a fine breast of his own! sir, you are a prelate of the order, I understand, and I have a terrible grudging now upon me to be one of your company; will your captain take a prentice, sir? I would bind myself to him, body and soul, either for one-andtwenty years, or as many lives as he would. Clod. Ay, and put in my life for one, for I am come about too; I am sorry I had no more money my purse when you came first upon us, sir; if I had known you would have picked my pocket so like a gentleman, I would have been better provided; I shall be glad to venture a purse with your worship at any time you'll appoint, so you would prefer me to your captain; I'll put in security for my truth, and serve out my time, though I die to morrow. Cock. Ay, upon those terms, sir, and I hope your captain keeps better cheer than he made for the devil, for my stomach will ne'er agree with that diet, we'll be all his followers; I'll go home and fetch a little money, sir, all I have, and you shall pick my pocket to my face, and I'll avouch it: a man would not desire to have his purse pickt in better company. Pup. Tut, they have other manner of gifts than picking of pockets, or telling fortunes. Cock. Ay, and if they would but please to shew them, or thought us poor country mortals worthy of them. Pup. What might a man do to be a gentleman of your company, sir? Cock. Ay, a gipsy in ordinary, or nothing. Or any way quell ye, To buy or to sell ye, A fine breast of his own.] A phrase common to all the writers of Jonson's age, and constantly used as an equivalent for what is now termed a fine voice. It is needless to bring examples of so trite an expression. To the coops and the pens, As neither do cry; To change your complexion, And out of your noses, As it were from a spout. Town. Admirable tricks, and he does them all se defendendo, as if he would not be taken in the trap of authority by a frail fleshly constable. Pup. Without the aid of a cheese. Cock. Oh, he would chirp in a pair of stocks sumptuously; I'd give anything to see him play loose with his hands when his feet were fast. Pup. O' my conscience he fears not that, an the marshal himself were here; I protest I admire him. Pat. Is this worth your wonder! Nay then you shall under Stand more of my skill. I can (for I will) Here at Burley o' the Hill You'll know them for true men; For he we call chief, I'll tell't ye in brief, With his bread, beer, and beef. Omnes. A hall, a hall, a hall ! Enter the GIPSIES METAMORPHOSED, ¿.e. dressed in rich Habits, and DANCE. Pat. Why now ye behold, 'Twas truth that I told, As he gives ye relief, &c.] He speaks of the Captain (the Marquis of Buckingham). When the Masque was represented at Bever Castle, the following lines were used instead of those in the text: "The fifth of August, And no device; They are changed in a trice Be myself, by and by. Must study how To come off with a grace, Unto my good master, Each man with his voice, If my art hit right. Shall prove a good knight; Where fancy engages Clod. Oh, anything for the Patrico; what is't? what is't? Pat. Nothing but bear the bob of the close, It will be no burthen you well may suppose, But bless the Sov'reign and his senses, And to wish away offences. Clod. Let us alone, Bless the Sov'reign and his senses. Pat. We'll take them in order as they have being, And first of seeing. From a gipsy in the morning, Cho. Bless the Sovereign and his SEEING. From a lawyer, three parts noise : Meant for mirth, but is not it; ING. Pat. From a strolling tinker's sheet, ING. Pat. From an oyster and fried fish, 1 From a fiddle out of tune, As the cuckow is in June.] The dissonant note of the cuckow in this month is thus alluded to by Shakspeare: "So when he had occasion to be seen, He was but as the cuckow is in June, 66 2 From the candlesticks of Lothbury.] This expression will be best illustrated by a quotation from Stow's Survey of London: The street of Lothbury is possessed (for the most part) by founders that cast candlesticks, chaffing-dishes, spice-mortars, and such like copper or laten works, and doe afterwards turne them with the foot, and not with the wheele, to make them smooth and bright with turning and scrating (as some do term it), making a lothsome noise to the by-passers, and therefore disdainfully called From a needle or a thorn In the bed at e'en or morn; Or from any gout's least grutching, Cho. Bless the Sovereign and his TOUCH ING. Pat. Bless him too from all offences, Bless him, O bless him, heaven, and lend him long To be the sacred burden of all song; The acts and years of all our kings t' outgo; And while he's mortal we not think him so. After which, ascending up, the JACKMAN sings. SONG 1. Jack. The sports are done, yet do not let Your joys in sudden silence set; Delight and dumbness never met In one self-subject yet. If things opposed must mixt appear, Then add a boldness to your fear, And speak a hymn to him, Where all your duties do of right belong, Which I will sweeten with an under-song. Captain. Glory of ours, and grace of all the earth; How well your figure doth become your birth! As if your form and fortune equal stood, SONG 2. Jack. Virtue, his kingly virtue, which did merit This isle entire, and you are to inherit. 4 Gipsy. How right he doth confess him in his face, by them 'Lothberie,' p. 287. Banbury has been already noticed as being chiefly inhabited by Puritans, vol. ii. p. 142. A sow's baby in a dish.] "Three things to which James had a great dislike; and with which, he said, he would treat the devil were he to invite him to a dinner, were a pig, a poll of ling with mustard, and a pipe of tobacco for digesture."-Witty Apothegins delivered by James I. &c. 12mo, 1671. Or a foul day.] There was nothing James bore so impatiently as this, whenever it interfered with his hunting. This was pretty nearly the case with those of his followers who were much attached to the chase, I believe. The king sometimes relieved his ill humour by a sonnet: whether they tried the efficacy of a little poetry on themselves is not said. Jack. Good princes soar above their fame, Such, such the father is, Whom ev'ry title strives to kiss; Who on his royal grounds unto himself doth raise, The work to trouble fame and to astonish praise. 4 Gip. Indeed he's not lord alone of all the state, But of the love of men, and of the empire's fate. The muses' arts, the schools, commerce, our honours, laws, And virtues hang on him, as on their working cause. 2 Gip. His handmaid justice is. 3 Gip. Wisdom, his wife. 4 Gip. His mistress, mercy. 5 Gip. Temperance, his life. 2 Gip. His pages bounty and grace, which many prove. 3 Gip. His guards are magnanimity and bye. You have beheld (and with delight), their change, And how they came transformed may think it strange ; It being a thing not touched at by our poet, Good Ben slept there or else forgot to shew it: But lest it prove like wonder to the sight, To see a gipsy, as an Æthiop, white, Know, that what dy'd our faces was an ointment Made and laid on by Master Wolfe's appointment, The court Lycanthropos; yet without spells, The Masque of Augurs. WITH THE SEVERAL ANTIMASQUES. Presented on Twelfth-night, 1622-23. THE MASQUE OF AUGURS.] From the folio 1641, where it is wretchedly printed. Every page that I turn over in this volume renews my regret at the remissness of Jonson in not giving these little pieces himself to the press. In this, as in everything else, his character has been misrepresented. He is constantly spoken of as extremely jealous of the fate of his works, as tremblingly alive to the accuracy of his page; whereas nothing is so certain as that for the greatest part of his dramatic career, he was as careless of their appearance as any of his contemporaries, not excepting Shakspeare. Want itself could not drive him to the revision and publication of a single drama; and for the long space of twenty years (i.e., from the appearance of the first folio to his death), he gave nothing to the press (unless Love's Triumph, or Chloridia was published by him, which I can scarcely believe), but the New Inn, to which he was compelled by the triumphant ridicule of his enemies, who represented that unfortunate piece as worse perhaps than it really was. A new whim has seized the editors in this place, and they have given the dramatis persona or "presenters of the first Antimasque." SCENE.-The Court Buttery-hatch. Enter NOTCH and SLUG. Notch. Come, now my head's in, I'll even venture the whole: I have seen the lions ere now, and he that hath seen them may see the king. Slug. I think he may; but have a care you go not too nigh, neighbour Notch, lest you chance to have a tally made on your pate, and be clawed with a cudgel; there is as much danger going too near the king, as the lions. Enter Groom of the Revels. sters? what is the business, the affair? stop, I beseech you. Notch. This must be an officer or nothing, he is so pert and brief in his demands: a pretty man! and a pretty man is a little o' this side nothing; howsoever we must not be daunted now, I am sure I am a greater man than he out of the court, and I have lost nothing of my size since I came to it. Groom. Hey-da! what's this? a hogshead of beer broke out of the king's buttery, or some Dutch hulk! whither are you bound? the wind is against you, you must back; do you know where you are? Notch. Yes, sir, if we be not mistaken, M |