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Middle Temple, November 1602. He found a cousin, John Ford, (the Fords were almost all Johns,) at Gray's Inn. No small advantage is it for a youth, on his first entrance at town or college, to have a kinsman or friend established just before him, old enough for a counseller, and not too old for a companion*. To the influence of John Ford, of Gray's Inn, it may perhaps be attributed, that John Ford, of the Middle Temple, stuck to his legal studies, and persevered in his profession, seemingly with good success, though we know not what was the peculiar nature of his professional engagements. He did not forget the obligation, but affectionately remembered his cousin, and is anxious to proclaim to the world, that he had not left his "calling for the idle tradet."

As plays and masques were periodically represented by the Inns of Court, a young lawyer's becoming a writer of plays could be no indecorum: yet it was not in this line that Ford first appeared in print. He was early in the field. In 1606, in his eighteenth year, he published "Fame's Memorial," a tribute to the memory of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy‡, for by that title he is better and more honourably known, than by the earldom of Devonshire. It is dedicated to the Lady Penelope, the unhappy cause of the great Mountjoy's unhappiness. Ford speaks of himself as a young stranger, totally unknown" to the lady, and probably to her lord also; but the sad

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* This observation I owe to my late father, who often used to dwell on the advantage he derived from finding his fellow Christ's-boy Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, at Jesus College, Cambridge, and the loss he sustained at the departure of such a guide and example. I experienced a similar loss at Oxford, in the present Bishop of Barbadoes, though his rank in the university would have prohibited him from associating with a freshman who was not his kinsman.

"the

"the

+ His dedications are tiresomely iterative upon this point. He calls "The Lover's Melancholy" first fruits of his leisure, "-" 'Tis Pity, &c.," "the first fruits of his leisure," -" The Lady's Trial," issue of less serious hours;" and he tells the Earl of Antrim, to whom he presented the "Fancies Chaste and Noble," that his "courtship of greatness never aimed at any thrift." So much the better; but what was all this to the public or his patrons either?

Ford's dedications present a curious contrast to Massinger's in another respect. In all his dramas his language, when not obscured by vain emulation of Shakspeare's involution and superfætation of thought, is as clear as the stars on a frosty night when there is no moon, -but in his prose addresses he is sometimes as laboriously unintelligible as if he would give the Sphynx a lesson-that might have saved her life-to secure her meaning from being guessed by having no meaning at all. Take a specimen: "As plurality hath reference to a multitude, so I care not to please many, but where there is a parity of condition, there the freedom of construction makes the best music." Is not this curiosa infelicitas?

The life of this great man is the finest subject for biography now unoccupied. He was the true conqueror of Ireland, the friendly rival of Essex, -the more his friend because he had been his rival; but that sad destiny which makes some men martyrs, and inflicts on others infinitive pains, far worse than martyrdom,一 tried Mountjoy to the utmost. If he failed, -let him that has no sin throw the first stone. He loved the sister of Essex, and she loved him. But the Court of Wards interfered, and she was sold to Lord Rich. The natural consequences followed. Yet neither Mountjoy nor the lady suffered in reputation, till they married. It is difficult to calculate the issues of etiquette. Court morality, when it is at the best, (which probably was in the reign of Queen Charlotte,) was rather conventional at all times, -so, as long as Lord Mountjoy (made Earl of Devonshire by James I.) suffered his connexion with Lady Rich to be a thing which everybody knew but nobody was obliged to know, all went on well. The lady was received, and Mountjoy enjoyed the favour which his public service had earned. The lady parted from the man who, taking her against her will, must be deemed guilty of what the law justly punishes with death. Yet I say not that Mountjoy and she did right. However bitter the cup of duty may be, duty commands us to drink it even to the dregs.

Laud married them. King James said, "Ye have gotten a fair woman with a foul heart." I hope this was not true. But Mountjoy felt it. He that might fairly have claimed the highest place among England's found. The subject has great dramatic capabilities; but I doubt whether Massinger would treat it worthily either of the theme, or of himself. Neither Tragedy nor Comedy, in the strictest force of the terms, was his province. Besides, he had an unlucky habit of getting into a passion with his bad characters, and making them wilful demonstrators of their own depravity. Smollett, particularly in his Count Fathom, falls into this mistake. Euripides was not free from it. It nowhere occurs in Homer, Cervantes, or Shakspeare, the great and true dramatists, and very seldom in Fielding or Sir Walter Scott.

Massinger's excellence-a great and beautiful excellence it is was in the expression of virtue, in its probation, its strife, its victory. He could not, like Shakspeare, invest the perverted will with the terrors of a magnificent intellect, or bestow the cestus of poetry on simple unconscious loveliness.

We draw to a close. After "The King and Subject," so happy in its timely expurgation, Massinger produced two dramas, "Alexius, or the Chaste Lover," and "The Fair Anchoress of Pausilippo." It is a pity they are both lost, for the titles promise much in his best way. The last was acted in January, 1640. On the 16th March in the same year, he went to bed in apparent health, and was found dead in the morning in his house on the Bankside. Such is the received account; but he seems to have had none to care for him, none to mark his symptoms, or to detect the slow decay which he might conceal in despair of sympathy.

Poorly, poor man, he lived-poorly, poor man, he died.

He was buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, and the comedians were his only mourners-perhaps half envious of his escape from the storm that was already grumbling afar, and sending ahead its herald billows. No stone marked his neglected resting-place, but in the parish register appears this brief memorial, "March 20, 163940-buried Philip Massinger, a STRANGER." His sepulchre was like his life, obscure : like the nightingale, he sung darkling it is to be feared, like the nightingale of the fable, with his breast against a thorn.

JOHN FORD* was descended from a family long settled in the north of Devonshire. Those who have an opportunity of consulting Prince's "Worthies of Devon," may find a great deal about his genealogy, but little or nothing about himself. Suffice it to say, that Thomas Ford, of Ilsington, married the sister or daughter "of the famous Lord Chief Justice Popham, and had issue John the Poet and several others." John the Poet was baptized in Ilsington church, 17th April, 1586, and became a member of the

* Lucian wrote a whimsical piece called Δικὴ φωνηέντων, the lawsuit of the bowels. The letter E, might find ground for litigation in the names of Shakspear or Shakespeare, Massinger or Messenger, and Ford or Forde. I am not aware that any autograph of the last has been discovered; but the anagram, Fide Honor, seen in the title-pages of some of his plays, pleads for the final E. I doubt, however, if anagrams are legal evidence in these cases; and the matter is not worth contesting, as this anagram is no way significant or præfigurative, like some which Camden has collected. The most extraordinary instance of anagrammatical prophecy that I remember, is that of Horatio Nelson, - Honor est a Nilo. The Cabala cannot equal it.

Middle Temple, November 1602. He found a cousin, John Ford, (the Fords were almost all Johns,) at Gray's Inn. No small advantage is it for a youth, on his first entrance at town or college, to have a kinsman or friend established just before him, old enough for a counseller, and not too old for a companion*. To the influence of John Ford, of Gray's Inn, it may perhaps be attributed, that John Ford, of the Middle Temple, stuck to his legal studies, and persevered in his profession, seemingly with good success, though we know not what was the peculiar nature of his professional engagements. He did not forget the obligation, but affectionately remembered his cousin, and is anxious to proclaim to the world, that he had not left his "calling for the idle tradet." As plays and masques were periodically represented by the Inns of Court, a young lawyer's becoming a writer of plays could be no indecorum : yet it was not in this line that Ford first appeared in print. He was early in the field. In 1606, in his eighteenth year, he published "Fame's Memorial," a tribute to the memory of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy†, for by that title he is better and more honourably known, than by the earldom of Devonshire. It is dedicated to the Lady Penelope, the unhappy cause of the great Mountjoy's unhappiness. Ford speaks of himself as "a young stranger, totally unknown" to the lady, and probably to her lord also; but the sad

* This observation I owe to my late father, who often used to dwell on the advantage he derived from finding his fellow Christ's-boy Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, at Jesus College, Cambridge, and the loss he sustained at the departure of such a guide and example. I experienced a similar loss at Oxford, in the present Bishop of Barbadoes, though his rank in the university would have prohibited him from associating with a freshman who was not his kinsman.

+ His dedications are tiresomely iterative upon this point. He calls "The Lover's Melancholy" "the first fruits of his leisure,"-" 'Tis Pity, &c.," "the first fruits of his leisure," -" The Lady's Trial," "the issue of less serious hours;" and he tells the Earl of Antrim, to whom he presented the "Fancies Chaste and Noble," that his "courtship of greatness never aimed at any thrift." So much the better; but what was all this to the public or his patrons either ?

Ford's dedications present a curious contrast to Massinger's in another respect. In all his dramas his language, when not obscured by vain emulation of Shakspeare's involution and superfœtation of thought, is as clear as the stars on a frosty night when there is no moon, -but in his prose addresses he is sometimes as laboriously unintelligible as if he would give the Sphynx a lesson-that might have saved her life-to secure her meaning from being guessed by having no meaning at all. Take a specimen : "As plurality hath reference to a multitude, so I care not to please many, but where there is a parity of condition, there the freedom of construction makes the best music." Is not this curiosa infelicitas?

The life of this great man is the finest subject for biography now unoccupied. He was the true conqueror of Ireland, the friendly rival of Essex, -the more his friend because he had been his rival; but that sad destiny which makes some men martyrs, and inflicts on others infinitive pains, far worse than martyrdom, tried Mountjoy to the utmost. If he failed, -let him that has no sin throw the first stone. He loved the sister of Essex, and she loved him. But the Court of Wards interfered, and she was sold to Lord Rich. The natural consequences followed. Yet neither Mountjoy nor the lady suffered in reputation, till they married. It is difficult to calculate the issues of etiquette. Court morality, when it is at the best, (which probably was in the reign of Queen Charlotte,) was rather conventional at all times, -so, as long as Lord Mountjoy (made Earl of Devonshire by James I.) suffered his connexion with Lady Rich to be a thing which everybody knew but nobody was obliged to know, all went on well. The lady was received, and Mountjoy enjoyed the favour which his public service had earned. The lady parted from the man who, taking her against her will, must be deemed guilty of what the law justly punishes with death. Yet I say not that Mountjoy and she did right. However bitter the cup of duty may be, duty commands us to drink it even to the dregs.

Laud married them. King James said, "Ye have gotten a fair woman with a foul heart." I hope this was not true. But Mountjoy felt it. He that might fairly have claimed the highest place among England's history and premature death of such a man must have been rife in the mouths of men, and well might actuate a genius yet in the egg, but destined to be potent in the issues of erratic passion.

The dread strife

Of poor humanity's afflicted will

Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny. - WORDSWORTH.

I say genius in the egg, for a young crocodile could not crawl forth from the shell, prematurely crushed, a more unseemly miniature of its future self, than "Fame's Memorial" presents of the future Ford. It is worth reading as a warning to all those figure-casters who prognosticate the success or failure of authors from their Juvenilia. Had any seer predicted that the maker of all that stuff was to deserve a lofty seat among England's dramatists, he would have been as heartily laughed at, as he who should have foretold to Trajan, that a Christian priest would one day fulminate from the Seven Hills more dreaded edicts than his own. In the paucity of direct information, we are glad to hang a conjecture on any loop of an author's raggedness. Mr. Gifford has discovered, from certain prints in the "Memorial," that Ford, at eighteen, was the prey of a hopeless passion for a nymph so cruel, as to earn the classical appellation of Lycia, or she-wolf. Most poets think it necessary to be, or to have been, in love, and most men at eighteen fancy themselves so.

Ford submitted to the usual dramatic apprenticeship, and like the pupils of the great masters in painting, was content to forward the works which his elders had designed, or retouch what time had discoloured. He assisted Webster in "A late Murther of the Sonne upon the Mother," a play not extant, and perhaps no great loss. Such as have an appetite that way, and no dread of the night-mare, may "sup full of horrors" on the remaining dramas of Webster. No doubt it was of the same class with "Arden of Feversham," and the "Yorkshire Tragedy." He joined with Decker in the "Fairy Knight" and the "Bristowe Merchant" - both lost. The latter was probably founded on some recent event. "An Ill Beginning has a Good End," acted at the Cockpit, 1613, "The London Merchant," "The Royal Combat," and "Beauty in a Trance," entered on the Stationers books, but not printed, were used up by Mr. Warburton's cook.

The "Witch of Edmonton," by Decker, Rowley, and Ford, probably appeared about 1622 or 1623, for a woman, named Elizabeth Sawyer, was executed on a charge of witchcraft in 1621, and the play was evidently got up to take advantage of a temporary excitement; it has all the incongruity that might be expected in a hasty work of three authors. Ford once more united with Decker in the "Sun's Darling," a moral masque, acted March, 1623-24, but supposed to be a recast of an older piece.

subjects for his well-deserving, pined away, and died untimely, the victim of an iniquitous law and an unfortunate passion.

Ford was not the only poet that wept for the death of Mountjoy. The moral Daniel wrote one of his sweetest monodies on that occasion.

Ford no doubt remembered Mountjoy and his hapless love when he wrote the "Broken Heart." By far the finest scene in all the old Dramatists (Shakspeare of course excepted) is that in which Penthea laments her "enforced marriage."

The last act, which bears the strongest marks of Ford, may have been written at a later period, after the accession of Charles I., as it evidently alludes to the Scotch, and their repugnance to the religious ordinances of the prelacy. As it was not printed till 1657, when it appeared under the auspices of Theophilus Byrde and Andrew Pennycuyke, two actors out of work, obliged, like other distressed tradesmen, to sell off their stock for what they could get, there was time enough for alterations; and it would naturally be printed as it was last acted.

Ford now took a long rest. At least we hear nothing of him till 1628, when he produced the "Lover's Melancholy," acted Nov. 24, and printed the following year. In his dedication he says, "My presumption of coming in print in this kind, has hitherto been irreprovable; this piece being the first that ever courted reader." We may fairly conclude, therefore, that whatever dramatic works he had previously written, alone or in concert, had not been printed. Though himself a member of the Middle Temple, he dedicates "To my worthily respected friends, Nathaniel Finch, John Ford, Esqrs., Mr. Henry Blunt, Mr. Robert Ellice, and all the rest of the noble society of Gray's Inn." This was a compliment to his cousin. Most likely N. Finch and John Ford, who are designated esquires, were benchers, or otherwise distinguished by forensic honours. The title of the piece was seemingly suggested by Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," then recently published. Ford borrowed as freely from that delightful book as Sterne-more honestly, for he could have neither hope nor wish of concealment, but not to so good purpose. The play is ushered, as usual, by commendatory verses by George Donne (a regular contributor on these occasions, whose rhymes, occasional as the bellman's or the Laureate's, may be excused if they exhibit the same degree of merit), William Singleton, a relation of Massinger's, Hum. Howorth, whose tribute has all the oracular darkness of no meaning; and Ὁ φιλος, who seems to have estimated his offering at its true worth, -for thus saith he,

'Tis not the language, nor the fore-placed rhymes
Of friends, that shall command to after times
The Lover's Melancholy.

In great men's houses, you must thread your way through a file of menials, who pass your name like a watch-word, till the man of figure finally commits you to the drawing-room. The commendatory verses that throng the entrance of old books would be almost as troublesome, if you could not brush by without heeding them.

Massinger wrote rapidly and incessantly. No wonder. It was his vocation. A week's holiday might have thrown him out of employment for a year. Operative authors should keep the Sabbath, but they should make no saint Mondays. They should observe the painter's rule, ne dies sine linea. Like poor hacks on the road, while warm in the harness we jog on, not very happy perhaps, but still with a certain sense of power, hardly conscious of each separate effort, and precipitated by accumulated velocity. But let us once get cold, and our joints stiff, the whole arrear of weariness comes upon us with compound interest, the toil which was hardly felt in the act becomes terrible in the retrospect, and nothing short of the actual cautery of antique Irish posting can set us in motion again. Ford was a professional gentleman. Perhaps

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