at the same time of the most irregular turn and the most carelessly cultivated. The Mask, with which poetical readers are most familiar,-Comus,-has less of the particular nature of the composition than any other; and those, which have most of it, either form parts of other dramas, as in the Tempest, and are too short to fix a separate recollection, or happen to be so poor in themselves, like those of Ben Jonson, as to be occasionally omitted in the writer's works.

The Mask, with regard to it's origin, is dismissed by Warton in his History of Poetry as 66 a branch of the elder drama ;" and it's nature is defined by Dr. Johnson to be "a dramatic performance written in a tragic style without attention to rules or probability." These accounts appear equally vague and incorrect. It is more than doubtful whether the Mask had any connection with the drama in the first instance; and there have been Masks in a comic as well as tragic style. The definition would even include a number of tragedtes.

On the other hand, it is not easy to settle the distinct nature of a composition, the lawlessness of which is confessed. Some Masks have been without supernatural agency, others without scenery, others without a machinery of any kind; but an intermixture of songs, and especially some kind of pomp or pageant, seem to have been features in all of them,-in all, at least, that pretend to a dramatic form; for the title, in some instances, appears to have been warranted by the exhibition, real or descriptive, of a piece of dumb shew; and this, together with the name itself and the mention of the word pageant, may lead us to it's true origin and definition, the former of which is otherwise lost amidst a multitude of shews, mysteries, and musical dramas.

The Mask then, as far as it's actors and in-door character were concerned, seems to have grown more immediately out of the entertainment called a Masquerade, and as far as it's gorgeousness and machinery, out of the Pageants or Public Shews with which it was customary in the reign of the Tudors to welcome princes

and other persons of distinction. From the latter it took it's deities and allegorical persons, and from the former it's representation by families, or by parties of the gentry and nobility.

Both of these kinds of exhibition, with a remote relationship perhaps to the Greek stage, and a nearer one to the festive compositions of the Provençals, had their birth in Italy,-the soil, in which every species of modern poetry seems to have originally sprung up. The first appearance of one of them, or perhaps combination of both, undoubtedly took place at Florence, in the time of Lorenzo de Medici, when a party of persons, during a season of public festivity, made their appearance in the streets, riding along in procession and dressed up like reanimated dead bodies, who sung a tremendous chorus, reminding the appalled spectators of their mortality.* Spectacles of this nature were clearly the origin of the Trionfi or Triumphs of the

See the History of Lorenzo de' Medici by Mr. Roscoe, to whom the lovers of Italian literature are so much indebted.

Italian poets; and under different aspects, and with more or less assumption of a dramatic air, soon spread all over Italy, now contracting themselves into domestic and gorgeous congratulations at the nuptials of great men, now splitting from a particular purpose into the scattered and individual freaks of carnivals and masquerades.

It is true, the fondness of the Inns of Court for this species of performance may be referred to the old theatrical exhibitions in monasteries and colleges; but the connexion with masquerades in general seems easily traceable. The masquerade, in this country, as a particular entertainment, was for a long time confined to the houses of the great, and to the celebrations of births, marriages, and the higher description of festive meetings; and as the Masquers, who sometimes went visiting in a troop, would now and then come upon their host unawares, it may be conjectured, that finding themselves encouraged by success to give their compliments a more prepared and poetical turn, they gradually assumed characters in honour of the day's celebration, and ac

companied their appearance with songs and dialogue: in a short time, the Pageants that were every day occurring, and the very nature of the exhibition itself, easily suggested the addition of allegory and personification; by further degrees, a scene and a stage arose; the composer and machinist were regularly employed; and at length the Mask took it's place as a species of fanciful drama, which the poet was to render as agreeable and surprising as he could.

The Mask therefore, in it's proper character, and such as it flourished in this country during the finest times of our poetry, may be defined-A mixed Drama, allowing of natural incidents as of every thing else that is dramatic, but more essentially given up to the fancy, and abounding in machinery and personification, generally with a particular allusion.

To some critics, the license which such a species of composition allows is intolerable. They see in it nothing but the violation of rules and probabilities; and turn aside from the most charming fancy, when it