must have the honour of being
associated with Milton's, for it was his comedy or opera which threw the
first spark of the Paradise Lost into the soul of the epic poet--a
circumstance which will hardly be questioned by those who have examined
the different schemes and allegorical personages of the first projected
_drama_ of Paradise Lost: nor was Andreini, as well as many others of
this race of Italian dramatists, inferior poets. The Adamo of Andreini
was a personage sufficiently original and poetical to serve as the model
of the Adam of Milton. The youthful English poet, at its representation,
carried it away in his mind. Wit indeed is a great traveller; and thus
also the "Empiric" of Massinger might have reached us from the Bolognese
"Dottore."

The late Mr. Hole, the ingenious writer on the Arabian Nights, observed
to me that _Moliere_, it must be presumed, never read _Fletcher's_
plays, yet his "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" and the other's "Noble Gentleman"
bear in some instances a great resemblance. Both may have drawn from the
same Italian source of comedy which I have here indicated.

Many years after this article was written, has appeared "The History of
English Dramatic Poetry," by Mr. Collier. That very laborious
investigator has an article on "Extemporal Plays and Plots," iii. 393.
The nature of these "_plats"_ or "plots" he observes, "our theatrical
antiquaries have not explained." The truth is that they never suspected
their origin in the Italian "scenarios." My conjectures are amply
confirmed by Mr. Collier's notices of the intercourse of our players
with the Italian actors. Whetstone's Heptameron, in 1582, mentions "the
comedians of Ravenna, who are not _tied to any written device_." In
Kyd's Spanish Tragedy the extemporal art is described:---

The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit,
That in one hour of meditation
They would perform anything in action.

These extemporal players were witnessed much nearer than in Italy--at
the Theatre des Italiens at Paris--for one of the characters replies--

I have seen the like,
In Paris, among the French tragedians.

Ben Jonson has mentioned the Italian "extemporal plays" in his "Case is
Altered;" and an Italian _commediante_ his company were in London in
1578, who probably let our players into many a secret.

SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE.

Men of genius have devoted some of their hours, and even governments
have occasio