and other persons of distinction. From the latter it took it's deities and allegorical persons, and from the former it's representation by families, or by parties of the gentry and nobility.

bu loving to

Both of these kinds of exhibition, with a remote relationship perhaps to the Greek stage, and a nearer one to the festive compositions of the Provençals, had their birth in Italy,--the soil, in which every species of modern poetry seems to have originally sprung up. The first appearance of fone of them, or perhaps combination of both, undoubtedly took place at Florence, in the time of Lorenzo de Medici, when a party of persons, during a season of public festivity, made their appearance in the streets, riding along in procession and dressed like reanimated dead bodies, who sung a tremendous chorus, reminding the appalled spectators of their mortality.* Spectacles of this nature were clearly the origin of the Trionfi or Triumphs of the

up

* See the History of Lorenzo de' Medici by Mr. Roscoe, to whom the lovers of Italian literature are so much indebted.

Italian poets; and under different aspects, and with more or less assumption of a dramatic air, soon spread all over Italy, now contracting themselves into domestic and gorgeous congratulations at the nuptials of great men, now splitting from a particular purpose into the scattered and individual freaks of carnivals and masquerades.

It is true, the fondness of the Inns of Court for this species of performance may be referred to the old theatrical exhibitions in monasteries and colleges; but the connexion with masquerades in general seems easily traceable. The masquerade, in this country, as a particular entertainment, was for a long time confined to the houses of the great, and to the celebrations of births, marriages, and the higher description of festive meetings; and as the Masquers, who sometimes went visiting in a troop, would now and then come upon their host unawares, it may be conjectured, that finding themselves encouraged by success to give their compliments a more prepared and poetical turn, they gradually assumed characters in honour of the day's celebration, and ac

companied their appearance with songs and dialogue : in a short time, the Pageants that were every day occurring, and the very nature of the exhibition itself, easily suggested the addition of allegory and personification; by further degrees, a scene and a stage arose ; the composer and machinist were regularly employed; and at length the Mask took it's place as a species of fanciful drama, which the poet was to render as agreeable and surprising as he could.

The Mask therefore, in it's proper character, and such as it flourished in this country during the finest times of our poetry, may be defined-A mixed Drama, allowing of natural incidents as of every thing else that is dramatic, but more essentially given up to the fancy, and abounding in machinery and personification, generally with a particular allusion.

To some critics, the license which such a species of composition allows is intolerable. They see in it nothing but the violation of rules and probabilities; and turn aside from the most charming fancy, when it

comes to them in a dress which the French have not authorized. Give others again the fancy, and in a piece professedly supernatural they will be content to overlook rules and probabilities; they go whithersoever the poet leads them, provided he does it with grace as well as imagination; and when they find themselves among summer clouds or enchanted gardens, do not quarrel with him for being out of London or Paris. Undoubtedly, that work is the noblest, which can produce the greatest quantity of fancies and probabilities at once, or in other words, the greatest pleasure under the greatest difficulty. A Mask, it is confessed, is not a great drama, nor an epic poem. But when the poet chuses to take leave of the probable, it does not follow that he must abandon the tasteful or even the natural, whatever has been the assertion of those, whose taste, if they could have found out the truth, was of as small a range as their imagination. Even the improbable has it's rules, and does not mistake mere exaggeration for greatness, the shocking for the terrific, or the puerile for the tricksome. In short, taste as well as fancy, has a very extensive province, even of the most legiti

mate kind; and the wildest imagination may be found there, and is, so long as it carries with it two things which may be called the poet's passports, and which our critical friends on the other side of the water would be in vain called upon to produce, primitive feelings, and a natural language. Let the reader just look at a passage, almost a random one, from the Tempest. It is where Prospero tells Ariel to bring in some of the inferior spirits for the Mask.

Prospero. Ay,-with a twink.

Ariel. Before you can say Come and Go,

And breathe twice, and cry So, so,

Each one tripping on his toe,

Will be here with mop and mowe.

Do you love me, Master? No.

Prospero. Dearly, my delicate Ariel.

Here are freaks of the fancy; but do they hinder the properest and most natural language, or even an appeal to the affections? The half-arch, half pathetic line in italics comes across our nature with a startling