consists, as printed (for there were others now lost or
uncollected), of fifteen plays, all comedies, all bearing a strong family
likeness, and all belonging to the class of comedy just referred to--that
is to say, a cross between the style of Jonson and that of Fletcher. Of the
greater number of these, even if there were space here, there would be very
little to say beyond this general description. Not one of them is rubbish;
not one of them is very good; but all are readable, or would be if they had
received the trouble spent on much far inferior work, of a little editing
to put the mechanical part of their presentation, such as the division of
scenes, stage directions, etc., in a uniform and intelligible condition.
Their names (_A Mad Couple well Matched_, _The Sparagus Garden_, _The City
Wit_, and so forth) tell a good deal about their most common form; while
in _The Lovesick Court_, and one or two others, the half-courtly,
half-romantic comedy of Fletcher takes the place of urban humours. One or
two, such as _The Queen and Concubine_, attempt a statelier and tragi-comic
style, but this was not Brome's forte. Sometimes, as in _The Antipodes_,
there is an attempt at satire and comedy with a purpose. There are,
however, two plays which stand out distinctly above the rest, and which are
the only plays of Brome's known to any but diligent students of this class
of literature. These are _The Northern Lass_ and _A Jovial Crew_. The first
differs from its fellows only as being of the same class, but better; and
the dialect of the _ingenue_ Constance seems to have been thought
interesting and pathetic. _The Jovial Crew_, with its lively pictures of
gipsy life, is, though it may have been partly suggested by Fletcher's
_Beggar's Bush_, a very pleasant and fresh comedy. It seems to have been
one of its author's last works, and he speaks of himself in it as "old."

Our two next figures are of somewhat minor importance. Sir Aston Cokain or
Cockaine, of a good Derbyshire family, was born in 1608, and after a long
life died just before the accession of James II. He seems (and indeed
positively asserts himself) to have been intimate with most of the men of
letters of Charles I.'s reign; and it has been unkindly suggested that
posterity would have been much more indebted to him if he had given us the
biographical particulars, which in most cases are so much wanted concerning
them, instead of wasting his time on translated and origina