Not only can do that, but, by its virtue, To whom he will. In eight and twenty days I'll make an old man of fourscore a child. Restore his years, renew him, like an eagle, To the fifth age; make him get sons and daughters, The ancient patriarchs, afore the flood, You are incredulous. Surly. Faith, I have a humour. I would not willingly be gulled. Your stone Mam. Pertinax, my Surly, Will you believe antiquity? records? I'll show you a book where Moses and his sister, And Solomon, have written of the art; Ay, and a treatise penn'd by Adam— Surly. How! Mam. Of the philosophers' stone, and in High Dutch. Surly. Did Adam write, Sir, in High Dutch? Mam. He did; Which proves it was the primitive tongue. [Enter Face, as a servant How now ! Do we succeed? Is our day come, and holds it? Mam. Pertinax, my Surly, Again I say to thee aloud, Be rich. This day thou shalt have ingots, and to-morrow Give lords the affront. * Face. At his prayers, Sir, he; Good man, he's doing his devotions For the success. Mam. Lungs, I will set a period Where's thy master? To all thy labours; thou shalt be the master For I do mean To have a list of wives and concubines I will have all my beds blown up, not stuft : * * * I'll have of perfumes, vapoured about the room Have a sublimed pure wife, unto that fellow Mam. No. I'll have no bawds. But fathers and mothers. They will do it best, Best of all others. And my flatterers Shall be the pure and gravest of divines That I can get for money. My mists We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the medicine. My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells, Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphire, hyacinths, and rubies. And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, My footboys shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons, Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce; Face. Sir, I'll go look Mam. Do. My shirts I'll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light My gloves of fishes and birds' skins, perfum'd Surly. And do you think to have the stone with this? One free from mortal sin, a very virgin, Mam. That makes it, Sir, he is so ;-but I buy it. Has worn his knees bare, and his slippers bald, Act ii, scene 1. I have only to add a few words on Beaumont and Fletcher. Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,' 'The Chances,' and 'The Wild Goose Chase,' the original of the 'Inconstant,' are superior in style and execution to anything of Ben Jonson's. best comedies on the stage; and one proof that they are so is, that they still hold possession of it. They show the utmost alacrity of invention in contriving ludicrous distresses, and the utmost spirit in bearing up against, or impatience and irritation under them. Don John,in 'The Chances,' is the heroic in comedy. Leon, in 'Rule a Wife and have a Wife,' is a fine exhibition of the born gentleman and natural fool: the Copper Captain is sterling to this hour: his mistress, Estifania, only died the other day with Mrs Jordan: and the two grotesque They are, indeed, some of the females in the same play, act better than the Witches in Macbeth.' LECTURE III. ON COWLEY, BUTLER, SUCKLING, ETHEREGE, ETC. THE metaphysical poets or wits of the age of James and Charles I, whose style was adopted and carried to a more dazzling and fantastic excess by Cowley in the following reign, after which it declined, and gave place almost entirely to the poetry of observation and reasoning, are thus happily characterised by Dr John son. "The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour: but unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. "If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry τεχνη μιμητική, an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose |