t has the whole "matter and copy of the father--eye, nose,
lip, the trick of his frown." It is just such a swaggerer as
contemporaries have described old Ben to be. Meercraft, Bobadil, the
Host of the New Inn, have all his image and superscription. But
Mammon is arrogant pretension personified. Sir Samson Legend, in Love
for Love, is such another lying, overbearing character, but he does
not come up to Epicure Mammon. What a "towering bravery" there is in
his sensuality! he affects no pleasure under a Sultan. It is as if
"Egypt with Assyria strove in luxury."

* * * * *

GEORGE CHAPMAN.

_Bussy D'Ambois_, _Byron's Conspiracy_, _Byron's Tragedy_, &c.
&c.--Webster has happily characterized the "full and heightened
style" of Chapman, who, of all the English play-writers, perhaps
approaches nearest to Shakspeare in the descriptive and didactic, in
passages which are less purely dramatic. He could not go out of
himself, as Shakspeare could shift at pleasure, to inform and animate
other existences, but in himself he had an eye to perceive and a soul
to embrace all forms and modes of being. He would have made a great
epic poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one;
for his Homer is not so properly a translation as the stories of
Achilles and Ulysses rewritten. The earnestness and passion which he
has put into every part of these poems would be incredible to a
reader of mere modern translations. His almost Greek zeal for the
glory of his heroes can only be paralleled by that fierce spirit of
Hebrew bigotry, with which Milton, as if personating one of the
zealots of the old law, clothed himself when he sat down to paint the
acts of Samson against the uncircumcised. The great obstacle to
Chapman's translations being read, is their unconquerable quaintness.
He pours out in the same breath the most just and natural, and the
most violent and crude expressions. He seems to grasp at whatever
words come first to hand while the enthusiasm is upon him, as if all
other must be inadequate to the divine meaning. But passion (the all
in all in poetry) is everywhere present, raising the low, dignifying
the mean, and putting sense into the absurd. He makes his readers
glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be moved by
words, or in spite of them, be disgusted, and overcome their disgust.

* * * * *

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.--JOHN FLETCHER.

_Mai