that of Shakespeare to prove that he cannot even graze in his loftiest flights the heights where Avon's bard "sits throned and serene!" After Dryden the most eminent dramatic writers of this era are Otway, Lee, Crowne, and Shadwell. Lee is characterized by tenderness, fire, and imagination. Crowne in some of his productions is eminent for poetry, and in others for plot and character. Otway's dramas, though rugged and irregular in versification, far excel those of Dryden in propriety of style and character. Otway was born at Trotting in Sussex, March 3, 1651. Educated at Oxford, he left college without taking his degree. He afterward appeared as an unsuccessful actor, then as a playwright, and subsequently as a military character in Flanders; there he was cashiered for irregularities, and returning to England, resumed writing for the stage. His short and eventful life, checkered by want and extravagance, was closed prematurely in 1685. One of his biographers relates that he came to his death by too hastily swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of bread which charity had supplied. Whatever may have been the immediate cause of his death, he is known to have been at the time in circumstances of great poverty. Otway excels in his delineation of the passions of the heart, the ardor of love, and the excess of misery and despair. His fame now rests upon his two tragedies, "The Orphan," and "Venice Preserved;" but on these it has been aptly remarked that "it rests as on the Pillars of Hercules." The plot of the "Orphan," from its inherent indelicacy and painful associations, has driven this play from the stage; but "Venice Preserved" is still deservedly popular. Otway's power in scenes of passionate affection was thought by Walter Scott to rival and sometimes excel Shakespeare's; and in his excessive praise of this dramatist he has said, "More tears have been shed, probably, for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia than for those of Juliet and Desdemona." This passage from "Venice Preserved" is a sample of Otway's tender pathos: Jaf. O Belvidera! doubly I'm a beggar: Canst thou bear cold and hunger? Bel. Oh! I will love thee, even in madness love thee! And as thou sighing liest, and swelled with sorrow, Into thy soul, and kiss thee to thy rest; Then praise our God, and watch thee till the morning. Jaf. Hear this, you Heavens, and wonder how you made her! Reign, reign, ye monarchs, that divide the world; Busy rebellion ne'er will let you know Tranquillity and happiness like mine; Like gaudy ships, the obsequious billows fall, And rise again, to lift you in your pride: They wait but for a storm, and then devour you! I, in my private bark already wrecked, Like a poor merchant, driven to unknown land, That had, by chance, packed up his choicest treasure A CHAPTER X. MILTON. BOVE all the poets of his age in genius and purity of life and purpose, and in the whole range of English poetry inferior only to Shakespeare in rank, was John Milton, born in London, Dec. 9, 1608. His father was of an ancient Roman Catholic family. Embracing the Protestant faith, he was disinherited, and as a means of support, followed the profession of a scrivener, and was also distinguished as a musical composer. Milton has been called “a musical poet," and no doubt he inherited his father's harmonical genius. The poet was carefully educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was designed for the Church; but "denying the power arrogated by councils and bishops," he preferred, as he tells us, "a blameless life to servitude and forswearing." In 1632 Milton took his degree of M. A. and retired from the university to his father's country-house, where he spent five years in studying classic literature. Leaving England in 1638, he travelled fifteen months in France and Italy. The Civil War hastened his return to his native land, where he nobly engaged against the prelates and Royalists, and wrote his pamphlets against the Established Episcopal Church, continuing through the whole period of those troublous times to devote his pen to the service of liberty and truth, defending the boldest measures of his party, even to the execution of the King. In these essays, some of which, that they might be read in foreign countries, are written in Latin, Milton displays his unbounded love of liberty and his strong inflexible principles, both in regard to religion and civil government. Macaulay has observed that "as compositions they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language." The poet must have been about thirty when, having found it necessary to increase his income, he received into his house a few pupils, who appear to have been sons of his relatives and intimate friends, and "proceeded with cheerful alacrity in the noblest of all employments, that of training up immortal souls in wisdom and virtue." Milton taught Latin, Greek, French, Italian, the chief Oriental tongues, mathematics, and astronomy. Dr. Johnson has been pleased to scoff at Milton as a school-master; but one of his scholars thus bears testimony to his capacity and fidelity as a teacher. If his pupils," he says, "had received his documents with the same acuteness of wit and apprehension, the same industry and alacrity and thirst after knowledge as the instructor was endowed with, what prodigies of wit and learning might they have proved!" In 1649 the poet was, without solicitation, appointed foreign or Latin secretary to the Council of State. For ten years his eyesight had been failing, owing to the wearisome studies and midnight watchings of his youth, and by the close of the year 1652 he was totally blind. By the Restoration Milton was deprived of his public employment. In 1643 he married his first wife, Mary Powell. Her voluntary desertion of her husband, his resolve to repudiate her, — which led to his treatises on divorce, and their subsequent reconciliation are well known. Our satisfaction in the perfecting of "the patience of the saints" alone reconciles us to the fact that this woman embittered Milton's life more than fifteen long years. Graciously released from her by death, he married soon after his second and most beloved wife, Katharine Woodcock, who died within a year after their marriage. By his first marriage Milton had three daughters. When the youngest was about fifteen, he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshul, a gentlewoman "of twenty-four, without pretensions of any kind, who willingly gave her life to cheer his blind and helpless. years;" yet to her tender reverence for his studious habits, and the peace and comfort she shed over his heart and home, it is said that we owe the "Paradise Lost." Milton had attained his sixty-sixth year when, his mind calm and tranquil to the last, though long suffering acute physical pain, he passed gently from earth. His funeral was "honored with a numerous and splendid attendance," and he was buried next his father, in the chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. There is supposed to have been no memorial on his grave; his memory was, however, honored with a tomb in Westminster Abbey in 1737, for which the English nation may take to itself no credit, as it was erected at private expense. Milton's poverty has been the darling theme of his eulogists. Even Macaulay, in his inimitable essay on the poet, cannot refrain from making capital of it. Thus he writes: "When having experienced every calamity incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die." Milton's "hovel appears to have been a small but comfortable house, in one room of which ("hung decently with rusty green") the poet is described as sitting, not on a three-legged stool, but in a commodious armchair, and dressed neatly in a suit of sober black. There he had his beloved books and his |