ing a particular event,-the betrothment of Ferdinand

and Miranda. It is not, of course, as the mere con*tingency of a play, to be compared with the work of - Milton, nor is it, though not without marks of a great hand, so lively and interesting as Spenser's Pageant; but it comes much nearer than either to the genuine Mask, and indeed only differs from it inasmuch as it is rather an incident than a piece by itself,-rather a Mask in a drama, than a drama in the form of a Mask. Of a similar kind, and not without touches of poetry, is the Mask in the Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the spirited little sketch of another, after Spenser, in Fletcher's Wife for a Month.

The pieces, written for more direct occasions, and altogether presenting us with the complete and dis tinct character of this entertainment, may be divided perhaps into two classes,-those written to be seen only, and those that had the ambition also to be read. Of the former class (for it seems but fair to allow them this privilege) are the Masks of Ben Jonson. It may seem a hardy thing to assert, that Jonson was in one

respect eminently qualified for this kind of production by the luxuriance and volatility of his fancy; but the ancients, instead of furnishing cordials to his actua deficiency, will be found perhaps, upon a due insight into the more poetical part of him, to have been the bane of his natural strength. A classical education may have given him an accidental inclination towards them, as it will do with most poets at first; but upon comparison of his learning with his fancy, it seems likely that nothing but a perversion of the love of originality, and perhaps a consciousness that he could never meet Shakspeare on equal terms in the walk of humanity, determined him on being a local humourist in the grave cloak of a scholar. What he wanted, besides the generalizing power, was sentiment. His turn of mind, doubly distorted perhaps by the thwarting of his genius, was so unfortunate on this score, and appears to have acquired such a general tendency to contradiction, that he almost seems to be playing the Hector with his own performances, and to delight in shaming the occasional elegance of his fancy by following it up with an additional coarseness and heyday

vulgarity. Of the numerous Masks, which he wrote for the court of James the First, those perhaps that contain the most poetical passages are two with very attractive titles, the Vision of Delight, and Pleasure reconciled to Vertue; but neither is free from this sort of bitterness. That they are poor in other respects is not to be wondered at. The author probably wrote them with little good-will. Not only was the honour of the inventions partaken by the celebrated Inigo Jones, whom he has frequently endeavoured to gall in his Epigrams, but the King, whose taste when he was not hunting or disputing, ran upon finery, most likely expressed a greater admiration of the machinist's beauties than the poet's; and to sum up all, the task was an official one. If this cannot excuse the coarseness of the humour, or even the gross servility of the adulation, it may reasonably apologize for the rest; and something of the same kind may be observed for the poverty of Masks in general. A passage in Beaumont and Fletcher will at once illustrate this observation, and shew the opinion which two real poets

who wrote Masks themselves, entertained of their gene

ral aukwardness.

Lysippus. Strato, thou hast some skill in poetry;
What think'st thou of the Masque? Will it be well?
Strato. As well as Masque can be.

Lysippus. As Masque can be?

Strato. Yes.

They must commend their king, and speak in praise
Of the assembly, bless the bride and bridegroom
In person of some god. They're tyed to rules
Of flattery.

MAID'S TRAGEDY. Act 1. Sc. 1.

Taste and good temper, however, would make a considerable difference in the merit even of flattery; and it is to be recollected, after all, that the Mask was not of necessity to be complimentary, though it was generally produced on complimentary occasions. Beaumont, in a piece called the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, and written in honour of the Elector Palatine's marriage with James's daughter, has exhibited equal delicacy and invention. Carew, in the

succeeding reign, when the Prince, whatever political errors he had derived from a bad education, was a man of taste and respectability, complimented the court in a Mask, entitled Cœlum Britannicum, which, contrary to the usual corruptness of the author's taste, is in some parts worthy the dignity of Milton himself; and among the variety of productions of this kind, which the gentlemen of the law appear to have got up, as the phrase is, for their own amusement, there is one, of a general description, founded on the fable of Circe, and written by William Browne, a student of the Temple in the beginning of James's reign, which reminds us of Milton, and has been supposed by some to have been one of the various productions which furnished hints for his Comus. Browne, though he was deficient in that pervading taste, or selectness, which can alone bring down a man to posterity, or at least enable him to survive but with the curious, was a true poet, with a luxuriant fancy and great powers of description, and has undoubtedly been imitated by Milton in some instances.