"
8vo. 1633. Let me give you a taste of his quality, in the following
elaborate catalogue of the curiosities of a battle-field:--
"Here a hand severed, there an ear was cropped;
Here a chap fallen, and there an eye put out;
Here was an arm lopped off, there a nose dropped;
Here half a man, and there a less piece fought;
Like to dismembered statues they did stand,
Which had been mangled by Time's iron hand."
This is prosaic enough, and might have been written by a surgical
student; but this is better:--
"The artificial wood of spears was wet
With yet warm blood; and trembling in the wind,
Did rattle like the thorns which Nature set
On the rough hide of an armed porcupine;
Or looked like the trees which dropped gore,
Plucked from the tomb of slaughtered Polydore."
So much for Mr. Charles Aleyn.
But it is at the theatre, as you may well believe, that poets live and
die most like the blithesome grasshoppers. The poor players, marvellous
compounds of tin, feathers, and tiffany, fret but a brief hour; but the
playwright, less considered alive, is sooner defunct. I have not
Dodsley's Plays by me, but, if my memory does not deceive me, not one
of them keeps the stage; nor did dear Charles Lamb make many in love
with that huge heap in the British Museum.
Pages:
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186