Enjoy now the delight of your goodness, which is to see that prosper you preserved, and posterity to owe the reading of that, without offence, to your name, which so much ignorance and malice of the times then conspired to have supprest.

Your true Lover,

BEN. JONSON.3

of Mr. Martin with the Lord Chief Justice seem to have delivered him. So, at least, I understand the passage. There was, There was, indeed, another occasion on which the friendship of this generous man might have stood Jonson in great stead. I speak of his imprisonment, together with Chapman and Marston, for the satire against the Scots in Eastward Hoe! but as this was a most serious affair, and really implicated the poet's safety, he would, perhaps, have been more explicit had the allusion been to this circumstance. 3 The quarto has no dedication, but merely the following address. to the reader :

"Ludimus innocuis verbis, hoc juro potentis

Per Genium Fama, Castalidumque gregem;
Perque tuas aures, magni mihi numinis instar,
Lector, inhumana liber ab invidia." Mart.

IGHT, I salute thee, but with wounded

nerves,

Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.

What's here? THE ARRAIGNMENT!1ay;
this, this is it,

That our sunk eyes have waked for all this while:
Here will be subject for my snakes and me.
Cling to my neck and wrists, my loving worms,2
And cast you round in soft and amorous folds,
Till I do bid uncurl; then, break your knots,

1 What's here? THE ARRAIGNMENT!] Envy says this upon discovering, as Whalley observes, the title of the play, which, as is already mentioned, was always written or painted in large letters, and fixed in some conspicuous part of the stage. To this practice there are innumerable allusions in our old dramatists.

2 Cling to my neck and wrists, my loving worms.] Worms, the generic English word for snake, is very common in our ancient writers, though now confined to one or two of the species. Cowley seems to have had this description. in view, in the first book of

Shoot out yourselves at length, as your forced stings
Would hide themselves within his maliced sides,
To whom I shall apply you. Stay! the shine
Of this assembly here offends my sight;
I'll darken that first, and outface their grace.
Wonder not, if I stare: these fifteen weeks,
So long as since the plot was but an embrion,3
Have I, with burning lights mixt vigilant thoughts,
In expectation of this hated play,

To which at last I am arrived as Prologue.
Nor would I you should look for other looks,
Gesture, or compliment from me, than what
The infected bulk of Envy can afford:
For I am risse here with a covetous hope,
To blast your pleasures and destroy your sports,
With wrestings, comments, applications,
Spy-like suggestions, privy whisperings,
And thousand such promoting sleights as these.
Mark how I will begin: The scene is, ha!

Rome? Rome? and Rome? Crack, eye-strings, and your balls

the Davideis. Envy rises from the infernal regions, attired as she is here, and thus addresses her ministers:

"With that she takes

One of her worst, her best beloved snakes,

Softly, dear worm, soft and unseen, she said,

Into his bosom steal," &c.

Cowley is so pleased with the management and address of Envy, that he very characteristically makes her "envy herself!"

So long as since the plot was but an embrion.] There is no pleasing Decker; for he twits Jonson with this confession. What, will he be fifteen weeks about this cockatrice's egg too? has he not cackled yet? has he not lay'd yet?" Surely our Untrusser must have possessed a very extraordinary facility in writing, if such a period as this appeared too long for the production of the Poetaster.

the scene is, ha!

Rome? Rome? &c.] We have here a curious proof of the absolute poverty of the stage. As far as we have hitherto gone in Jon