“In all debates where critics bear a part,
  Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson’s art,
  Of Shakspeare’s nature, and of Cowley’s wit;
  How Beaumont’s judgment checked what Fletcher writ;
  How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;
  But for the passions, Southerne, sure, and Rowe! 
  These, only these, support the crowded stage,
  From eldest Heywood down to Cibber’s age."[25]

Sedley joined him in the composition of more than one comedy.  Macaulay, in seeking illustrations of the times and occurrences of which he writes, cites Shadwell five times, where he mentions Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve once.[26] From his last play, “The Stockjobbers,” performed in November, 1692, while its author was on his death-bed, the historian introduces an entire scene into his text.[27] Any one, indeed, who can clear his mind from the unjust prejudice produced by Dryden’s satire, and read the comedies of Shadwell with due consideration for the extemporaneous haste of their composition, as satires upon passing facts and follies, will find, that, so far from never deviating into sense, sound common-sense and fluent wit were the Laureate’s staple qualities.  If his comedies have not, like those of his contemporaries just named, enjoyed the good-fortune to be collected and preserved among the dramatic classics, the fact is primarily owing to the ephemeral interest of the hits and allusions, and secondarily to “MacFlecknoe.”

[To be continued.]

Footnote 1:  SPENSER:  Faery Queen.  See also the Two Cantos of Mutability, Cant.  VII.:—­

  “That old Dan Geffrey, in whose gentle spright
  The pure well-head of poesie did dwell.”

Footnote 2:  MILTON:  Il Penseroso.

Footnote 3:  WORDSWORTH:  Poems of Later Years.

Footnote 4:  CHAUCER:  Clerke’s Tale, Prologue.

Footnote 5:  WARTON:  Ode on his Majesty’s Birthday, 1787.

Footnote 6:  Tyrwhitt’s Chaucer:  Historical Notes on his Life.

Footnote 7:  Masque of the Fortunate Islands.

Footnote 8:  History of English Poetry, Vol.  II. pp. 335-336, ed. 1840.

Footnote 9:  WARTON:  Birthday Ode, 1787.

Footnote 10:  See his British Poets, from Chaucer to Jonson, Art. Daniel.  Southey contemplated a continuation of Warton’s History, and, in preparing for that labor, learned many things he had never known of the earlier writers.

Footnote 11:  Jonson’s classification.  See his Poetaster.

Footnote 12:  Lamb’s Works, and Life, by Talfourd, Vol.  IV. p. 89.

Footnote 13:  Hesperides, Encomiastic Verses.

Footnote 14:  Herrick, ubi supra.—­To the haunts here named must be added the celebrated Mermaid, of which Shakspeare was the Magnus Apollo, and The Devil, where Pope imagines Ben to have gathered peculiar inspiration:—­