., "is
I would be
head when he wrote it." This will be, I be-
glad to know what idea the author had in his
lieve, best explained by a line of Mr. Dennis:
And gave him liberty, the salt of life.
Liberty Asserted.
will not rise at the other.
The understanding that can digest the one
127 Han.
Are you
the chief whom men
famed Scipio call?
Scip. Are you the much
Hannibal?

more famous Hannibal.

128 Dr. Young seems to have copied this Of Princess Huncamunca and Tom Thumb; engagement in his Buriris:

Nood.

Oh! monstrous, dreadful, terrible, Oh! Oh!

King. Ha! murderess vile, take that.

Deaf be my ears, for ever blind my eyes! Dumb be my tongue! feet lame! all senses lost!

138 Howl wolves, grunt bears, hiss snakes, shriek all ye ghosts!

King. What does the blockhead mean?
Nood.
I mean, my liege,
139 Only to grace my tale with decent horror.
Whilst from my garret, twice two stories
high,

I looked abroad into the streets below,
I saw Tom Thumb attended by the mob;
Twice twenty shoe-boys, twice two dozen
links,

Chairmen and porters, hackney-coachmen,
whores;

Aloft he bore the grizly head of Grizzle;
When of a sudden through the streets there

came

A cow, of larger than the usual size, And in a moment-guess, Oh! rest!

guess the

And in a moment swallowed up Tom Thumb.
King. Shut up again the prisons, bid my

treasurer

Not give three farthings out-hang all the
culprits,

Guilty or not-no matter.-Ravish virgins:
Go bid the schoolmasters whip all their boys!
Let lawyers, parsons, and physicians loose,
To rob, impose on, and to kill the world.
Nood. Her majesty the queen is in a

swoon.

Queen. Not so much in a swoon but I have still

news.

Nood. O! I am slain.

Strength to reward the messenger of ill [Kills NOODle. Cle. My lover's killed, I will revenge him [Kills the QUEEN. Hunc. My mamma killed! vile murderess, [Kills CLEORA. Dood. This for an old grudge to thy heart. [Kills HUNCAMUNCA.

So.

beware.

[Kills MUST. [Kills himself, and falls. So when the child, whom nurse from danger guards,

140 And take thou this.

Sends Jack for mustard with a pack of cards,

Kings, queens, and knaves, throw one another down,

Till the whole pack lies scattered and
o'erthrown;

So all our pack upon the floor is cast,
And all I boast is-that I fall the last.

[Dies.

140 We may say with Dryden, Death did at length so many slain forget, And left the tale, and took them by the great.

I know of no tragedy which comes nearer
to this charming and bloody catastrophe
than Cleomenes, where the curtain covers
five principal characters dead on the stage.
These lines too-

The bodies tell the story as they lie-
seem to have belonged more properly to this
scene of our author; nor can I help imagining
they were originally his. The Rival Ladies,
We're now a chain of lovers linked in death;
too, seem beholden to this scene:
Julia goes first, Gonsalvo hangs on her,
And Angelina hangs upon Gonsalvo,
As I on Angelina.

I asked no questions then, of who killed who?

No scene, I believe, ever received greater honors than this. It was applauded by several encores, a word very unusual in tragedy.

And it was very difficult for the actors to escape without a second slaughter. This I take to be a lively assurance of that fierce spirit of liberty which remains among us, and which Mr. Dryden, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, hath observed: "Whether custom," says he, "hath so insinuated itself into our countrymen, or nature hath so formed them to fierceness, I know not; but they will scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror to be taken from them." And indeed I am for having them encouraged in this martial disposition: nor do I believe our victories over the French have been owing to anything more than to those bloody spectacles daily exhibited in our tragedies, of which the French stage is so entirely Cleomenes. I clear.

I drive to thine, O Doodle! for a new one. [Kills DOODLE.

138 These beautiful phrases are all to be found in one single speech of King Arthur, or The British Worthy.

139 I was but teaching him to grace his tale With decent horror.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, who "touched nothing that he did not adorn," assayed no dramatic composition until near his fortieth year. His days of ragged roving and garret toil were then so far behind him, "Noll Goldsmith, hack-writer," had so long since given place to the great Dr. Goldsmith, the friend of Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke, and member of the famous "Literary Club," that his early struggles need not long detain us. His birth in the mean hamlet of Pallas in Longford, Ireland, November 10, 1728; his desultory boyhood in his father's poor parish and at many an Irish school; his four unhappy years at Trinity College, Dublin; the season of idle waiting and of aimless wandering that followed, are of little import to the student of his dramas. "He was a plant that flowered late," said Dr. Johnson; "there appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young."

With the thirties close upon him, came London years of the lean kine, during which he tried his hand at every calling-apothecary's clerk, physician, corrector of the press, usher at Peckham School. His literary career opens ignobly as a publisher's hack, making prefaces to order, grinding out reviews, revamping books with butterfly lives. But before he had reached the mezzo cammin" of life, he had entered upon the great work which he was destined to do. The admirable prose of The Bee and of The Citizen of the World was succeeded by the more admirable verse of The Traveller in 1764 and of The Hermit in 1765. After The Vicar of Wakefield of the next year, no one can question Goldsmith's claim to the rank which his genius has won. During the few years that remain to him there are other great achievements, that make us quite forget the hack-work of his Histories and of Animated Nature (1769-1774). The Deserted Village (1770) is as memorable as his dramas. Then night closes about him, and early in April, 1774, his body finds a resting-place under the stones of the Temple.

Goldsmith's supremacy in every field of his various endeavor is so readily acknowledged now and his merits seem so very obvious, that it is hard for us to realize the struggles through which he came into his own.