Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair : the lyrics in the Faithful Shepherdess are also models of this kind in point of grace and a light touching; nor could Ben Jonson have more completely proved his fitness for writing Masks than by the single production of that most accomplished invocation to Diana in Cynthia's Revels; Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep*; &c. but to conclude the specimens from the more decided Mask, the following passage may be taken from the Circe of Browne. The Charme, though falling off towards the conclusion, has been quoted by Warton * Act 5. Sc. 6. in his History of Poetry* with a just feeling of admiration. THE SONGE OF NYMPHES IN THE wood. What sing the sweet birds in each grove? Nought but love. What sound our echoes, day and night? All delighte. What doth each wynd breathe us, that fleetes? Endlesse sweetes.. CHORUS. Is there a place on earth this isle excels, Or any nymphes more happy live than we, When all our songes, our soundes, and breathinges be, CIRCE. Yet holdes soft sleepe his course. Now, Ithacus, Ajax would offer hecatombes to us, And Ilium's ravish'd wifes, and childlesse sires, * Vol. 2. Sect. 16. To have thee bounde in chaynes of sleepe as here; THE CHARME. Sonne of Erebus and Night! Poppy and mandragoras, With like simples not a fewe, Hang for ever droppes of dewe; Thrice with moly from my hand Doe I touch Ulysses' eyes, And with the jaspis.-Then arise, This is the hepta-syllabic measure which Fletcher rendered so attractive in his Faithful Shepherdess, and which from it's adoption by succeeding writers, particularly Milton, has almost become appropriated to the rhyming speeches of the Mask and Pastoral Drama, as distinguished from their songs and dialogue. With these writers the Mask may be said to have begun and ended; for though a few pieces are to be found under the same title, or that of Operas, in the works of Dryden and others, yet upon the whole, the distinct species of drama, both in character and mode of performance, had gone by :-the witchery that had consented to visit the dreams of an earlier and less sophisticated age, had vanished. The Puritans, who first put an end to them, and who, for the most part, were as disagreeable a body of persons as Liberty could have taken it into her head to make use of, quarrelled with every thing they found established, liberal as well as despotic; and the golden age of English poetry, in it's feeling as well as it's freaks, in it's sublimity and 4 love of nature as well as it's sports and extravagancies, closed at the very moment when it might have given additional lustre to the rise of freedom. The harsh and disputatious period that succeeded, and the still more unfeeling debauchery of the one after, effectually prevented the re-appearance of genuine poetry. The Muse, it is true, had not quite forsaken the land, nor given it up to a hopelessness of better days. In the person of Milton, she had retired into a sacred obscurity, and built herself, as it were, an invisible bower, where the ascension of her voice, and the mingling of her majestic organ, might be heard at intervals by a few favoured ears;-but the rest of the country was occupied with a very different succession of and after " a sullen interval of war," came in sounds ; The barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers. In short, both Puritan and Cavalier, though in different ways and for different objects, did their best to d |