"Soon to that mass of nonsense to return, Where things destroyed are swept to things unborn."
In "The Royal Shepherdess," however, a play in blank verse, altered by Shadwell from Fountain of Devonshire, there are some fine lines, so far above any thing known to be Shadwell's that we readily take him at his word in his preface, where, modest for once, he invites the reader, if he finds any thing good in the play, to set it down to Mr Fountain. The following lines are a favourable specimen, notwithstanding the _breeding barrenness_:--
"No more, no more must we scorn cottages; Those are the rocks from whence our jewels come. Gold breeds in barren hills; the brightest stars Shine o'er the poorer regions of the north."
Still better, where a king, in a vicious attempt upon an innocent girl, has compelled her consent to a meeting at night. The queen, apprised of the design, personates the intended victim, and appeals to his conscience with an effect that he thus describes:--
"She only whisper'd to me, as she promised, Yet never heard I any voice so loud: And though the words were gentler far than those That holy priests do speak to dying saints, Yet never thunder signified so much."
The songs in this piece are all by Shadwell, except, as he declares, the last but one, which is Fountain's, and the only one not below mediocrity. Shadwell had also the impudence to alter and corrupt "Timon of Athens," and to produce the farrago on the stage as an improvement on the original. In the dedication he says, "It has the inimitable hand of Shakspeare in it; yet I can truly say, I have made it into a play." This "tun of man and kilderkin of wit" was admitted to a tomb in Westminster Abbey, an honour (?) said to have been denied to the remains of a noble poet, the author of "Don Juan." Yet Shadwell had also produced a "Don Juan." His tragedy of "The Libertine," the same hero, is ten times more indecent than the most objectionable parts of Byron's poem. But it is, indeed, also less noxious, for it has not a single attractive grace of fancy or feeling. A print of Shadwell, prefixed to Tonson's edition of his works, ludicrously bears out Dryden's description of the outer man. He looks like an alehouse Bacchus, or rather like one of those carnal cherubs whom the French call _anges bouffis_--his cheeks bulging out as if they were stuffed with apples from the forbidden tree. He died in December 1692, and was succeeded by