nature with the rarest predilections,
consecrated to the most charming of human
occupations, run after, caressed, celebrated
among the most eminent of her contemporaries,
she would appear to have possessed
everything that is most desirable in this life.
One little thing she wanted to fill up the
measure of her existence, and that was
happiness.  This is man's life.  There is no block
of marble so white but you shall find a blue
vein in it, and the snow-flake from heaven
shall not rest a second on the earth without
becoming tinged with its impurities.

SOMETHING LIKE A DRAMATIC
AUTHOR.

JOHNSON—we call him Johnson, because
that is not his name, and we would rather not
be personal—Johnson called upon us the
other day, on purpose to present us with a
neatly-bound copy of his collected works.
We were extremely busy at the time, and so
we told him, but Johnson was not easily got
rid of.  Assuring us he would not detain us
many seconds, he took a seat, and—as the
time-piece on our mantle-piece can witness—
entertained us for one hour and ten minutes
with the story of his grievances.

Johnson had written, he assured us, no less
than five successful plays—all of which had
been acted, and all applauded to the echo.
"And now, sir," he continued. "What's the
use of it?  Five plays, sir, all successful!
And yet, sir, every one of them forgotten!
Here, sir," and Johnson dealt a vigorous blow
on the unconscious and neglected volume.
"Here, sir, I bring them out in a collected
form, and not a copy has been asked for!
Depend upon it, sir, it's all up with the drama.
There was a time when men who wrote but
one play gained celebrity, and here, sir, I've
written five, sir—Five!"

We condoled with him as we best could,
and tried to hold out brilliant visions of the
justice to be done to him by generations yet
unborn: but it was useless; Johnson would
not be comforted.  Grateful, however, for
our sympathy, he did the kindest thing he
could have done.  He left us.  Not, though,
till we had given the most solemn promise
that we would at our very earliest leisure
read through the whole of the collected
works, from title-page to Finis.

We placed the copy of the works of Johnson
on the shelf behind us, and there for
several days it stayed as unmolested and
unnoticed as its thousand brethren that still
encumbered the warehouses of Johnson's
publisher.  One morning, however, we thought
that we would look at it, and see what Johnson
really had produced, for we confess we had
forgotten the very names of his plays quite
as completely as it seemed the public had.
Accordingly, we looked along our shelves for
it; but for some time in vain.  The volume
was a thin one, and must, we supposed, have
slipped behind its bulkier neighbours.  We
were just giving up our search as hopeless,
when all at once we caught a sight of it, and
in such company, that it made us smile despite
ourselves, as we remembered the poor fellow's
sad complaints, that he—the author of no
less a number than five plays—was still
unread—forgotten!

Johnson was squeezed between two volumes
of the works of Lope de Vega!

The accidental juxtaposition of the two
dramatists was certainly a somewhat strange one.
Poor Johnson!  We had promised him
posthumous and undying fame for his five dramas—
his, "Five, sir—Five!" as he so proudly dwelt
upon their number; and, for the life of us,
we could not help laughing at our prophecy,
as we asked ourselves, how many plays of all
the hundreds the great Spaniard wrote, are
heard of now.  Nay, how many were there
that even long survived their author.  A
per-centage, truly, most disheartening to
Johnson!

At once, we mentally ran over all we knew
of Lope de Vega—the "Prodigy of Nature,"
the "King of Comedy," the "Spanish Phœnix,"
as he was styled by his various critics—the
man whose name became admitted into the
Spanish language as an adjective expressing
the extreme of excellence.  At once we turned
to different memoirs of the poet, and looked
over the astounding arithmetical calculations
that in different lands, at different times, have
been made to state the number of his works.
And if the reader does not know already, we
should like to hear him guess how many plays
he thinks it possible that Lope de Vega
wrote.  We have prepared him, doubtless,
to suppose the number large, but in spite
of all our warnings, we defy the boldest
guesser to come near the truth.  Let him
think of a number that may seem
preposterous.  It will be much below the mark.
Nay, let him even work out that mysterious
problem in mental arithmetic which
we remember puzzling over in our schoolboy
days, and having thought of a number,
double it, add ten to it, and so on—we
forget exactly, the true formula.  Still will
the total, in all probability, fall considerably
short of the number of plays composed by
Lope de Vega.

The lowest calculation that seems based
on anything like solid grounds, is that given
by M. Damas Hinard, in an. admirable
memoir of the poet, prefixed to a French
translation of his plays; or rather some of his
plays, for we should like to see the man
who could translate them all, in one lifetime,
supposing all to be extant.  M. Hinard
informs us—a statement in which Schah,
the German historian of the Spanish drama,
and others coincide—that Lope de Vega wrote
the prodigious number of fifteen hundred
plays!

Fifteen hundred plays!  Written by one
man's hand—conceived by one man's brain!