• Diocl. Why, doft thou now?

Or dar'ft thou, in our hearing

Theoph. Were my voice
As loud as is his thunder, to be heard
Through all the world, all potentates on earth
Ready to burst with rage, should they but hear it ;
Though hell, to aid their malice, lent her furies;
Yet I would speak, and speak again, and boldly,
I am a Chriftian, and the powers you worship
But dreams of fools and madmen.

Max. Lay hands on him.
Diocl. Thou twice a child! for doating age fo makes thee;
Thou couldst not elfe, thy pilgrimage of life
Being almost past through, in this last moment
Deftroy whate'er thou haft done good or great.
Thy youth did promise much; and, grown a man
Thou mad'ft it good, and with increase of years
Thy actions ftill better'd; as the sun

Thou did'ft rife gloriously, keptst a constant course
In all thy journey; and now, in the evening,
When thou shouldst pass with honour to thy reft,
Wilt thou fall like a meteor?' I. 113.

We shall now quote the description of the characters of the son and father in the Unnatural Combat.

• I have fat with him in his cabin a day together,

Yet not a fyllable exchanged between us.

Sigh he did often, as if inward grief
And melancholy at that inftant would
Choke up his vital fpirits; and now and then
A tear or two, as in derifion of

The toughness of his rugged temper, would
Fall on his hollow cheeks, which, but once felt,
A fudden flash of fury did dry up;

And laying then his hand upon his fword,

He would murmur, but yet fo as I oft heard him,
We shall meet, cruel father, yes we fhall;
When I'll exact, for every womanish drop
Of forrow from these eyes, a ftri&t account
Of much more from thine heart.-

-Yet what makes
The miracle greater, when from the maintop
A fail's defcried, all thoughts that do concern
Himself laid by, no lion pinch'd with hunger
Roufes himself more fiercely from his den,
Than he comes on the deck; and there how wifely
He gives directions, and how ftout he is

In his executions, we to admiration

H 3

Have

Have been eyewitneffes. Yet he never minds
The booty when 'tis made ours; but, as if
The danger in the purchase of the prey
Delighted him much more than the reward,
His will made known, he does retire himself
To his private contemplation; no joy
Exprefs'd by him for victory. I. 146.

I have known him (i. e. the father)

From his firft youth, but never yet obferved,

In all the paffages of his life and fortunes

Virtues fo mix'd with vices: valiant the world speaks him,

But with that bloody; liberal in his gifts too,

But to maintain his prodigal expenfe,

A fierce extortioner; an impotent lover

Of women for a flash; but, his fires quench'd,
Hating as deadly.' I. 272.

The following passage from the Old Law, which was the joint work of Massinger, Rowley and Middleton, is eminently beautiful; though it may be questionable whether the lines should be attributed to him-the fourth line especially.

Does the kind root bleed out its livelihood

In parent diftribution to his branches,
Adorning them with all his gloricus fruits,
Proud that his pride is feen while he's unfeen ;
And mutt not gratitude defcend again

To comfort his old limbs ia fruitless winter?
Improvident or at least partial nature!

(Weak woman in this kind) who in thy lat teeming
Forgette till the former, ever making

The burthen of thy lad throes the dearest darling!
O yet in noble man reform, reform it,

And make us better than thofe vegetives,

Whole fouls die with them. Nature, as thou art old,

If love and justice be not dead in thee,
Mike fome the pattern of thy piety,
Led all do turn unnaturally against thee,
And theu be blamed for our oblivious

And brich reluctations! IV. 472.

A plan, entitled the Parliament of Love, (which is not to be found in the former editions of Massinger), has been printed fum in c2 MS. by Mr Gifford, and is in parts imperfect. The edince informs us that it is bevond all possibility of doubt The per line work of Missinger. It is entered in the Master of the Eense bork with Missinger's name, but in the Stationers' pure work Fowler's; and a play of the same name by W. Rowley will at the number of these destroyed by Mr Warburton's ser

germine

yant.

vant. The editor is very sparing of the grounds of his decided
opinion; but the internal evidence is to us satisfactory; and, af-
ter perusing the play, we had not the least hesitation in assent-
ing to the assertion, that it is undoubtedly the work of Massin-
ger. His style is easily recognized throughout the whole. We
cannot, however, equally assent to the praise which Mr Gifford's
partiality has lavished on it. The language is good, but the play
has little other merit. We shall extract from it one passage,
which is a good specimen of Massinger's fluent and elegant ver-
sification.
If I bring with me

One thought, but of fubmiffion and forrow,
Or nourish any hope, but that your goodness
May please to fign my pardon, may I perish
In
your difpleafure! which to me is more
Than fear of hell hereafter. I confefs
The violence offered to your sweetness
In my prefumption, with lips impure
To force a touch from yours, a greater crime,
Than if I fhould have mix'd lafcivious flames
With those chafte fires that burn at Dian's altar,
That 'twas a plot of treason to your virtues
To think you could be tempted, or believe
You were not fashion'd in a purer mould,
And made of purer clay, than other women.
Since you are then the Phoenix of your time,
And e'en now, while you blefs the earth, partake
Of their angelical effence, imitate

Heaven's aptnefs to forgive, when mercy's fued for,

And once more take me to your grace and favour.' II. 278. In p. 252, we observe an error of the MS. (or perhaps of the press) which has escaped Mr Gifford's observation.

• I'll not out for a second,' should have been, I'll out for a second, ' as appears clearly by reference to p. 268.

We have perhaps already transgressed the limits we had prescribed to ourselves in the discussion of the merits of Massinger's writings; and shall now dismiss this article, assuring Mr Gifford, that we are thankful to him for his edition, which is an acquisition to the public: and though we have held it our duty to censure his asperity against those who are beneath him in literary attainments, we respect his talents, and admire his industry.

ART. VII. Bakerian Lecture on the Force of Percussion. By William Hyde Wollaston, M. D. Sec. R. S. From the Philosophical Transactions for 1806.

THO

HOUGH Mechanics is the branch of science that boasts of the highest certainty next to Arithmetic and Geometry, some of its conclusions have been controverted, and have given rise to considerable debate. Of this sort are the propositions concerning the measure of the force of bodies in motion; where two very different opinions have been entertained, each professing to be supported by experiment and demonstration. In this quarter mechanics comes in contact with metaphysics; the idea of force or of power belongs to both; and the latter science seems, in consequence, to have imparted to the former a degree of uncertainty that corresponds not well with its ordinary character. Though the mathematics, both pure and mixt, are thus apt to contract a little obscurity, in the neighbourhood of a science more remarkable for the grandeur than the distinctness of its objects, they do not, on that account, suffer any lasting injury: discussion restores them, sooner or later, to their native purity, and puts them in possession of that evidence which marks the perfection of knowledge.

If we examine what has happened with respect to the angle of contact, the method of indivisibles, the geometry of infinites, &c. &c. we shall find, that this process has invariably taken place; and that, in the question concerning the force of percussion, the same thing is now exemplified; insomuch that it is no longer doubted that this force may, with perfect truth, be considered as proportional, either to the quantity of matter multiplied into the velocity, or to the quantity of matter multiplied into the square of the velocity, according to the nature of the effect which it is destined to produce.

The learned and ingenious author of the present dissertation, to whose inventive powers many different departments of science will always acknowledge their obligations, does not appear to have chosen the subject of his lecture with a view to discovery, or to the invention, either of any new experiment, or new argument, by which the truth was to be established; but with a view, which is hardly less important-to state the matter clearly, and, as he tells us himself, to consider which of the opinions respecting the force exerted by moving bodies is most conformable to the usual meaning of the word,-and to show, that the explanation given by Newton of the third law of motion, is in no respect favourable to those who, in their view of the question, have been called Newtonians.

In entering on this discussion, Dr Wollaston has described an experiment, in which both the measures of force have their reality ascertained, in a manner very incontrovertible, but not a little paradoxical, at the same time.

• Let a ball of clay, or of any other foft and wholly inelastic fubftance, be suspended at reft, but free to move in any direction with the flighteft impulfe; and let there be two pegs, fimilar and equal in every refpect, inferted flightly into its oppofite fides. Let there be alfo two other bodies, A and B, of any magnitude, which are to each other in the proportion of 2 to 1, fufpended in fuch a pofition, that when perfectly at reft they shall be in contact with the extremities of the oppofite pegs, without preffing against them. Now, if these bodies were made to fwing with motions fo adapted, that, in falling from heights in the proportion of 1 to 4, they might ftrike at the fame inftant against the pegs oppofite to them, the ball of clay would not be moved from its place to either fide; nevertheless, the peg impelled by the fmaller body B, which has the double velocity, would be found to have penetrated twice as far as the peg impelled by A.'

• One fide obferving that the ball of clay remains unmoved, confiders the proof indifputable, that the action of the body A is equal to that of B, and that their forces are properly measured by their momenta, which are equal, because their velocities are in the fimple inverse ratio of the bodies. Their opponents think it equally proved, by the unequal depths to which the pegs have penetrated, that the causes of these effects are unequal, as they find to be the cafe in their eftimation of the forces by the fquares of the velocities. One party is fatisfied, that equal momenta can refift equal preffures during the fame time: the other party attend to the spaces through which the fame moving force is exerted; and finding them in the proportion of 2 to 1, are convinced that the vis viva of a body in motion is juftly eftimated by its magnitude and the fquare of its velocity, jointly.'

The statement we would offer of the propositions on which these two different results depend, is the following-That if on a body there act any number of accelerating or retarding forces in succession, and if each force be multiplied into the time during which it acts, the sum of all these products will be proportional to the velocity acquired by the body; but if each force be multiplied into the distance over which the body moves while that force is acting on it, the sum of all these products will be proportional to the square of the velocity acquired by the body.

These two propositions are not only true, but they are necessarily connected with one another; and the second may easily be shown to be the unavoidable consequence of the first. This is actually done by Newton, in the 39th Prop. of the First Book of the Principia, one of the most useful in the whole theory of motion,