ot so rigorous as it
sounds, since at least half of the poor old things never went into a
second.

As long as it is Congreve and Dryden and Otway, of course it is
literature, and of a very high order; even Shadwell and Mrs. Behn
and Southerne are literature; Settle and Ravenscroft may pass as
legitimate literary curiosity. But there are depths below this where
there is no excuse but sheer collectaneomania. Plays by people who
never got into any schedule of English letters that ever was planned,
dramatic nonentities, stage innocents massacred in their cradles, if
only they were published in quarto I find room for them. I am not
quite so pleased to get these anonymities, I must confess, as I am to
get a clean, tall _editio princeps_ of _The Orphan_ or of _Love for
Love_. But I neither reject nor despise them; each of them counts one;
each serves to fill a place on my solitaire board, each hurries
on that dreadful possible time coming when my collection shall be
complete, and I shall have nothing to do but break my collecting rod
and bury it fathoms deep.

A volume has just come in which happens to have nothing in it but
those forgotten plays, whose very names are unknown to the historians
of literature. First comes _The Roman Empress_, by William Joyner,
printed in 1671. Joyner was an Oxford man, a fellow of Magdalen
College. The little that has been recorded about him makes one wish to
know more. He became persuaded of the truth of the Catholic faith, and
made a voluntary resignation of his Oxford fellowship. He had to do
something, and so he wrote this tragedy, which he dedicated to Sir
Charles Sedley, the poet, and got acted at the Theatre Royal. The cast
contains two good actors' names, Mohun and Kynaston, and it seems that
it enjoyed a considerable success. But doubtless the stage was too
rough a field for the gentle Oxford scholar. He retired into a
sequestered country village, where he lingered on till 1706, when he
was nearly ninety. But Joyner was none of the worst of poets. Here is
a fragment of _The Royal Empress_, which is by no means despicably
versed:

_O thou bright, glorious morning,
Thou Oriental spring-time of the day,
Who with thy mixed vermilion colours paintest
The sky, these hills and plains! thou dost return
In thy accustom'd manner, but with thee
Shall ne'er return my wonted happiness_.

Through his Roman tragedy there runs a pensive vein of sadness, as
though the poet were