The Masque of Lethe.

The FATES sitting by him on his bank; a grove of myrtles behind them, presented in perspective, and growing thicker to the outer side of the scene. O Mercury, perceiving them to faint, calls them on, and shows them his golden

Mer. Nay, faint not now, so near the And thus in pairs I found them. Only one

Mer. As if that Love disarmed were less We, that their lives unto their fates they a fire!

The Vision of Delight:

PRESENTED AT COURT IN CHRISTMAS, 1617.

THE VISION OF DELIGHT.] From the fol. 1641. This is one of the most beautiful of Jonson's little pieces, light, airy, harmonious, and poetical in no common degree. It stands without à parallel among performances of this kind; and might have convinced even Dr. Aikin, if he had ever condescended to look into Jonson, that "this once celebrated author" had something besides the song in the Silent Woman (see vol. i. p. 406 6), to relieve "the prevalent coarseness of his tedious effusions."

Here the first ANTIMASQUE entered.

A She-monster delivered of six BURRA-
TINES, that dance with six PANTA-
LONES which done,

Del. Yet hear what your Delight doth

pray:

All sour and sullen looks away,
That are the servants of the day;
Our sports are of the humorous Night,
Who feeds the stars that give her light,
And useth than her wont more bright,
To help the VISION OF DELIGHT.

NIGHT rises slowly, and takes her chariot
bespangled with stars.

See, see, her scepter and her crown
Are all of flame, and from her gown
A train of light comes waving down.
This night in dew she will not steep
The brain, nor lock the sense in sleep;
But all awake with phantoms keep,
And those to make Delight more deep.

By this time the Night and Moon being
both risen; NIGHT hovering over the
place sung,

p. 268. It was probably a glossy kind of perpetuana: whatever it was, the six young monsters were clothed in it, and formed, it may be presumed, some ridiculous contrast to the formal and fantastic habits of the six old men.

Night. Break, Phant'sie, from thy cave of
cloud,'

And spread thy purple wings;
Now all thy figures are allowed,
And various shapes of things;
Create of airy forms a stream,

It must have blood, and nought
phlegm ;

And though it be a waking dream,

Cho. Yet let it like an odour rise

To all the Senses here,

And fall like sleep upon their eyes,

Or music in their ear.

Phan. Bright Night, I obey thee, and am come at thy call,

But it is no one dream that can please these all;

Wherefore I would know what dreams would delight 'em:

of For never was Phant'sie more loth to affright 'em.

The Scene here changed to cloud, from which
PHANT'SIE breaking forth, spake.

Break Phant'sie, &c.] In Whalley's cor-
rected copy I find a long quotation from Hurd's
Essay on the Marks of Imitation (p. 52), on the
subject of Milton's "improvement" of those
lines in his Penseroso! I do not give it, because
I differ toto cælo from my predecessor with
regard to its merits. He calls it a "fine and
judicious criticism," whereas it appears to me a
mere string of positions, which, under the affec-
tation of great acuteness, evince nothing but
methodical imbecility.

I have yet a word to say of Hurd. The
reader must have gathered from what has been
already written, that his constant object is to
ridicule and degrade Jonson; to drag him for-
ward, and on every occasion bind him to the
triumphant wheels of all whose cause it pleases
him to espouse. In the same Essay (p. 24), he
says: "If Shakspeare had never looked into
books, or conversed with bookish men, he might
have learned almost all the secrets of paganism
from the MASKS of B. Johnson."-He must have
"looked into books," I presume, even for this;
for he was probably not often invited to Court,
to partake of them.
continues Hurd,
after abusing Jonson for his exactness in the use
"But,"
of ancient learning, "the taste of the age, much
devoted to erudition, and still more the taste of
the princes for whom he writ, gave a prodigious
vogue to these unnatural exhibitions. And the
knowledge of antiquity, requisite to succeed in
them was, I imagine, the reason that Shakspeare
was not over fond to try his hand [tasty lan-
guage this!] at these elaborate trifles. Once
indeed he did [try his hand], and with such
success as to DISGRACE THE VERY BEST THINGS
OF THIS KIND WE FIND IN JONSON! The short
Mask in The Tempest is fitted up with a classi-
cal exactness: [he had just before ridiculed
Jonson for this exactness]: but its chief merit
lies in the beauty of the SHEW and the richness
of the poetry. Shakspeare was so sensible of
his superiority that he could not help exulting
little upon it, where he makes Ferdinand say:

And Phant'sie, I tell you, has dreams that have wings,

And dreams that have honey, and dreams that have stings:

Dreams of the maker, and dreams of the teller,

Dreams of the kitchen, and dreams of the cellar :

(for I am loth to give it its proper name) may be
safely pronounced unparalleled. The Tempest
itself is indeed a surprising, nay, an almost
miraculous effort of the highest powers of genius;
but the little interlude of which Hurd speaks is
so far from disgracing the very best of Jonson's
Masques, that it is nearly as bad as the very
worst of them. I am not afraid to affirm that
there was scarcely a writer on the stage at that
time who could not, and who did not, inter-
weave things" equally good in his dramas. It
is, in short, one of those trifling entertainments
which were usually looked for by the audience,
and cannot boast a single excellence to distin
guish it from those of Fletcher, Shirley, Brome,
and twenty others. Iris enters and calls for
Ceres; after a short dialogue they are joined by
Juno, who sings the following song:

"Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!

Juno sings her blessings on you.”

On the conclusion of this rich poetry, Ferdi&c. There were but three personages upon the nand exclaims, This is a most majestic vision! stage, and no scenery of any kind is even hinted at: yet Hurd is not ashamed to affirm that this of Jonson's pieces, by the ingenuity of its contrite mythology, which disgraced the very best struction, left them still more behind it, in the beauty of its shew! and called forth an involuntary exultation from Shakspeare on his superio rity! When we consider that the Masques of Jonson were exhibited with all the magnificence of scenery which the taste and splendour of a Court could bestow, that the performers in them were the most accomplished of the nobility of both sexes, headed by the queen and royal family; that the most skilful musicians were constantly called in to compose the songs, and engaged to execute them; and when we know, the most exquisite voices that could be found on the other hand, that the theatres had no scenery, and that the songs and dances were left to the ordinary performers, what language of reprobation is sufficiently strong to mark the The intrepid absurdity of this insane criticism portentous ignorance which could deliberately

This is a most majestic Vision, and
Harmonious charming lays.'

a