"Many persons persuade themselves that the life and well-being of a State are something like their own fleeting health and brief prosperity. And hence "I do not mean to suggest that truth and right are they see portentous things in every subject of politialways to be found in middle courses; or that there cal dispute. Such fancies add much to the intoleis any thing particularly philosophic in concluding rance of party-spirit. But the State will bear much that both parties are in the wrong,' and that there killing. It has outlived many generations of politiis a great deal to be said on both sides of the ques-cal prophets-and it may survive the present ones." tion,-phrases which may belong to indolence as well as to charity and candour. Let a man have a hearty strong opinion, and strive by all fair means to bring it into action-if it is in truth an opinion,

From the Examiner.

The Pleasant Comedie of Patient Grissill. As it hath beene sundrie times plaid by the Right Honorable the Earle of Nottingham (Lord High Admirall) his servants. Reprinted from the black-letter Edition of 1603. With an Introduction and Notes. For the Shakspeare Society.

A RIGHT pleasant comedy indeed! A reprint that does honour to the Shakspeare Society.

labouring for us. All honour to thee, therefore, in these latter days that have so profited by thee!

We venture to think it easy to determine the respective claims of authorship in this comedy. There are two interpolations, if we may so describe them, of the original story. That of the Welsh shrew and her humorous husband, introduced as a foil to the gentle heroine, we take to be the work of Chettle's hand. The witty raillery of Julia, and the laughable absurdities of her euphuistic lover, we claim for Haughton. The beauty, the simplicity, the deep pathos, wrought in the main action of the play-affiliate themselves of right to Dekker. No one else could own them. Great as was the common heritage of genius in that day, the subtle master-touches of the creator of an Orlando Friscobaldo, of a Bellafront, of a Candido, are yet unerringly to be singled from the stock. We have them here enshrined. In the

We were not aware of the existence of such a work. Not more than three copies would seem to have fallen into the hands of the collectors. The Shakspeare Society are indebted to Mr. Payne Collier for the means of placing it at the disposal of their members; and it is another and weighty obligation, to the many Mr. Collier's labours have conferred on the lovers of the early drama of Eng-characters of the heroine and her family, there lives land.

the very soul of that daring and passionate burst of sweetness, which, had he written not another line, would have immortalized Dekker's name.

Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace:

Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven:
It makes men look like gods.... The best of Men
That e'er wore earth about him was a Sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breath'd.

This remark is taken from a brief introduction: "The ensuing play possesses almost the rarity of a manuscript: there is no copy of it in the British Museum; none at Cambridge: the only public library that contains it is, we believe, the Bodleian; and the only private collection in which it is known to exist in a complete state, is that of the Duke of Devonshire. Before his Grace was able to procure a perfect copy, he was obliged to be satisfied with And in these noble lines, let us take the opportuan imperfect one, which he subsequently gave to the writer of the present notice: both have been of mate- nity of saying, is written the secret of the extraordirial service in the present re-impression. The mem-nary popularity of this famous story of Griselda. bers of the Shakspeare Society will thus be aware that they are in a manner under a double obligation to the Duke of Devonshire, since the imperfect copy would have been of comparatively little use, without the aid of the perfect one to supply its deficiencies. "The authors of it were three celebrated contemporaries of Shakspeare-Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle, and William Haughton, as we learn from that curious and valuable theatrical record, Henslowe's Diary, which is about to be printed entire for the use of the members of the Shakspeare Society. Malone refers to the memorandum under December 1599, (Shakesp. by Bosw., iii. 332) but he does not give the precise date, nor the exact terms of the entry. It runs thus-the body of it being in the handwriting

of the dramatist who first subscribed it:

"Received in earnest of Patient Grissell by us Tho. Dekker, Hen. Chettle and Willm. Hawton, the sume of 3li of good and lawfull money, by a note sent from Mr. Robt. Shaa: the 19th of December

1599.

"By me HENRY CHETTLE.
W. HAUGHTON.

THOMAS DEKKER.'"

Chettle, Haughton, Dekker! The first two, good names; the last, a great one. This advance, we see, was exactly a pound a piece. Prudent Henslowe! They might have been tempted by more to make too merry a Christmas, and what would have come of patient Grissil then? Too merry a Christmas interferes with business. The nightingale in the fable, sang best with her breast against the thorn. Again we say-prudent Henslowe! In caring for thy pockets, thou caredst also for posterity. Thou art the same estimable theatrical pawnbroker, who bound down Philip Massinger so fast for that very sum of three pounds, and wrung out of his heart another play the more. The like didst thou for others, who might else have been enjoying themselves, not

monstrous, nay impossible character, of many of its Taken abstractedly, there cannot be a doubt of the chief details. That the high-born husband should in the first instance-with all his previous reluctance to marriage-have resolved to make trial of the pathe manner in which he pursued this trial should tience of his lowly wife, was natural enough. That widely differ from modern ideas of right and even If he had even been contented with a year's exhibidecency, was also natural-in those feudal times. tion of her uncomplaining patience under the supposed murder of her first-born child and the horrible possible, though strained to its extremest verge, indignities he heaps upon herself, our sense of the might not have wholly given way. But when he repeats this with her second child, having in the insecutions of the still gentle, loving, unfaltering partterim of four years abated none of these terrible perner of his bed-when he prolongs the torture for eight years beyond, still exacting from her all quiet duty and affection towards the supposed murderer of her children-when at the expiration of that time he sends her naked back to her father's hovel, and recalls her to witness his pretended second marriage under a dispensation he affects to have obtained-the mind utterly renounces and rejects such a series of abominable cruelties, as altogether monstrous, and not possible in nature.

Why, then, did Dekker take up such a story for the profitable exercise of his genius? Because there is, beneath and independent of all its falsehood, a truth of the divinest character. The rest falls off as temporary and trivial, while this remains-profound, eternal. In the heavenly sweetness of Gri selda amongst all her wrongs; in the sense of duty wherein she teaches us to stand fixed, though amidst all horrible unnatural portents the firmament itself should fall; in the triumph to which through every possible shape of evil this sublime obedience tends; in its victory of weakness over strength, and its

final submission of hostility to love;-there shone] tortures he himself inflicts. A genuine dramatic forth to the heart of this brave old writer all those effect is also produced by his disguised visit to old reverential lessons which are of deepest import to Janiculo's dwelling after poor Grissil has resumed her humanity, and which had already received their high-lowly state: we are deeply touched when he drops

est and holiest illustration from the patience and suffering of Him whom he dared with no irreverence to call

the well-filled purse as he leaves the hovel; and still more affected when the stern honesty of the old basket-maker sends it untouched after him. These things, we believe, are in no version of the divine tale but this of Dekker: who, like the great master he is, has turned every necessity imposed on him by the stage, into a commodity for his art. Chaucer, it will be recollected, sends back Griselda from her. father's home in nakedness:-the passage is one of the noblest in the poem. Here, with what an effect of careless pathos-for which we cannot but half love the man, cruel as is the part he is playingdoes the Marquess, when he orders her to put off for ever her dress of state, betray that he has carefully kept, all the time of their marriage, the humble russet gown she wore and the poor pitcher she carried, when he saw her first. They have been a "monument" among his costliest gems. He restores them to her, and she rejoins her father precisely as she quitted him.

"The first true gentleman that ever breath'd." Poor Dekker! he had hard need himself, of all the consolation of those lessons. His life was a continued hardship: a stormy, wintery day. No one had a better privilege to write about patience. There was a letter of his made public the other day, to Alleyn the rich player, praising him for the foundation of Dulwich hospital, and remarking how it best be came himself to sing any thing in praise of charity, "because, albeit I have felt few handes warme tho rough that complexion, yett imprisonment may make me long for them.” The note was dated from the King's Bench. Not that he was patient in all things, either. He was not patient under wrongs it was a duty to resist. When Ben Jonson assailed him with needless and undeserved reproaches, he was not patient. To inculcate no slavish submission had But we detain the reader too long from the few he written the adventures of Candido, a Griselda in specimens we wish to give of this most beautiful trunkhose to teach no base subservience to reme-play. This is from the scene in which Grissil and her diable wrongs, did he afterwards, in this dramatic father are first introduced: story, depict the patient Grissil herself, in the dress of her own loveliness-such as she was when Chaucer worshipped her, and Boccaccio, and Petrarca, and the elder minstrels of France, and numberless balladsingers of England, and Hans Sach in Germany, and in short, all of the whole world who had hearts to feel what a thing for worship is the sweetness and fortitude of woman.

Jan. Come, Grissil, work, sweet girl. Here the

warm sun

Will shine on us; and, when his fires begin,
We'll cool our sweating brows in yonder shade.
Gri. Father, methinks it doth not fit a maid,
By sitting thus in view, to draw men's eyes
To stare upon her: might it please your age,
I could be more content to work within.

Jan. Indeed, my child, men's eyes do now-a-days
quickly take fire at the least spark of beauty;
And if those flames be quench'd by chaste disdain,
Then their envenomed tongues, alack! do strike,
To wound her fame whose beauty they did like.

Chaucer's version of the story (and how exquisite that is, every lover of the good old poet knows) is in the main points adopted in the play: with such alterations and introductions as his fine instinct of dramatic effect appears to have suggested to Dekker. He has, for example, made an addition to the family Gri. I will avoid their darts, and work within. of Janiculo the basket-maker, father of the heroine, Jan. Thou need'st not: in a painted coat goes sin, in the person of his son Laureo, a poor scholar : whose learning has not taught him half the endu- And loves those that love pride. None looks on thee; rance or content which his sister has derived from Then, keep me company. How much unlike the goodness of her heart alone. This contrast is Are thy desires to many of thy sex! managed with a skill exquisite as its feeling, and How many wantons in Salucia noble and tender thoughts flow out of it. The cha- Frown like the sullen night, when their fair faces racter of the servant of the poor basket-maker, Are hid within doors; but, got once abroad, Clown Babulo, with his rude mother wit and unfail. Like the proud sun they spread their staring beams: ing cheerfulness, is also a piece of masterly relief in They shine out to be seen; their loose eyes tell the picture. Janiculo himself is more bravely done That in their bosoms wantonness doth dwell. than in any version of the story we know his Is but a star, thy star a spark of fire, Thou canst not do so, Grissil; for thy sun strength of heart never deserts him; nor, in the worst extremity of his sorrow, does he, as in Chau-Thy silks are threadbare russets; all thy portion Which hath no power t'inflame doting desire. cer, curse the day that he was born. In avoiding the Is but an honest name; that gone, thou art dead; painful repetition of two scenes alike in their cruelty and torture, by making the children twins, and thus Though dead thou liv'st, that being unblemished. Gri. If to die free from shame be ne'er to die, concentrating into one mass of misery the poor mo- Then I'll be crown'd with immortality. ther's suffering-the best laws of the drama are faithfully kept. But the highest dramatic art of Dekker seems to us to be shown in the treatment of the husband, Marquess of Saluzzo. He felt that to exhibit without due relief the mere ruffianly tramplings of this man upon unoffending gentleness, would be a violation, utterly gross and intolerable, of that high temple of human sympathies a well-filled theatre. He has elevated the character, therefore, as far as it was possible to do so, by a mistaken sense of duty of its own. The husband secretly suffers well nigh as much as the poor hapless wife, from the To add to golden numbers, golden numbers?

To beguile their work a song is afterwards sung: in the lyric melody of Fletcher's sweetest vein. How lovely it is-what a note of all sweet accord with the lovely after story!

Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
Oh, sweet content!

Art thou rich, yet in thy mind perplexed?
Oh, punishment!
Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed

This is the introduction of Laureo: the poor My song shall charm grief's ears, and care beguile. scholar we have described:

Bab. Yes, three things-age, wisdom, and basket-No sooner in coarse frieze, than cloth of gold. makers.

Gri. A better nurse! seek'st thou a better nurse? They will be mix'd, this sweet will then be brine. A better nurse than whom?

Gri. For God's sake, who must nurse them? do Should I not weep for joy, my heart would break.