Nick. Well, 'tis gone. I must resolve to fight; this confounded beau will tell all the town what men he baffles, as well as what women he lies with.

Sir Tim. There's no more to be said.-I will fight.- -Sirrah! rogue! rascal! scoundrel! coward! I'll whip thee through-I'll make thee fuller of holes than e'er pinked sattin was.

Nick. What the devil! Is this coward beau run mad?

Sir Tim. He begins to fear me.-Sirrah, I will mangle thee so, that when I have kill'd thee, they shall not know whether thou art a man or a fish.

Nick, If you long to be beaten again

[Draws. Sir Tim. Beaten, you dog! Have at your lungs, or some other of your entrails.

[He runs at Nickum as hard as he can, and disarms him. Damn me! beg your life, sirrah!

Nick. I do, I do!

Sir Tim. What a pox is this all? I have no hurt. To make such a business of fighting! Here, sirrah, take your sword, and fight again! Here's a business indeed!

Nick. What! with one that has given me my life?

Sir Tim. Prithee, I gave thy life to thee to fight with it. Gad! I must fight with you, or somebody else. It's an admirable exercise. I intend to use it a-mornings, instead of tennis.

Nick. This is most amazing! What a metamorphosis is this? He is a bloody-minded beau. That I should light on two wrong beaux in an hour! Pox on 'em for me! I'll meddle no more with 'em.

Sir Tim. Will you fight again, sirrah? If you won't, get you about your business:--what have I to do with you? a company of cowardly rascals of you! Now I think on't, you laid on me confoundedly. [Struts up and down, and cudgels him. Nick. This is the devil in his shape, sure! My sword, sir. Sir Tim. No, sirrah, you have no occasion for it; you durst not fight. I'll keep it, sirrah-begone!

Nick, What a devil! does he take the plunder o' the field? I see I must fight now. [Ex. Nickum. Sir Tim. Gad take me, this is rare sport! I long to be fighting with somebody else: I must pick a quarrel.”

Besides the plays of Shadwell's, of which we have given an account, he wrote Psyche, a kind of mythological drama, which is destitute of merit: he modified the Timon of Athens of Shakspeare, and boasts that he had turned it into a play: he translated, or rather imitated, the L'Avare of Moliere; he claims having made considerable changes in it; and his Miser is undoubtedly a very respectable comedy.

The portion of these volumes which is peculiarly disagreeable to us is the prologues and epilogues, which are almost wholly written by the author. They are very dull, very full of pretension, and excessively abusive and illiberal.

Thomas Shadwell was born at Stanton Hall in Norfolk, a seat

of his father's, about the year 1640. He was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and afterwards entered of the Middle Temple, where he studied law for a time, and then visited the continent. At the revolution he was made poet laureate through the influence of a warm friend, the Earl of Dorset. He died December 6, 1692, of an over-dose of opium, to the practice of taking which it is said he was addicted. The play of the Volunteers is dedicated to Queen Anne by his widow, who acknowledges, with gratitude, the support and favour she had received from her Majesty. Dr. John Shadwell, the dramatist's eldest son, afterwards Sir John Shadwell, was physician successively to Queen Anne, George I., and George II. Charles Shadwell, who was either his son or his nephew, it is uncertain which, wrote several plays, which were chiefly acted in Ireland. He died in Dublin in 1726, where he enjoyed a post in the

revenue.

The Letters which Johan Ashwell, Priour of Newnham Abbey, sent secretly to the Bishop of Lincolne, wherein the said Priour accuseth George Joye of four Opinions, with the Answere of the said George unto the same Opinions. Printed at Strasburg, A. D. 1527.

THE author of the little work, the name of which is prefixed to this article, was one of the first who stood forward in England to advocate the diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and to proclaim the sacred right of private judgment. George Joye was a native of Bedfordshire. He was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated A. B. in 1513, and A.M. in 1517; and the same year elected fellow of Peter House. Learning was then at a very low ebb in both the English universities. Cambridge was the seat of ignorance, of bigotry, and superstition'. The nurslings of reform, which accident produced or protected within her sacred precincts, for a time were soon blasted by the poisoned breath of persecution; and he who presumed to teach the right of private judgment, and to promulgate the truths and expose the corrup tions of the Holy Scriptures, was instantly beset by a set of monkish hornets, who dreaded lest the light of God's eternal word, shed abroad upon the people, should discover to the world the unholy recesses of their nests of indolence, impiety, and iniquity.

The reader will not be surprised that Joye, who advocated the universal diffusion of the Gospel, and who was, as we are told by

Life of Latimer, prefixed to the fourth edition of his Sermons.

Fuller," the great friend of Master Tindale," became the object of calumny and persecution. Accused of heresy by the Prior of Newenham, who wrote a letter to the Bishop of Lincoln, to which the work above is an answer, he was sent for, to use his own words," as from the Cardinal Wolsey, by one of his officers, to Cambridge, with letters delivered to the Vice-chancellor, Dr. Edmunds, then Master of Peterhouse, in which letters he was desired to send me up to appeare at Westminster at ix. of the clock, with Bilney and Arthure, for certain erroneous opinions. I saw the Cardinal's sign manual subscribed in great letters, and his seal. I got me horse, when it snowed, and was cold, and came to London, and so to Westminster, not long after my houre, when Bilney and Arthure were in examination. When I knew but those two poor sheep among so many cruel wolves, I was not overhasty to thrust in amongst them, for there was a shrewd many of Bishops, besides the Cardinal, with others of that faction. On the Saturday, a master of mine, William Gascoigne, the Cardinal's treasurer, bade me go to the chamber of presence. I was but a coarse courtyer, never before hearing this term, and I was half ashamed to ask after it, and at last happened upon a door and knocked, and one opened it, and when I looked in, it was the kitchen! Then the Treasurer tolde me, the Cardinale sent not for me. Then I began to smell their secret conveyance, and how they had counterfeited theyr Lord the Cardinale's letters. And here the Treasurer sent me to the Bishop of Lyncolne; Dr. Raines showed my Lord of me, and said that I must come again in the morning at six of the clock. I did so, and waited at the stair's foot till it was about eight. My Lord came down, and I did my duty to him. He asked me, Be you Master Joye?' "Yea! forsooth, my Lord,' quoth I. Abide,' quoth he, 'with my Chancellor till I come again.' I desired my Lord to be good Lord to me, and shew me his pleasure, what his Lordship would with me, and he answered me like a Lord, and said, I should wait upon his leisure. On the morrow, I met with a scholar of Cambridge, and he tolde me the Bishop of Lincolne had sent his servant busily to enquire, and to seke me. 'What is the matter,' quoth I. Mary,' quoth he, it is said he would give you a benefice.' A benefice!' quoth I, ' yea, a malefice rather, for so reward they men for well-doing. Then I gote me horse, and rode from my benefice, and left college, and all that I had. And the Bishop of Lincolne laid privy wait for me, to be taken, and my feet bound under an horse's belly to be brought into him."

Suspecting that the Cardinal had no charitable design towards him, he resigned his fellowship, his home, his country, and his friends, and fled to Strasburg, in 1527. "Your letters," as he pathetically writes to his calumniator, "wrought me much

VOL. II.-PART I.

H

trouble, and drew out of my breast many a deep sigh, and many a salt tear out of mine eyes; they made me suddenly to fly, to forsake my poor living, my college, my learning, my promotion, and all that I had. They drew me out of my native land, whose desire yet holdeth me, for that I would right gladly return, and dare not, being exiled into a strange land, among rude and boisterous people. Your letters caused me not only to forsake my kin and friends, but they slandered me so grievously, that they made them to forsake me, and so to hate me, that yet I cannot come again into their favour, for they abhorred me so sore, after your secret letters had openly defamed me, that they would not suffer me to come into their houses, nor speak with me, nor help me, but fled from me and loathed me, which before both loved me, and were right glad of my company. But if you had known Christ and his word, you would never have done thus unto me, I know it well." Thus exiled from all that earth held dear to him, he trusted not to dissipation of mind, or to length of time, to free him from his afflictions. He knew that even sufferings often make a necessary part in the disposition of things as ordained by Providence; he knew that resignation to the will of that Providence was true magnanimity; he remembered that he was but a pilgrim on the earth, travelling to a better and an eternal world; and if asked where his country lay, he would have pointed, like Anaxagoras, to the heavens. "Expulsed," as he writes in his letter to the Prior," from my native land, forsaking all my kin and friends, I do daily comfort myself, as God giveth me grace, with this one comfortable saying of my Saviour, Blessed are you when men cast rebukes upon you, persecuting you, and report all manner of evil against you, for great is your reward in heaven.' This one sentence is enough to comfort me against all slanders and false reports."

"Men ignorant of the gospel," as he writes in another part of his works, "what comfort and deliverance have they in such anxieties? Verily, none at all. Wherefore, let us embrace the gospel, love and reverence the very true church; let us know the godly not to be called to sluggishness and idleness, but unto the most hard, sharp, and jeopardous battles1."

From Strasburg he wrote his " Answer to the Prior of Newenham," in which he exposes the greatest errors of the Roman Catholic church, with a sincerity, a strength of argument, a piety, and command of scriptural illustration that few writers on the abuses of that church have ever equalled. Speaking of the scriptures being withheld from the laity, he says,

"If ye were well acquainted with Christ his gospel, you

1 Commentary on the Prophecies of Daniel, mentioned post.

should have read there, 'Wo be to you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven before men!' You say the knowledge of God's word is hard and dark for the lay people; but wo be to you, saith Isaiah, that tell the light to be darkness! You say, that the scripture, in English, would make sedition, and breed errors and heresies among the laymen; but wo be to you, saith Isaiah, that say that thing which is good to be evil! You say the letter slayeth, is unsavoury and bitter for them; but wo be to you, saith Isaiah again, that say that which is sweet to be bitter!"

The "Answer" is divided into four parts; the first of which is entitled," Of the Keys, and of binding and loosing." In this he discusses, and denies, the superiority of Peter over the other apostles, and maintains that the Pope has no greater power to give absolution for sins than a simple priest. simple priest. The second part he entitles, "By Faith, without Works, a Man is justified." In the third, he deprecates, with indignation, the celibacy of the clergy, as enjoined by the Roman Catholic church. And in the fourth, he maintains that a layman may hear confessions as well as any priest, and that every confession "pre-supposes a penitent and contrite heart humbled, and unfeignedly confessed before God." He also adds some remarks on pilgrimages, and worshipping of images; which latter practice he discusses at greater length in his subsequent commentary on the prophecies of Daniel.

If it be objected, that from the brevity and quaintness of this inestimable little work, and the vein of playful humour we occasionally find in it, it is not likely to be read with much serious interest or advantage; let the reader remember what Warton has so justly remarked, in his History of English Poetry, that "the short Colloquies of Erasmus, which exposed the superstitious practices of the church of Rome, with so much humour, and in pure christianity, made more protestants than the ten tomes of John Calvin."

About the year 1531, and during his residence at Strasburg, Joye translated the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah into English. He also published, soon after, a translation of the Primer and Psalter, as is mentioned by Sir Thomas More. It would seem that, about the year 1533, he had a design to print the whole Bible, from what Tindale says in his letter to Frith, then confined to the Tower, and soon after crowned with martyrdom1. His only object of ambition was, to use the eloquent

He writes, that "George Joye, at Candlemas, being at Barrow, printed two leaves of Genesis in a great form, and sent one copy to the King, and another to the new Queen, with a letter to N. to deliver them, and to purchase licence, that he might so go through all the Bible. Out of this is sprung the noise of the new Bible, and out of that is the