Lee, who had always been excitable, began to show signs of definite mental derangement, but these were not severe enough to prevent him from combining with Dryden in writing The Duke of Guise, in 1683. In 1684, however, Lee became violently insane, and in November had to be confined in Bedlam, where he remained for more than four years, until he was discharged, cured, in 1689. He published two more tragedies, both, it is probable, written before his illness; but on a cold night early in the spring of 1692, returning home "overladen with wine," he fell down as he was passing through Clare Market, and was found dead in the morning, having been, as is supposed, stunned by his fall and stifled in the snow. He was buried on the 6th of May in the church of St. Clement's Danes. Two of Lee's tragedies, his Theodosius (1680) and his Alexander the Great; or, The Rival Queens (1677), remained stock-pieces long after every other tragical product of the Restoration theatre was obsolete, and the second of these did not go out of fashion for a century and a half.

Nathaniel Lee

A specimen of the conversation in the tragedy of Gloriana (1676) will give an idea of Lee's high-flown versification, and a typical instance of the English rhymed play :—

Gloriana (aside). Just Heaven does sure this god-like man provide
To bear me from the tyrant's lust and pride.

Beauty, if thou did'st ever, aid me now,

That I may make this haughty gazer bow

This heavenly youth; oh! force him to adore,

To love me only, I'll ne'er ask thee more.

Cæsar (aside). Why beats my heart as I had poison ta'en?

What means my burning breast and giddy brain?

Swift thrilling cold with panic terror flies,

And an unusual thaw dissolves my eyes.
If Love thou art, I will not take the wound;
My armour shall thy pointed darts confound;
I'll draw them, if they cannot be withstood,
Though to the feathers, drinking in my blood,
Then shake them at her eyes with fixed disdain,
And hurl them to thy godhead back again.

Gloriana (to Cæsar). It you in fields have purchased high renown,

Have with persisting virtue wonders done,

And wreaths, rewards of toiling valour, won,

Now in a princess' quarrel lift your sword:

Fate never did a nobler cause afford.

By all the mighty battles you have fought,

By all the trophies you with blood have bought,

A royal suffering virgin's wrongs redress,

And kill the giant vice that would oppress!

Cæsar. I meet the summons swift and snatch the joy,
Kindling at death, and panting to destroy;
Another sword like mine you'll ne'er employ.
War was my mistress, and I loved her long;
She loved my music, shoutings were my song,
And clashing arms that echoed through the plain,
Neighings of horses, groans of dying men,
Notes which the trump and hoarser drum affords,
And dying sounds rising from falls of swords.
Command dispatch and bid your lightning fly!
I'll flash, I'll kill, I'll conquer in your eye,
And, after all, here yield my breath and die.

While we study the noble critical prefaces of Dryden we perceive that English prose has taken fresh forms and a new coherency. Among the many candidates for the the praise of having reformed our wild and loose methods in prose, JOHN EVELYN seems to be the one who best deserves it. He was much the oldest of the new writers, and he was, perhaps, the very earliest to go deliberately to French models of brevity

and grace. Early in the

Commonwealth he was as familiar with La Motte le Vayer as with Aristotle; he looked both ways and embraced all culture. Yet Evelyn is not a great writer; he aims at more than he reaches. There is notable in his prose, as in the verse of Cowley, constant irregu

John Evelyn

From an old Engraving

Revival of

Prose

one startling beauty. Evelyn, therefore, is a pioneer; but the true artificers of modern English prose are a group of younger men of divers fortunes, all, strangely enough, born between 1628 and 1634. In genealogical order the

Evelyn

Wotton House, Surrey

ber 1620, and was the son of Mr. Richard Evelyn, who in 1633 was High Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex. He was sent in 1625 to live with his grandmother at Lewes; in 1637 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, as a fellow-commoner. In 1643, after the death of his father, and after fighting for a while for the king, Evelyn started on the European Grand Tour, and did not return to England to live until 1647. His earliest work was a translation from La Motte le Vayer, Of Liberty and Servitude (1649). He lived abroad again for some years, and did not visit England until 1652, when he took a house at Deptford. At the Restoration, his scientific and literary energies awakened; he was one of those who started the Royal Society in 1661. His famous Sylva was published

claim to recollection, was kept from the knowledge of the public until 1818, until Mrs. Evelyn of Wotton was persuaded to allow William Bray to edit it. It is an irregular and very picturesque chronicle of the events of Evelyn's life from 1641 to within three weeks of his death in 1706.

FROM EVELYN'S "DIARY."

The Bantam, or East India Ambassadors, being invited to dine at Lord George Berkeley's (now Earl), I went to the entertainment to contemplate the exotic guests. They were both very hard-favoured, and much resembling in countenance some sort of monkeys. We eat at two tables, the Ambassadors and interpreter by themselves. Their garments were rich Indian silks, flowered with gold, viz. a close waistcoat to their knees, drawers, naked legs, and on their heads caps made like fruit-baskets. They wore poisoned daggers at their bosoms, the hafts carved with some ugly serpents' or devils' heads, exceeding keen, and of Damascus metal. They wore no sword. The second Ambassador (sent, it seems, to succeed in case the first should die by the way in so tedious a journey), having been at Mecca, wore a Turkish or Arab sash, a little part of the linen hanging down behind his neck, with some other difference of habit, and was half a negro, barelegged and naked feet, and deemed a very holy man. They sate crossed-legged like Turks, and sometimes in the posture of apes and monkeys; their nails and teeth as black as jet, and shining, which being the effect, as to their teeth, of perpetually chewing betel to preserve them from the tooth-ache, much raging in their country, is esteemed beautiful. The first Ambassador was of an olive hue, a flat face, narrow eyes, squat nose, and Moorish lips, no hair appeared; they wore several rings of silver, gold, and copper on their fingers, which was a token of knighthood or nobility. They were of Java Major, whose princes have been turned Mahomedans not above fifty years since; the inhabitants are still pagans and idolaters. They seemed of a dull and heavy constitution, not wondering at any thing they saw; but exceedingly astonished how our law gave us propriety in our estates, and so thinking we were all kings, for they could not be made to comprehend how subjects could possess any thing but at the pleasure of their Prince, they being all slaves; they were pleased with the notion, and admired our happiness. They were very sober, and I believe subtle in their way.

Tillotson

Among the pioneers of prose style, the tradition of the eighteenth century gave the first place to JOHN TILLOTSON, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose influence on his contemporaries, and particularly on Dryden, was supposed to be extreme. Later criticism has questioned the possibility of this; and,

John Tillotson, D.D.

indeed, it can be demonstrated that until after he was raised to the primacy in 1691 the publications of Tillotson were scattered and few; he seemed to withdraw from notice behind the fame of such friends as Barrow and Wilkins. But it must not be forgotten that all this time Tillotson was preaching, and that as early as 1665 his sermons were accepted as the most popular of the age. The clergy, we are told, came to his Tuesday lectures "to form their minds," and, if so, young writers may well have attended them to form their style. The celebrated sweetness of Tillotson's character is reflected in his works, where the storms and passions of his career seem to have totally subsided. Urbanity and a balanced decorum are found

After the Portrait by Mrs. Beale throughout the serene and insinuating periods of this elegant latitudinarian. It is said of him that "there never was a son of absurdity that did not dislike, nor a sensible reader who did not approve his writings." He was a typical child of the Restoration, in that, not having very much to say, he was assiduous in saying what he had in the most graceful and intelligible manner possible.

John Tillotson (1630-1694) was born at Haugh End, near Sowerby, in Yorkshire, about Michaelmas Day, 1630. His father, Robert Tillotson, a considerable clothier, who was a rigid Puritan, was particularly anxious that his son should remain staunch to Calvinist principles. The boy was therefore sent to Clare Hail, Cambridge, in 1647, to be under the Presbyterian divine, Dr. Clarkson. Tillotson was a fair, but not a brilliant scholar at the university; he became a fellow of his college in 1651.

He had "always found something not agreeable to