Drop into earth; let me be ever blind.
I am prevented; all my hopes are crost,
Check'd, and abated; fie, a freezing sweat

Flows forth at all my pores, my entrails burn :
What should I do? Rome! Rome! O, my vext soul,
How might I force this to the present state?
Are there no players here? no poet-apes,

That come with basilisk's eyes, whose forked tongues
Are steep'd in venom, as their hearts in gall?
Either of these would help me; they could wrest,
Pervert, and poison all they hear, or see,
With senseless glosses, and allusions.
Now, if you be good devils, fly me not.
You know what dear and ample faculties

I have endow'd you with: I'll lend you more.
Here, take my snakes among you, come and eat,

And while the squeez'd juice flows in your black jaws,
Help me to damn the author. Spit it forth
Upon his lines, and shew your rusty teeth
At every word, or accent: or else choose
Out of my longest vipers, to stick down

In your deep throats; and let the heads come forth
At your rank mouths; that he may see you arm'd
With triple malice, to hiss, sting, and tear
His work and him; to forge, and then declaim,
Traduce, corrupt, apply, inform, suggest;
O, these are gifts wherein your souls are blest.
What! do you hide yourselves? will none appear?
None answer? what, doth this calm troop affright you?
Nay, then I do despair; down, sink again :

son, not the slightest notice has occurred of a moveable scene: a board, or a slip of paper, tells the audience that Rome is before them; and if there is any necessity for changing the place of action, as in Catiline, another bit of deal is thrust in, to inform them that they now see Fesulæ. The rage of Envy is excited because the scene is not laid in London, and among the poet's contemporaries; a little patience, however, would have rendered her fury unnecessary.

This travail is all lost with my dead hopes.
If in such bosoms spite have left to dwell,
Envy is not on earth, nor scarce in hell.

[Descends slowly.

The third sounding.

As she disappears, enter PROLOGUE hastily,

in armour.

Stay, monster, ere thou sink-thus on thy head
Set we our bolder foot; with which we tread
Thy malice into earth: so Spite should die,
Despised and scorn'd by noble Industry.

If any muse why I salute the stage,

5

An armed Prologue; know, 'tis a dangerous age:
Wherein who writes, had need present his scenes
Forty-fold proof against the conjuring means
Of base detractors, and illiterate apes,

That fill up rooms in fair and formal shapes.
'Gainst these, have we put on this forced defence:

5 An armed Prologue.] The prologue is spoken by a person in armour, to defend the author against the attacks of his adversaries and detractors. This whimsical circumstance has been imitated in the prologue to Langartha, a tragi-comedy by Henry Burnell, which an Amazon delivers with a battle-axe in her hand. And the prologue to Troilus and Cressida was so spoken :

"And hither am I come,

A prologue arm'd-but not in confidence
Of author's pen."

Not, as the commentators observe, in confidence of the author's abilities, but in a character suited to the subject. Troilus and Cressida is supposed to have been written in 1602. WHAL.

O bone, TOLOV σε εTOC QUYεv! But for this inadvertent introduction of the date of Troilus and Cressida, the passage in the text might have passed for a wanton sneer at Shakspeare; now, alas! the quotation can only be considered as a "just reflection upon Jonson; which, as the commentators well know, is a very different thing.

Whereof the allegory and hid sense
Is, that a well erected confidence

Can fright their pride, and laugh their folly hence.
Here now, put case our author should, once more,
Swear that his play were good; he doth implore,
You would not argue him of arrogance:
Howe'er that common spawn of ignorance,
Our fry of writers, may beslime his fame,
And give his action that adulterate name.
Such full-blown vanity he more doth loth,
Than base dejection: there's a mean 'twixt both.
Which with a constant firmness he pursues,
As one that knows the strength of his own Muse.
And this he hopes all free souls will allow :
Others that take it with a rugged brow,
Their moods he rather pities than enviés :
His mind it is above their injuries.

6

put case our author should, once more,

Swear that his play were good.] This alludes to the last line of the epilogue to Cynthia's Revels. It had justly scandalized the audience, and Jonson takes the first occasion to apologize for the language. His apology, however, is but awkward, and little more, at best, than an assumption of the very point in dispute. It is, indeed, true, that "there is a mean betwixt full-blown vanity and base dejection," but where is it to be found in the lines before us, or in those already noticed? It is but fair to remark that Jonson hazarded nothing equally offensive in his subsequent addresses to the theatre.

ACT I.

SCENE I. Scene draws, and discovers OVID in his study.

Ovid.

HEN, when this body falls in funeral fire,

My name shall live, and my best part aspire. It sh a ll go so.

Enter LUSCUS with a gown and cap.

Lus. Young master, master Ovid, do you hear? Gods a' me! away with your songs and sonnets, and on with your gown and cap quickly: here, here, your father will be a man of this room presently. Come, nay, nay, nay, nay, be brief. These verses too, a poison on 'em! I cannot abide them, they make me ready to cast, by the banks of Helicon! Nay, look, what a rascally untoward thing this poetry is; I could tear them now.

Ovid. Give me; how near is my father?

Lus. Heart a' man: get a law book in your hand, I will not answer you else. [OVID puts on his cap and gown.] Why so! now there's some formality in you. By Jove, and three or four of the gods more, I am right of mine old master's humour for that; this villainous poetry will undo you, by the welkin.

Ovid. What, hast thou buskins on, Luscus, that thou swearest so tragically and high?

Lus. No, but I have boots on, sir, and so has your

father too by this time; for he call'd for them ere I came from the lodging.

Ovid. Why, was he no readier?

Lus. O no; and there was the mad skeldering captain, with the velvet arms, ready to lay hold on him as he comes down: he that presses every man he meets, with an oath to lend him money, and cries Thou must do't, old boy, as thou art a man, a man of worship.

Ovid. Who, Pantilius Tucca?

Lus. Ay, he; and I met little master Lupus, the tribune, going thither too.

Ovid. Nay, an he be under their arrest, I may with safety enough read over my elegy before he

come.

Lus. Gods a' me! what will you do? why, young master, you are not Castalian mad, lunatic, frantic, desperate, ha!

Ovid. What ailest thou, Luscus ?

Lus. God be with you, sir; I'll leave you to your poetical fancies, and furies. I'll not be guilty, I.

[Exit.

Ovid. Be not, good ignorance. I'm glad th'art

gone;

For thus alone, our ear shall better judge

The hasty errors of our morning muse.

8

Envy, why twit'st thou me, my time's spent ill,
And call' st my verse, fruits of an idle quill?

7 The mad skeldering captain.] This word, which is explained in p. 7, is adopted by our poet's antagonist, and applied to the same character; "Come-if skeldering fall not to decay, thou shalt flourish." Satiromastix. And by Marmion,

"Wandering abroad to skelder for a shilling,
Amongst your bowling allies."

Fine Companion, A. iii. S. 4.

8 Envy, why twit'st thou me, &c.] Jonson's translations, as Whalley somewhere observes, are not to be estimated by the