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, For say the French verdingale, and the Were here to dispute; must it be understood? Of perfect Utopian; and then 'twere an 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 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 Yet all this while no proportion is boasted For grant the most barbers can play on the 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 affirm that the homely and unadorned interlude in The Tempest exceeded in the splendour of its exhibition that of all the Masques of Jonson! 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. 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 Perhaps the true reading would be— 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 "Some that wear halters, and some that wear scarfs."-F. C.] 2 For say the French verdingale, and the French hood Were here to dispute, &c.] The medley that timate the inconsistency of dreams; and has at follows is purposely designed, I suppose, to inleast, 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. With a chain and a trundle-bed following at th' heels, And will they not cry then the world runs a-wheels? As for example, a belly and no face, With the bill of a shoveler1 may here come in place; The haunches of a drum with the feet of a pot, And the tail of a Kentish man to it: why not? Yet would I take the stars to be cruel, If the crab and the ropemaker ever fight duel, On any dependence, be it right, be it wrong: But mum: a thread may be drawn out too long. Here the second Antimasque of Phantasms came forth and danced. Phan. Why, this you will say was phantastical now, As the Cock and the Bull, the Whale and the Cow, But vanish! away! [They retire.] I have change to present you, And such as I hope will more truly con tent you. Behold the gold-haired Hour descending here, That keeps the gate of heaven and turns the year, Already with her sight how she doth cheer, And makes another face of things appear. Here one of the HOURS descending, the whole scene changed to the bower of ZEPHYRUS, whilst PEACE sung as followeth : Peace. Why look you so, and all turn 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 ground To force out all the flowers that might be 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 aunt3 doth sport her With the bill of a shoveler.] A particular Qui mea lascivo regnas per prata volatu,” kind of sea-bird, with a broad bill. In the en- &c. &c.-Rap. Proserp. lib. ii. v. 73 et seq. tertainment given to Queen Elizabeth by the Earl of Leicester at Kenelworth Castle, we are Jonson was the first who made this excellent told there were two square wire cages, and in little known or studied in this country, our poet familiar to us. At a time when he was 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 translating, or, as he is pleased to term it, "of murdering" the ancients, for the "entertainment" of his friend, should have missed this passage, in which Claudian is so comically travestied: Compellat Zephyrum, Pater O gratissime Veris 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? 66 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, 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." Winter's Tale, iv. 2.-F. C.] 1 How the blue bindweed doth itself infold With honeysuckle, &c.] This passage settles the meaning of the speech of Titania, in Midsummer Night's Dream, on which so much has That seas are now more even than the land? The rivers run as smoothéd by his hand; Only their heads are crispéd by his stroke :— How plays the yearling with his brow scarce broke Now in the open grass! and frisking lambs 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, 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 corrupt the text. This, however, was infinitely preferable to having recourse to "old Ben,' without any prospect of calumniating him. Cho. Again! again! you cannot be Here they danced their Main DANCE; Cho. In curious knots and mazes so, 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 1 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;" something, 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 Against my will, to bid you come away. Cho. They yield to time, and so must all. As night to sport, day doth to action call; Here they danced their going off. sun," Mr. Chalmers brings forward this confirmation of it from the Phenix' Nest: "Aurora now began to rise again From watrie couch, and from old Tithon's side."-Lindsay, vol. iii. p. 488. Now though "Titan" may be old, it is not very likely, I think, that he should be frozen; and 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 If the scenery PLEASURE RECONCILED TO VIRTUE.] From the second fol. 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 old man, his head and beard all hoary and frost, as if his shoulders were covered with snow; the rest wood and rock. A grove of ivy at his feet; out of which, to awild music of cymbals, flutes, and tabors, is brought forth COMUS, the god of Cheer, or the Belly, riding in triumph, his head crowned with roses and other flowers, his hair curled: they that wait upon him crowned with ivy, their javelins done about with it; one of them going with HERCULES' bowl bare before him, while the rest present him with this HYMN. Full Cho. Room! room! make room for the Bouncing Belly, First father of sauce and deviser of jelly; Prime master of arts and the giver of wit, That found out the excellent engine the spit; The plough and the flail, the mill and the hopper, The hutch and the boulter, the furnace and copper, And since with the funnel and Hippocras bag, He has made of himself, that now he cries swag! Which shows, though the pleasure be but of four inches, Yet he is a weasel, the gullet that pinches Of any delight, and not spares from his back Whatever to make of the belly a sack! Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste, For fresh meats, or powdered, or pickle, or paste, Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted, or sod; And emptier of cups, be they even or odd: All which have now made thee so wide in the waist, As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced ; But eating and drinking until thou dost nod, Thou break'st all thy girdles and break'st forth a god. |