bridge, where he took his bachelor's degree, in 1668; but failing to obtain a fellowship, he quitted the university to try his fortune at court. Here, being also disappointed, he had recourse to dramatic writing for a subsistence, and produced, in 1675, his first tragedy, Nero, Emperor of Rome. This play was so well received as to induce the author to give up all other projects, and devote himself exclusively to the drama. He produced a new play every year, until 1681, and from the effectiveness with which he read his pieces to the actors, they were led to persuade him to go on the stage. As an actor, however, he entirely failed; and the mortification consequent, upon this failure, brought upon him habits of irregularity and extravagance that frequently plunged him into the lowest depths of misery. Gifted by nature to a remarkable degree, but uncontrolled, either by moral feelings or a sense of propriety, he let loose the reins of his imagination, till at length poverty and poetic enthusiasm transported him into madness. In November, 1684, Lee was taken to a mad-house, where he remained for nearly four years, a raving maniac. At length, in 1688, his physicians pronounced him sufficiently recovered, and he was accordingly set at liberty. After his release from Bedlam Lee produced two tragedies, The Princess of Cleve, and The Massacre of Paris; but notwithstanding the profits arising from these performances, his poverty was still so great that during the last year or two of his life he was supported by public charity. His death occurred on the sixth of April, 1692, and he was buried in St. Clement's Church, London.

Lee was the author of eleven tragedies, the best of which are The Rival Queens, or Alexander the Great, Mithridates, Theodosius, and Lucius Junius Brutus. In praising 'The Rival Queens' Dryden alludes to Lee's power in moving the passions, and counsels him to despise those critics who condemn

'The too great vigour of his youthful muse.'

This line indicates the source, both of Lee's strength and his weakness. In tenderness and genuine passion he excels most of his contemporaries; but his style often degenerates into bombast and extravagant frenzy—a defect which was heightened, in his later productions, by his mental malady. The author was himself aware of his weakness, and frequently alludes to it in touching terms. He wanted discretion to temper his fiery genius, and reduce his poetical conceptions to consistency and order; yet amid his wild ardor and martial enthusiasm we often find very soft and graceful lines. Few things are finer in this way than the following declaration of love :—

Or taste the yellow fruit which autumn yields;
And when the golden evening calls us home,
Wing to our downy nest, and sleep till morn.

We shall conclude this sketch with the following scene from 'Lucius Junius Brutus.' Titus, the son of Brutus, having joined the Tarquin conspiracy, is taken prisoner, and condemned by the Consul, his own father, to suffer the death of a traitor. Brutus thus takes a last farewell of Lim :

Brutus. Well, Titus, speak; how is it with thee now?

I would attend awhile this mighty motion,

Wait till the tempest were quite overblown,

That I might take thee in the calm of nature

With all thy gentler virtues brooding on thee.

So hush'd a stillness, as if all the gods

Look'd down and listen'd to what we were saying:

Speak then, and tell me, O my best beloved,

My son, my Titus, is all well again?

Titus. So well that saying how, must make it nothing;

So well, that I could wish to die this moment,

For so my heart with powerful throbs persuades me:

That were indeed to make you reparation

That were, my lord, to thank you home, to die;

And that for Titus too, would be most happy.

Bru. How's that, my son? would death for thee be happy?

Tit. Most certain, sir; for in my grave I 'scape

All those affronts which I in life must look for,
All those reproaches which the eyes, and fingers,
And tongues of Rome will daily cast upon me;
From whom, to a soul so sensible as mine,
Each single scorn would be far worse than dying:
Besides, I 'scape the stings of my own conscience,
Which will forever rack me with remembrance,
Haunt me by day, and torture me by night,
Casting my blotted honour in the way
Where'er my melancholy thoughts shall guide me.
Bru. But is not death a very dreadful thing?
Tit. Not to a mind resolved. No, sir; to me
It seems as natural as to be born:

Groans, and convulsions, and discolour'd faces,
Friends weeping round us, blocks, and obsequies,
Make it a dreadful thing; the pomp of death

Is far more terrible than death itself.

Yes, sir; I call the powers of heaven to witness

Titus dares die, if so you have decreed;

Nay, he shall die with joy, to honour Brutus,
To make your justice famous through the world,

And fix the liberty of Rome forever:

Not but I must confess my weakness too:
Yet it is great thus to resolve against it,

To have the frailty of a mortal man,
But the security of the immortal gods.

Bru. O Titus, O thou absolute young man!

Thou flattering mirror of thy father's image,
Where I behold myself at such advantage!
Thou perfect glory of the Junian race!

Let me endear thee once more to my bosom;
Groan an eternal farewell to thy soul;

Instead of tears, weep blood, if possible;

Blood, the heart blood of Brutus, on his child;
For thou must die, my Titus; die, my son:

I swear the gods have doom'd thee to the grave.

The violated genius of thy country

Rears his sad head, and passes sentence on thee:
This morning sun, that lights thy sorrows on

To the tribunal of this horrid vengeance,

Shall never see thee more.

Tit. Alas! my lord,

Why art thou moved thus? why am I worthy of thy sorrow? Why should the godlike Brutus shake to doom me?

Why all these trappings for a traitor's hearse?

The gods will have it so.

Bru. They will, my Titus;

Nor Heaven, nor earth, can have it otherwise;
Nay, Titus, mark; the deeper that I search,
My harass'd soul returns the more confirm'd.
Methinks I see the very hand of fire
Moving the dreadful wheels of this affair,
That whirl thee, like a machine, to thy fate;
It seems as if the gods had pre-ordain'd it,
To fix the reeling spirits of the people,
And settle the loose liberty of Rome.

'Tis fixed: 0, therefore, let not fancy fond thee:
So fix'd thy death, that 'tis not in the power

Of gods or men to save thee from the axe.

Tit. The axe? O heaven! Then must I fall so basely?

What! Shall I perish by the common hangman?

Bru. If thou deny me this, thou giv'st me nothing.

Yes, Titus, since the gods have so decreed

That I must lose thee, I will take th' advantage

Of thy important fate-cement Rome's flaws,

And heal their wounded freedom with thy blood:

I will ascend myself the sad tribunal,

And sit upon my sons; on thee, my Titus:

Behold thee suffer all the shame of death,

The lictor's lashes bleed before the people;

Then with thy hopes and all thy youth upon thee,

See thy head taken by the common axe,

Without a groan, without one pitying tear,

If that the gods can hold me to my purpose,

To make my justice quite transcend example.

Tit. Scourg'd like a bondman? Ha! a beaten slave!

But I deserve it all: yet here I fail;

The image of this suffering quite unmans me.

O sir, O Brutus, must I call you father,

Yet have no token of your tenderness?

No signs of mercy? What! not bate me that?

Can you resolve on all th' extremity
Of cruel rigour? to behold me too?

To sit unmov'd and see me whipt to death?
Where are your bowels now? Is this a father?
Ah! sir, why should you make my heart suspect
That all your late compassion was dissembled ?
How can I think that you did ever love me?

Bru. Think that I love thee by my present passion,
By these unmanly tears, these earthquakes here,
These sighs that twitch the very strings of life;
Think that no other cause on earth could move me
To tremble thus, to sob, or shed a tear,
Nor shake my solid virtue from her point,
But Titus' death: 0, do not call it shameful,
That thus shall fix the glory of the world,
I own thy sufferings ought t' unman me thus,
To make me throw my body on the ground,
To bellow like a beast, to gnaw the earth,
To tear my hair, to curse the cruel fates
That force a father thus to drag his bowels.

Tit. O rise, thou violated majesty,

Rise from the earth; or I shall beg those fates
Which you would curse, to bolt me to the centre.
I now submit to all your threaten'd vengeance:
Come forth, you executioners of justice,

Nay all you lictors, slaves, and common hangmen;
Come strip me bare, unrobe me in his sight,
And lash me till I bleed; whip me like furies;
And when you'll have scourg'd me till I foam and fall,
For want of spirits, grovelling in the dust,

Then take my head, and give it his revenge:

By all the gods, I greedily resign it.

Bru. No more- -farewell-eternally farewell:

If there be gods, they will reserve a room,

A throne for thee in Heaven. One last embrace-
What is it makes my eyes thus swim again?

THOMAS SOUTHERNE, the next distinguished tragic author to be noticed, was born of good parentage, in the city of Dublin, in 1659. He early entered the university of his native city, where he remained till the eighteenth year of his age, when he removed to Oxford, and there finished his studies. From Oxford he went to the Middle Temple, London, professedly as a legal student, but there devoted himself to dramatic writing and poetry, rather than to the law. In 1682 he produced The Persian Prince, or Loyal Brother; and as the tory interest was not at that time triumphant in England, and the character of the Loyal Brother,' well drawn to compliment James, Duke of York, that prince afterward handsomely rewarded Southerne for the services thus rendered him. On his accession to the throne he conferred upon the poet a captaincy, and in that capacity he served under the king himself, in his opposition to the invasion of England by the Prince of Orange. After the Revolution Southerne returned to his studies,

and prosecuted dramatic writing so successfully that he eventually acquired, by it, a very handsome fortune. The last ten years of his life were passed in retirement at Westminster, where, through his fondness for music, he became a very constant attendant on the Abbey service. His death occurred on the twenty-sixth of May, 1746, and in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

Southerne was the author of ten dramas, but Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage, and Oroonoko, are the only ones that exhibit his characteristic powers. The latter is founded on actual occurrence; Oroonoko, an African prince, having been stolen from his native kingdom of Angola, and carried to one of the West India Islands. The impassioned grandeur of Oroonoka's sufferings, his bursts of horror and indignation at the slave-trade, and his unhappy passion for Imoinda, are both powerful and pathetic. In the following scene, the hero and heroine unexpectedly meet after a long absence :—

Oroo. My soul steals from my body through my eyes;

All that is left of life I'll gaze away,

And die upon the pleasure.

Lieut. This is strange!

Oroo. If you but mock me with her image here:

If she be not Imoinda

[She looks upon him and falls into a swoon, he runs to her.]

Ha! she faints !

Nay, then, it must be she-it is Imoinda!

My heart confesses her, and leaps for joy,

To welcome her to her own empire here.

Imoinda! oh thy Oroonoko calls.

Imo. [Recovering.] My Oroonoko! Oh! I can't believe
What any man can say. But if I am

[Kisses her.]

That I would have: my husband! then I am

Alive, and waking to the joys I feel:

They were so great, I could not think 'em true;

But I believe all that you say to me:

For truth itself, and everlasting love,

Grows in this breast, and pleasure in these arms.

Oroo. Take, take me all; inquire into my heart

(You know the way to every secret there),

My heart, the sacred treasury of love:

And if, in absence, I have misemployed

A mite from the rich store; if I have spent

A wish, a sigh, but what I sent to you,
May I be cursed to wish and sigh in vain,

And you not pity me.

Imo. Oh! I believe,