Some that are tall, and some that are dwarfs, Some that are haltered, and some that wear scarfs ;1 Some that are proper, and signify o' thing, And some another, and some that are nothing. For say the French verdingale, and the French hood Were here to dispute; must it be understood? A feather for a wisp were a fit moderator? Your ostrich, believe it, 's no faithful translator Of perfect Utopian; and then 'twere an odd piece To see the conclusion peep forth at a codpiece. The politic pudding hath still his two ends, Though the bellows and bagpipe were ne'er so good friends: And who can report what offence it would be For a squirrel to see a dog climb a tree? If a dream should come in now to make you afeard, And the nature of the onion is to draw tears, As well as the mustard: peace, pitchers have ears, And shittlecocks wings, these things do not mind 'em, If the bell have any sides the clapper will find 'em : There's twice so much music in beating the tabor As in the stock-fish, and somewhat less labour. Yet all this while no proportion is boasted "Twixt an egg and an ox, though both have been roasted; For grant the most barbers can play on the cittern, Is it requisite a lawyer should plead to a ghittern? You will say now the morris-bells were but bribes To make the heel forget that e'er it had kibes; I say, let the wine make ne'er so good jelly, With a windmill on his head, and bells at The conscience of the bottle is much in the his beard; Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes, And your boots on your brows, and your spurs on your nose? Your whale he will swallow a hogshead for a pill; But the maker o' the mousetrap is he that hath skill. affirm that the homely and unadorned interlude in The Tempest exceeded in the splendour of its exhibition that of all the Masques of Jonson! With respect to Shakspeare-he is no party in the dispute. The exclamation of Ferdinand is natural and proper to the character, and has nothing to do with the real circumstances of the stage. For the rest, I make no apology. I love and reverence Shakspeare as truly as the warmest of his admirers, and in addition flatter myself that my understanding goes with my worship; but I will not silently suffer his name to be made a stalking-horse, under cover of which malice and folly may wantonly shoot from age to age their poisoned bolts at the name and reputation of Jonson. I know the fate which I am preparing for myself; but if I had not been utterly regardless of personal abuse in the cause of sound literature and truth, I should never have ventured on so unpopular a task as that of attempting to do simple justice to the talents and integrity of one of the most injured and calumniated of men. To return to the quotation with which this long note began:-Jonson has a similar thought in Love's Triumph, where Euphemus says, very beautifully: 'Love in perfection longeth to appear, But prays, of favour, he be not called on Till all the suburbs and the skirts be clear Of perturbations, and the infection gone. Then will he flow forth like a rich perfume Into your nostrils! or some sweeter sound Of melting music, that shall not consume Within the ear, but run the mazes round." 1 [In the folio this line stands "Some that were haltered, and some that wear scarfs.' " Perhaps the true reading would be— "Some that wear halters, and some that wear scarfs."-F. C.] For say the French verdingale, and the follows is purposely designed, I suppose, to inWere here to dispute, &c.] The medley that timate the inconsistency of dreams; and has at least, if no other merit, the praise of being spoken in character.-WHAL. Our old poets seem to have found some amusement in stringing together these sheer absurdities, as they frequently indulged in them. and if there be any degree of comparison in Jonson's, as Whalley observes, is not ill placed; nonsense, his is also the best that we have. It might have been shorter: but if it amused the audience, we need not quarrel with it. Peace. Why look you so, and all turn dumb, To see the opener of the New Year come? Cho. We see, we hear, we feel, we taste, The wealth of nature here, or art? it shows Had roused him here, and shook his feathers, wet With purple swelling nectar; and had let The sweet and fruitful dew fall on the To force out all the flowers that might be ground found: Or a Minerva with her needle had The enamoured earth with all her riches clad, And made the downy Zephyr as he flew Still to be followed with the Spring's best hue. The gaudy peacock boasts not in his train So many lights and shadows, nor the rain Resolving Iris, when the Sun doth court her, Nor purple pheasant while his aunts doth sport her With the bill of a shoveler.] A particular Qui mea lascivo regnas per prata volatu, &c. &c.-Rap. Proserp. lib. ii. v. 73 et seq. kind of sea-bird, with a broad bill. In the entertainment given to Queen Elizabeth by the Jonson was the first who made this excellent Earl of Leicester at Kenelworth Castle, we are poet familiar to us. At a time when he was told there were two square wire cages, and in little known or studied in this country, our them live bitterns, curlieus, shovelars, &c-author was already intimately acquainted with WHAL. 2 As if Favonius, &c.] At length we have a word with which Jonson is admitted to have furnished Milton; but Milton is indebted for somewhat more than a word to this beautiful speech. It is to be lamented that Hurd, while looking for specimens of Jonson's manner of of translating, or, as he is pleased to term it, entertainmurdering" the ancients, for the ment" of his friend, should have missed this passage, in which Claudian is so comically travestied: Compellat Zephyrum, Pater O gratissime his merits, and had many allusions to his most striking beauties dispersed through his works. I should have remarked, that in the charming address of Maia to the king and queen (vol. ii. p. 580 6), there is a reference to this favourite poet: "The spice that from Panchaia comes, The odour that Hydaspes lends." "Quidquid turiferis spirat Panchaia silvis, Quicquid odoratus long eblanditur Hydaspes." 8 While his aunt doth sport her.] i.e., his wanton mistress. Thus Brome: Cicely. Is she your kinswoman-your aunt, 'or cousin? To hear him crow, and with a perched pride Wave his discoloured neck and purple side. I have not seen the place could more surprise, It looks, methinks, like one of Nature's eyes, Phan. How better than they are, are all things made By Wonder? But awhile refresh thine eye. I'll put thee to thy oftener What and Why? Here, to a loud music, the Bower opens, and the MASQUERS are discovered as the Glories of the Spring. Won. Thou wilt indeed; what better change appears? Whence is it that the air so sudden clears, And all things in a moment turn so mild? Whose breath or beams have got proud earth with child Of all the treasure that great Nature's worth, ven And makes her every minute to bring forth? How comes it winter is so quite forced hence, And locked up under ground? that every sense Hath several objects? trees have got their heads, The fields their coats? that now the shining meads Do boast the paunce, the lily, and the rose; And every flower doth laugh as Zephyr blows? Sam. [aside.] Means she in the mystical sense, of ill? Toten. Court. But our old dramatists used this word in a very loose way. As The Gentleman's Recreation says of brach, it "seems to be a mannerly word" for an appellation peculiarly offensive to female ears. See vol. ii. p. 425 b. ["The lark that tirra-tirra chaunts, With hey! with hoy! the thrush and the jay, Are summer songs for me and my aunts, While we lie tumbling in the hay." Make wanton salts about their dry-sucked dams ! Who to repair their bags do rob the fields. How is't each bough a several music yields? The lusty throstle, early nightingale, Accord in tune, though vary in their tale; The chirping swallow called forth by the sun, And crested lark doth his division run? The yellow bees the air with murmur fill, The finches carol, and the turtles bill? Whose power is this? what god? Phan. Behold a king Whose presence maketh this perpetual spring; The glories of which spring grow in that bower, And are the marks and beauties of his power. Cho. 'Tis he, 'tis he, and no power else, That makes all this what Phant'sie tells; The founts, the flowers, the birds, the bees, The herds, the flocks, the grass, the trees, Here they danced their ENTRY, after been written, and which after all is so little understood: "So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist. " The woodbine of Shakspeare is the blue bindweed of Jonson: in many of our counties the woodbine is still the name for the great convolvulus. If the reader will turn to this quotation in the Variorum Shakspeare, he will find three pages of nonsense, quotation heaped upon quotation to no purpose; and this place in Jonson, which gives an easy and intelligent explanation of it, not once noticed? It should be added that Steevens and Malone, to make out even their no-meaning, have been compelled to corWith honeysuckle, &c.] This passage settles rupt the text. This, however, was infinitely the meaning of the speech of Titania, in Mid-preferable to having recourse to "old Ben," summer Night's Dream, on which so much has I without any prospect of calumniating him. Winter's Tale, iv. 2.—F. C.] 1 How the blue bindweed doth itself infold Cho. Again again! you cannot be Here they danced their Main DANCE ; after which they sung. Cho. In curious knots and mazes so, The Spring at first was taught to go; And Zephyr, when he came to woo His Flora, had their motions too : And thence did Venus learn to lead The Idalian brawls, and so to tread As if the wind, not she, did walk; Nor prest a flower, nor bowed a stalk. Here they danced with the LADIES, and the whole REVELS followed; after which I was not wearier where I lay By frozen Tithon's side to-night, &c.] The ingenious Mr. Chalmers, the Lepidus of the grand triumvirate of Jonson's enemies, would probably start, had he ever looked into his works, at discovering that there was something in them besides "malice to Shakspeare," some thing, in short, from which the critic himself, vast as his knowledge confessedly is, might occasionally derive information. In illustrating the word Titan, which he explains with laudable accuracy to be a poetical name for the AURORA appeared (the Night and Moon being descended), and this Epilogue followed. Aur. I was not wearier where I lay Cho. They yield to time, and so must all. As night to sport, day doth to action call; Here they danced their going off. And thus it ended. sun," "Mr. Chalmers brings forward this confir mation of it from the Phænix' Nest: "Aurora now began to rise again From watrie couch, and from old Tithon's side."-Lindsay, vol. iii. p. 488. very likely, I think, that he should be frozen; and Now though "Titan" may be old, it is not as Jonson is generally allowed to be pretty correct in his epithets, it will be worth Mr. Chalmers's while to consider, previously to the republication of his glossary, whether Titan and Tithon may not be distinct personages. Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue: A MASQUE, AS IT WAS PRESENTED AT COURT BEFORE PLEASURE RECONCILED TO VIRTUE.] From the second fol. If the scenery answered the poet's description, the opening of this Masque must have had a very striking effect. The entrance of Comus is picturesque and full of voluptuous gaiety. The commentators on Milton, after spending twenty or thirty pages in conjectures on the origin of Milton's Comus, without the slightest reference to Jonson, condescend, in the course of their subsequent annotations, to observe that "Jonson's Masque of Pleasure might perhaps afford some hint to Milton !" Perhaps it might and so I suspect might some others; but enough on this head. [Mr. Collier says, "Pleasure reconciled to Virtue was the Mask on Twelfth-day, 1618-19: it was performed again on Shrove Tuesday with the addition of the AntiMask called For the Honour of Wales."-Annals of the Stage, i. 413.-F. C.] The Scene was the Mountain Who had his top ending in the figure of an HYMN. Full Cho. Room! room! make room First father of sauce and deviser of jelly; The plough and the flail, the mill and the The hutch and the boulter, the furnace and copper, |