respects, as in it's magic, it's route of monsters, and it's particular allusion to an event in the noble family that performed it, is more allied, from it's regularity of story and it's deficiency in scenic shew, to the Favole Boschereccie, or Sylvan Tales of the Italian poets, which had just then been imitated and surpassed by the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher. A Mask may be pastoral or not as it pleases; but scenic shew and personification are, upon the whole, it's distinguishing features; and Milton, with the Faithful Shepherdess on his table (his evident prototype), was tempted to deviate more and more from the title of his piece by the new charm that had come upon him.

On the other hand, Spenser, who appears at one time to have written a set of Pageants, has introduced into his great poem an allegorical procession into which Upton conjectures them to have been worked up,* and which the author has expressly called a “ Maske,”

* See a note on the passage. Todd's Spenser, vol. 5. p. 1061805.

though it is in the other extreme of Comus, and has nothing but shew about it. It is in Book the third, Canto the twelfth, where Britomart, in the strange Castle, and in the silence and solitude of night, is awaked by a "shrilling trumpet," and after a storm of wind and thunder, with the clapping of doors, sees the "Maske of Cupid" issue from the Enchanted Chamber, and pace, about her room. The whole scene is in his noblest style of painting; but as it is only a mute spectacle, and that too rather described than acted, it does not include the dramatic character necessary to complete the more general idea of the Mask.

The Mask which is introduced in the Tempest, and which Warburton had unluckily forgotten when he thought to countenance his opinion of these "fooleries" by saying that Shakspeare had written none,* is a much completer thing of it's kind. In addition to supernatural agency, it has songs and a dialogue, and is called up by Prospero for the purpose of celebrat

* Note to Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Sc. 4.

ing a particular event,-the betrothment of Ferdinand and Miranda. It is not, of course, as the mere contingency of a play, to be compared with the work of Milton, nor is it, though not without marks of a great hand, so lively and interesting as Spenser's Pageant; but it comes much nearer than either to the genuine Mask, and indeed only differs from it inasmuch as it is rather an incident than a piece by itself,-rather a Mask in a drama, than a drama in the form of a Mask. Of a similar kind, and not without touches of poetry, is the Mask in the Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the spirited little sketch of another, after Spenser, in Fletcher's Wife for a Month.

The pieces, written for more direct occasions, and altogether presenting us with the complete and distinct character of this entertainment, may be divided perhaps into two classes, those written to be seen only, and those that had the ambition also to be read. Of the former class (for it seems but fair to allow them this privilege) are the Masks of Ben Jonson. It may seem a hardy thing to assert, that Jonson was in one

respect eminently qualified for this kind of production by the luxuriance and volatility of his fancy; but the ancients, instead of furnishing cordials to his actual deficiency, will be found perhaps, upon a due insight into the more poetical part of him, to have been the bane of his natural strength. A classical education may have given him an accidental inclination towards them, as it will do with most poets at first; but upon comparison of his learning with his fancy, it seems likely that nothing but a perversion of the love of originality, and perhaps a consciousness that he could never meet Shakspeare on equal terms in the walk of humanity, determined him on being a local humourist in the grave cloak of a scholar. What he wanted, besides the generalizing power, was sentiment. turn of mind, doubly distorted perhaps by the thwarting of his genius, was so unfortunate on this score, and appears to have acquired such a general tendency to contradiction, that he almost seems to be playing the Hector with his own performances, and to delight in shaming the occasional elegance of his fancy by following it up with an additional coarseness and heyday

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vulgarity. Of the numerous Masks, which he wrote for the court of James the First, those perhaps that contain the most poetical passages are two with very attractive titles, the Vision of Delight, and Pleasure reconciled to Vertue; but neither is free from this sort of bitterness. That they are poor in other respects is not to be wondered at. The author probably wrote them with little good-will. Not only was the honour of the inventions partaken by the celebrated Inigo Jones, whom he has frequently endeavoured to gall in his Epigrams, but the King, whose taste when he was not hunting or disputing, ran upon finery, most likely expressed a greater admiration of the machinist's beauties than the poet's; and to sum up all, the task was an official one. If this cannot excuse the coarseness of the humour, or even the gross servility of the adulation, it may reasonably apologize for the rest; and something of the same kind may be observed for the poverty of Masks in general. A passage in Beaumont and Fletcher will at once illustrate this observation, and shew the opinion which two real poets