THOMAS SHADWELL. 61 We are too apt to class him with Pistol, and cry down his plays as a mere waste of words. They possess, on the contrary, great character, great spirit, and occasionally great pathos. Were they weeded of their rank and turgid common places, and the healthy laurel left to grow alone, Lee would surprise many of his inferiors who now take upon themselves to condemn him. His tragedies are, beyond comparison, better than those of Dryden, or indeed any of his cotemporaries. We except the play of Venice Preserved' alone. Lee was unhappily subject to insanity; and his malady is evident in the very striking likeness which we have luckily had it in our power to make public. No. 74. THOMAS SHADWELL. From a scarce print by W. Faithorne. We cannot detect ourselves, even after a very strict investigation, envying either the person or the reputation of Mr. THOMAS SHADWELL. He was crowned with the bays-i. e. he was poetlaureat to our old Roman-nosed friend the Prince of Orange, afterwards King William the Third; and his verse might perhaps have sufficed for the taste of a Batavian monarch. Nevertheless, and maugre his fine cravat and jewelled brooch, and his aspiring wig which runs upwards like a pyramid and comes flowing down over his shoulders, with a prodigality which nothing can extenuate,— the poetry of Shadwell is positively bad, even for the time. He is said to have been a wit, and to have spoken better than he wrote. This might well have been. In his latter character (as a writer) he entitled himself to Dryden's notice; and now figures immortally as "Mac Flecnoe." 62 JOHN DRYDEN. No. 75. JOHN DRYDEN. From an original Picture in the Collection of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. WE unhesitatingly offer this portrait of DRYDEN, as superior to any extant. The original picture is in possession of the poet's celebrated editor, Sir Walter Scott, and has been engraved from it by his permission. If the reader will compare it with the other likenesses of Dryden, more particularly with reference to the character contained in it, he will be at once aware of its exceeding superiority. The eye is full of observation: the coarser part of Dryden's mind may be seen in the animal character of the mouth; and the whole forms, as will readily be allowed, an uncommonly striking picture. The dress is flowing, rich, and graceful, and even the artificial curls, which crown the poet's brows instead of laurel, have been tortured into no inconsiderable elegance. Dryden was a fine prose writer, and a magnificent satirist : his lines go floating onward, and sounding like the sea, grand, sweeping, and regular: he had a great grasp, if we may so say, over language, and flung his anathemas about, as fiercely and freely as though he had sate in the papal chair. But his style of poetry was not of the highest order, although excellent and possibly unequalled in its way. He was the Juvenal of his country, but not the Homer, the Virgil, the Dante, the Ariosto, or even the Catullus. He may be considered as better than some of these, perhaps, by a few; but they must be few indeed who can rank him, in his own country, with the four great spirits who preceded him, with Chaucer or Spenser, Shakspeare or Milton; or who can resist the divine evidence of the two last, claiming to belong to another and a loftier sphere than that in which Dryden and the satirists dwell. We know that there are high authorities in favour of Pope and Dryden, (and they were, in truth, men of whom CHARLES SACKVILLE. 63 their country may be proud,) but there is as much distinction between them and others, as there is between the task of correcting the follies of mankind and lifting their spirits to the stars. No. 76. SIR CHARLES SEDLEY. From an original Picture in the Collection of the Dutchess of Dorset. THIS worthy, who is reported to have passed a licentious youth and a patriotic old age, does not, as the reader will see, offer any personal contradiction to at least one part of his character. He looks like a Sir John Brute,- —a dark and vulgar rake, and there is a low cunning about his eye, which may, perhaps, be indicative of the wit, which he has the reputation of having possessed. There is, however, but little of that quality in his verses. The only good things that we know, concerning this writer, are a joke which he made when the playhouse fell in during the time that his play was in the act of being performed; and the fact of his having contributed to drive from a throne which he had dishonoured, the last of the race of Stuart. No. 77. CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET. From a Picture by Kneller, in the Collection of the Dutchess of Dorset. NOTHING can be more rich or elegant than the morning gown of the Earl of DORSET: it looks fresh from the Persian looms. But who would recognize in the full, heavy, chubby face of the peer, the descendant of the famous Lord Buckhurst? The family features seem to have degenerated beyond all reasonable computation. Nevertheless, this lord was a licentious gallant in his youth; was the companion of Sedley and Rochester; joined the friends of com mon sense in expatriating our worthy King James the Second; wrote the celebrated song of "To all you ladies now at land;" and composed divers little pieces in verse, which are sometimes pointed and often pleasant. So that, after all, we may be deceived in a head as well as in other things. We must not be understood to speak in disparagement of this portrait, for, in defiance of the want of poetry in the countenance, it still forms a very rich and picturesque engraving. No. 78. GEORGE STEPNEY. From a Picture by Kneller, in the Collection of William Baker, Esq. OUR next friend, GEORGE STEPNEY, should never have meddled with the Muses; but should have kept to his negociatings and embassies, wherein he might probably have gained—and perhaps did gain, for we are not very learned in his biography-credit and honour. This is one of those gentlemen who have been admitted by courtesy rather than right to a place among the poets of England. There is nothing poetical or flowing in the character of his portrait. The face has a dull, decided look; the skin is as dark as a blacksmith's; the gown, though somewhat rich, is all in angles; and the wig, and indeed the entire likeness, wear a castiron appearance, which not even poetic heat could have fused into absolute grace. To what station in the "Heaven of Fame" Mr. G. Stepney has been preferred, we know not: but as (we suppose) Milton and the spirits of power lie slumbering in the eye of Jove, and Shakspeare near Phoebus himself; as Catullus and Ovid are with Venus, and the plagiarists with the rogue-eyed Mercury; so Mr. Stepney, we conclude, has been sent by Minos, (that Sir Richard Birnie of the shades,) upon the strength of his looks, to hard labour at the forge of Vulcan. WILLIAM WALSH. No. 79. JOHN PHILLIPS. 65 From an original Picture, in the Collection of the Earl of Harcourt. THIS is the man who celebrated cider and tobacco in verse, and lifted up to temporary fame the "splendid shilling." He was deemed, in his time, we believe, no despicable imitator of Milton. At present, we do not trouble ourselves with such comparisons. Phillips's Shilling is left to itself as a coin out of date and no longer current; the author's reputation, and his once celebrated poem, live in our minds rather as traditions, than as things recorded, which any and every reader may peruse if he will. Phillips, in short, is not read, but talked of, as the author of "The Splendid Shilling." His poem of "Cider" is well enough in its way, as are also his verses on Tobacco," though they and all others must yield the palm to Mr. Charles Lamb's delightful rhymes on the same subject. Brother of Bacchus, later born, he sings, and goes on praising and abusing the herb of the "Oronoque," with all the caprice of a lover and the spirit of a poet and a wit. No. 80. WILLIAM WALSH. From an original Picture, in the Collection of Colonel Henry Bromley. We must leave Mr. WILLIAM WALSH to ingratiate himself with the reader, in the best manner he can. We have really nothing to say for him-or against him. We are in the predicament of a friend of ours who once cut an indifferent joke for the first time in F |