HENRY GLAPTHORNE.*

WHO was Henry Glapthorne ? We confess that we had never heard his name before we saw this reprint of his works, so we went for enlightenment to the nearest cycloptedia. This happened to be Rees's, but Rees knew him not, and we felt relieved. Not to know Glapthorne was clearly not so serious a thing as not to know the Prince of Darkness ; and in the " Bio- graphie Generale" we read, as follows, about this dramatist :— " Winstanley l'appelle un des principaux auteurs dramatiques du regne de Charles ler, mais ses pieces, quoique assez bien derites d'apres Baker, sont oubliees aujourd'hui." But Baker, alas ! was as unknown to us as Glapthorne himself, and we could not gage the value of his securities. We turned, therefore, reluctantly to the preface ; reluctantly, because we think that an editor's preface should, as a rule, be read aft‘r and not before the author whom he has edited. For we were not inclined, except upon compulsion, to read H. Glapthorne's dramas through, and we hoped to find some hints to guide us in the task of selection. We found the editor's own remarks almost incredibly silly, but from an extract from a well-written article in the Retrospective Review we learnt that Glap- thorne was one of the least-known of our neglected dramatists, one of the obscurest of an obscure class, and that only one short extract from him appears in Lamb's " Dramatic Specimens." This, again, was not reassuring, for few, indeed, we thought, were the paasages worth quoting in a neglected author of this kind which were likely to escape the inevitable eye of that sympathetic critic. The reviewer indeed was not of Lamb's mind. "The latest and best," he says, " of our author's productions is ' The Lady's Privilege,' a comedy abounding in poetry, and which as a specimen of fervid and beautiful composition might be quoted from begining to end." It is needless to say, perhaps, that Lamb was right and the reviewer wrong, but as we shall have to quotefrom this comedy, the reader will be able to judge for himself. Mean- while, we resolved to begin with this masterpiece, but we failed to keep our resolution, for at the end of the preface we read that on the 23rd of May, 1662, the celebrated Mr. Pepys and his wife " slunk away to the Opera, where we saw Wit in a Constable,' the first time it is acted, but so silly a play I never saw, I think, in my life." This was too tempting, so we slunk away with Mr. Pepys, and were very soon convinced that the Secretary was, in this case at least, a very sound theatrical critic. Hopelessly dull, yet hardly more dull than coarse, we marvelled how the reviewer could have called such trash an entertaining comedy. He admits indeed that it does not possess any passages which are particularly worth quoting, and adds, neatly enough, that if the Constable has much wit, he is like Hudibras, "very shy in using it." This is very good-natured criticism, and we like the reviewer for it, but are not inclined to be so good-natured ourselves. This dolt of a constable has no wit at all, no humour, and no drollery. He has a stupid catchword, "How's that?" which he abuses as Nym abused " humour ;" but if even a saturnine reader may scarce refrain from grinning at "Humour me the angels! " the model reader, whom Goldsmith longed for, would be soured by this blockhead's idiotic "How's that ?" Thoroughly convinced, then, that broad comedy was not Glapthorne's forte, we turned to that "fervid and beautiful composition, abounding in poetry, The Lady's Privilege.'" Omnes non omnia, we muttered ; and it might be that a writer who was so much at sea in the rougher elements of his art would, with a more congenial theme, show qualities (in kind) like those which won for "neat Terence" the title of a demi-Menander. A single Act served to dissipate all such illusions. It was evident beyond a doubt that Henry Glap- thorne was one of those mediocrities " quibus esse poetis non Di, non homines, non concessere columnm." His dramatic art, too, did not soar much above the naive simplicity which marks the efforts of-youthful playwrights in their earlier teens, or the fearless directness of the 'sacred bards' who cater for Richardson's Show and the Victoria "Sir, I am absolute for a virgin's life," says the lady. "Madam, bethink you of the joys of wedlock," answers the lover. " Yes, you are right, and I am yours," re- plies the unblushing fair. The famous scene between Gloster and Lady Anne has not altogether satisfied certain critics. We wonder what they would have said to such a scene as this, which, lest we should be thought to have misrepresented it, we quote :- "Emilia. My Lord,

If I should frame my Virgin thoughts to love, They should be fixt on you ; but I'm so well Content, and settled in a Virgin life, I cannot wish to change it.

• The Plays and Poems of Henry Glaplhorne. Now first collected. With Illus- trative Notes and a Memoir of the Author. 2 vols. London: John Pearson. Fredericks. Not to imbrace

A larger stock of happiness, Emilia. Virginity is but a single good, A happiness° which like a miser's wealth, Is, as from others,' so from your owne use, Lock'd up and closely cabin'd, since it not admits Communication of its good, when you Shall in the state of marriage freely taste Nature's choice pleasures, that same happiness° You were created for.

[Sentence left ruinous, as Carlyle would say.] Emil. You have prevail'd, Sir;

You, who are still victorious o're your foes, Must needs remains a Conqueror o're your friends.

My Lord, receive me freely : I am yours for ever.

Fred. This chaste kiss—" But here the form of Banquo—we mean Buckstone—rose like an exhalation, and we felt, with Mrs. Nickleby's grey-hosed suitor, that all was " gas and gaiters." Here, too, we intended to be quit of quoting Henry Glapthorne. But it happened that we had mislaid the second volume of Lamb's " Selections," and we wished to discover, if we could, the passage which he had chosen. In searching for this, we came to read each of these volumes through from cover to cover ; and we cheerfully admit that Glapthorne furnishes another proof of the truth of Quintilian's remark, that it is rare indeed to find a writer so utterly absurd as that some things, however few, will not be found in him which the world, if possessed of them, would not wil- lingly let die. " I am picking pearls from the dunghill of Ennius," replied the great poet whom the horn-book Bentleys of to-day call " Vergil," when a friend asked him what he was doing. It may be readily inferred from what we have said that Glapthorne's works are in one sense a sterquilinium, but the pearls upon it are so small and far between that, when we had finished, we felt, with the boy in "Pickwick," when he came to the end of the alphabet, that it was doubtful if it was worth while to go through so much to learn so little. However, such as they are, here are some specimens of these rarities. Doris., a victorious Genoese General (in " The Lady's Privilege ") had, so it was supposed, killed his friend Bonivet in a duel, which he had been provoked to fight through having been called a degenerate coward. About to be sentenced to death for this, he urges that as a soldier he could not, after such an insult, do otherwise than as he had done. The judge replies to him a strain of sober wisdom, which does infinite honour to the author's sense and sensibility, and contrasts mourn- fully with the two centuries during which this detestable practice was still in vogue among us, before the pistol-shot of the linen- draper's assistant, Mirfin, blew it off the face of England for ever. " Oh, my lord," he says,— "Collect your serious temper, and put off

The overweening fantasies of youth I Consider what a vaine deluding breath Is reputation, if compar'd with life ; Thinke that an idle, or detracting word May by a faire submission (which our lawes, If honour doe require it, will enforce) Be wash'd away, but the red guilt of blood Sticks as a blacks infection to the souls, That, like an lEthiop, cannot be wash'd white,- Thinke upon this, and know I must with griefe Pronounce your fatal sentence."

Si sic omnia ! we were going to say. but the absurdity of such a wish was too great, so we contented ourselves with the reflection that Ein Beispiel ist kein Beispiel, and wondered whether this was the passage which Lamb selected. We have somewhere read, but forget where, a pretty line about the music breathing in some maiden's face. In his verses "Upon a Gentleman playing on the Lute," Glapthorne has, we fancy, anticipated this thought:-

" For as his Touch kept equal! pace,

Ms looks did move with such a grace, We read his Musick in his Face."

Nor are graphic touches of another kind, altogether wanting.

In a poem on Whitehall, we find this description of the Beef- Eaters :—

"Those sons of chine And pith, the Guard, carowsed black Jacks of wine Instead of single beare : then did they eat Without controule that emperor of meat, The lusty chine of Beefe."

And this of the Court :— "The Lords then in their native habit went, Which was as comely as magnificent.

The ladies then their genuine beauties ware, Ignorant of the imposture of false haire; Nor did they their own red and white attaint, With that fordo treason against Nature, paint."

The line which we have italicised strikes a key-note, as it were, to one of Glapthorne's peculiarities. Difficult as it is to laugh

with him, it is often more difficult not to smile at him. Here, for instance, is a line which seems almost as funny as the line in his friend's tragedy which was too much for Lamb's gravity. For there, when a messenger had announced to the monarch of the land that a band of foemen, twelve in number, had crossed his frontier,—" Ttetive," yelled the irate king, " twelve, did you say ? Curse on those dozen villains ! " Here, the lady having said that she was not angry, but much distempered, her lover, the same Doria, replies, "At what, by whom ? Lives there a creature so extremely bad, Dares discompose your patience ?" " Speake," he continues, in a strain which out-Bottom's Bottom,-

" Speake, roveale, The monster to me; were he fenced with flames, Or locked in Bnlwarkes of congested yce, And all the fiends stood Centinels to guard The passage, I would force it Otis heart, Through which the mounting violence of my rage Should pierce like lightning."

"My violent rage," he roars, further on, and it apropos to some other cause of irritation,— "Would put me to some desperate act beyond The reach of fury ; those are words would infect Rose-coloured patience' cleere and lovely front With loathsome leprosy, change flames to teares, And with unusual harshness° of the sound Deafen the genius of the world."

If his blows were like his words, no wonder that haughty Turk and insolent Venetian went down, as we are told they did, before this doughty son of Genoa. Would he not have played " Ercles rarely," or "a part to tear a cat in?" But enough of this fustian.

It is our deliberate opinion that these plays were not worth reprinting, and we may, perhaps, infer that their nameless editor is of the same way of thinking. If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well, and as the editor has done his task very badly, he perhaps thought (and we repeat, that we quite agree with him if he did) that it was not worth doing at all. To say nothing of the irrelevant rubbish which he has foisted into the preface about a certain George Glapthorne, whom (as be admits) there is not a tittle of evidence to connect with Henry Glap- thorne, he has left the text literally swarming with gross mis- prints, which the commonest care might have corrected, and which, to borrow his own magniloquent phrase, " obviously sug- gest their own rectification on the most casual perusal." All such errors, he says, as far as his ability enabled him, he has silently cor- rected. Now either silently is an Irish euphemism for imperceptibly, or this editor's ability is not great. Ile spoils the purpureus paunus we have quoted by reading "of honor" instead of "if honour ;" and he punctuates, " Rose-coloured patience ; cleere and lovely front," in the second piece of bombast ; and similar uncorrected errors, are to be found, we really think, on every page. He allows a different and more amusing kind of misprint . to remain—silently, shall we say ? corrected—"Alablaster," e.g., for alabaster ; " Pyrrhus age" for Pyrrha's age ; " Gables shall weep that his Lycoris," for Gallus shall weep, &c., &c. He has, in fact, at all events, we hope so, for his sake, felt that con- sistency demanded that bad plays should be badly edited, and complete success has attended his efforts. When we add, as we are compelled to add, that these sorry dramas swarm with coarse expressions almost as numerous as with misprints, and that one of them at least, "The Hollander," is disgracefully indecent, we shall have adequately warned our readers to think twice before buying or reading the poor compositions of which we have now given them a sincere estimate.