Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 2.djvu/12

 2 The L I F E of


 * Let Brewer take his artful pen in hand,
 * Attending muses will obey command,
 * Invoke the aid of Shakespear's sleeping clay,
 * And strike from utter darkness new born day.

Mr. Winstanley, and after him Chetwood, has attributed a play to our author called Lingua, or the Contention of the Tongue and the Five Senses for Superiority, a Comedy, acted at Cambridge, 1606; but Mr. Langbaine is of opinion, that neither that, Love's Loadstone, Landagartha, or Love's Dominion, as Winstanley and Philips affirm, are his; Landagartha being written by Henry Burnel, esquire, and Love's Dominion by Flecknoe. In the Comedy called Lingua, there is a circumstance which Chetwood mentions, too curious to be omitted here. When this play was acted at Cambridge, Oliver Cromwel performed the part of Tactus, which he felt so warmly, that it first fired his ambition, and, from the possession of an imaginary crown, he stretched his views to a real one; to accomplish which, he was content to wade through a sea of blood, and, as Mr. Gray beautifully expresses it, shut the Gates of Mercy on Mankind; the speech with which he is said to have been so affected, is the following,


 * Roses, and bays, pack hence! this crown and
 * robe,
 * My brows, and body, circles and invests;
 * How gallantly it fits me! sure the slave
 * Measured my head, that wrought this coronet;
 * They lie that say, complexions cannot change!
 * My blood's enobled, and I am transform'd
 * Unto the sacred temper of a king;
 * Methinks I hear my noble Parasites
 * Stiling me Caesar, or great Alexander,
 * Licking my feet,—&c.

Mr.