THE EPILOGUE.

ENTLES, be't known to you, since I went in
I am turn'd rhymer, and do thus begin.
The author (jealous how your sense doth

take

His travails) hath enjoined me to make
Some short and ceremonious epilogue;
But if I yet know what, I am a rogue :
He ties me to such laws as quite distract
My thoughts, and would a year of time exact.
I neither must be faint, remiss, nor sorry,
Sour, serious, confident, nor peremptory;
But betwixt these. Let's see; to lay the blame
Upon the children's action, that were lame.
To crave your favour, with a begging knee,
Were to distrust the writer's faculty.
To promise better at the next we bring,
Prorogues disgrace, commends not any thing.
Stiffly to stand on this, and proudly approve
The play, might tax the maker of Self-love.
I'll only speak what I have heard him say,
By

'tis good, and if you like't, you may."

Ecce rubet quidam, pallet, stupet, oscitat, odit.
Hoc volo: nunc nobis carmina nostra placent.

9

and if you like't, you may.]

ah?

with a witness! This is what the modest Massinger calls "strange

self-love in a writer," and what might well have been dispensed with on the present occasion. This overweening confidence procured Jonson a host of enemies, and involved him in petty warfare, unworthy of his powers. The truth is, that he wrote above his audience, and adopted this rude and desperate mode of overawing their censure, when he suspected that he had failed to convince their judgment. Not that this way of bullying the hearer (for it is no better) was new to the stage, or peculiar to Jonson. Fletcher's Nice Valour, not composed, like this piece, with all the austerity of the ancient drama, but thrown out, at random, when he was either drunk, or light-headed, or both, concludes somewhat in the same audacious manner :

"But for the love-scenes

He'll stand no shock of censure. The play's good,
He says, he knows it, if well understood."

This is better, perhaps, than to have the Poet enter in a mourning suit, with an axe on his shoulders, and a piteous request to the audience that, "if they are determined not to like his play, they will be pleased to cut his head off." But, in fact, both practices are reprehensible in a high degree, and always defeat their own. ends. Overstrained humiliation excites ridicule; arrogant assumption provokes indignation; and both are hostile alike to the poet's genuine object.

Little remains to be said of Cynthia's Revels. The characters are well drawn, and well supported; and the influence of the Fountain of Self-love upon their natural vanity is pleasantly described : but they have little bearing upon one another; while the plot of the drama is so finely spun that no eye perhaps but Jonson's has ever been able to trace it. The gradual decline of interest from Every Man in his Humour to the present play, is as striking as it is mortifying, especially as the author appears to have spared no pains, and even to have exhibited more neatness of style, and perhaps more force of expression. There is still a retrospect to the preceding comedies. Amorphus and Asotus are Bobadil and master Stephen; yet without their natural touches: the rest scarcely merit particular attention. Cupid and Mercury, who open the "Revels" with such pure and genuine humour, lose all their pleasantry after the first act. As deities they do well; as pages they have 66 no more wit than ordinary men," and are scarcely distinguishable from Cos and Prosaites. What amusement the spectators might find in the solemn buffoonery of the contending courtiers I know not; but the reader, to whom it appears unintelligible, for want of a few marginal notes, which the author would not, and the editor cannot supply, must find it intolerably tedious. The fulsome compliments paid to the "obdurate virgin" of threescore and

ten, the hoary-headed Cynthia of Whitehall, must have appeared infinitely ridiculous, if the frequency of the practice had not utterly taken away the sense of derision. Yet Jonson must not be without his peculiar praise. The language of the time was grossly adulatory; and from Spenser to the meanest scribbler, our poet was almost the only one who interspersed salutary counsels among his flatteries.

THE POETASTER;

OR,

HIS ARRAIGNMENT.

THE POETASTER.] This "Comical Satire," as the folio terms it, was, produced in 1601, and acted, like Cynthia's Revels, by the children of the queen's chapel. It was printed in quarto the following year, with this motto from Martial,

Et mihi de nullo fama rubore placet.

and again, in folio, in 1616. The Poetaster was frequently performed at the private theatre in Black Friars, where it seems to have been a favourite. The actors were the same that appeared in the preceding drama, with the exception of Wil. Ostler and Tho. Marton. Of the last I can give the reader no information; but Wil. Ostler, who probably played the part of Julia, rose to considerable eminence in his profession, and was subsequently addressed by Davies as "the Roscius of his times," in a prosing epigram which concludes in this singular manner:

"But if thou plaist thy dying part as well

As thy stage part, thou hast no part in hell."