P. 237. A sausage or a bloat herring.] A herring dried by smoke, a bloater. In the Masque of Augurs, post, p. 411, the Groom of the Revels tells the hangers-on that they "stink like so many bloat-herrings."

NOTES TO THE GOLDEN AGE RESTORED.

Page 246.

HE Golden Age Restored.] This masque was performed twice-on New Year's Night and Twelfth Night, 1615-16.

On the latter occasion the French, Venetian, and Savoyard ambassadors were present. It used to require great diplomatic skill to arrange the seats of these rival representatives. On the present occasion " they were all three placed at the Masque on the King's right hand (not right out, but byas forward): first, and next to the king the French, next him the Venetian, and next him the Savoyard."

P. 247. Jove can endure no longer,

Your great ones should your less invade;

Or that your weak though bad be made

A prey unto the stronger.] These lines evidently are intended for Somerset and Overbury, and I am surprised that Gifford has not pointed out this, and praised Jonson for the dignity and good feeling of the allusion. There is another palpable reference to the case at the foot of the next page:

Thy babe last born

Smooth Treachery come hither!"

P. 255. It is with regret I inform the reader that the excellent old folio here deserts us.] So Gifford, but he at the same time neglects to inform the reader that in page 253 he had three times deserted this excellent old folio!

"Move, move then to the sounds,”

should be "to these sounds."

"The earth unploughed shall yield her crop,"

should be " Then earth unploughed." And

"Till earth have drank her fill,"

should be "drunk her fill." Not one of these changes is an improvement, but the reverse.

Gifford cannot praise the 1616 folio too highly, but it is only as compared to it that the second folio appears so incorrect. Contrasted with the other poetical publications of the time, I should say it was above the average in accuracy.

NOTES TO CHRISTMAS, HIS MASQUE.

Page 258.

HRISTMAS, &c.] The queen's health must have somewhat interfered with the festivities this Christmas-tide.

"Jan. 4. The Queen has been sick of the gout." "Jan. 4. The Queen somewhat recovered of the swelling in her leg, and is removed to White-hall." "Jan. 18. At a Masque on Twelfth Night the new made Earl (Buckingham) and the Earl of Montgomery danced with the Queen. I have heard no great speech nor commendation of the Masque, neither before nor since; but it is appointed to be represented again to-morrow night, and the Spanish ambassador invited." Cal. Jac. p. 428.

P. 260. Enter his Sons and Daughters.] Southey speaks with admiration of these personifications.

See

P. 260. Misrule.] This eldest son of Christmas was so leading a personage, that he was often called the Christmas prince. Nares' Glossary on this subject.

P. 260. Gambol-a binding cloth.] It is hard to abuse the 1640 folio and then father blunders on it which are not to be found in its pages, as in this instance, where it has what is undoubtedly the true reading, "blinding cloth." In the equipment of MUMMING too, in the next page, vizard is surely a preferable word to visor.

P. 262. Unrude people they are, your courtiers.] For an excellent note on this word, unrude, see Every Man out of his Humour, vol. ii. p. 126.

P. 263. Post and Pair wants his pur-chops.] For a previous note on this obscure point see the Alchemist, vol. iv. p. 14.

P. 267. Though he come out of Crooked-lane-a.] Jonson has contrived to make a very pleasant ballad by playing on the names of these London localities. Crooked Lane had always been a fruitful subject with the punsters. Among others Ford, in the Witch of Edmonton (ed. Dyce, vol. iii. p. 198), has "Double-bells— Crooked Lane-ye shall have 'im straight in Crooked Lane," where straight I suppose is also played upon, its real meaning here being forthwith.

P. 269. For at the Artillery-garden.] The Artillery-garden has already been spoken of when mentioned in the Alchemist, vol. iv. p. 13. (See supplemental note, in loc.)

NOTES TO THE MASQUE OF LETHE.

Page 272.

MASQUE, &c.] When Gifford invented the appropriate name of LETHE for this masque, he was not aware that Jonson had already christened it LOVERS MADE MEN. In the Bodleian there is a copy of a quarto of five leaves, which I suppose is unique, with that title. On the very day on which this masque was produced, the indefatigable Chamberlain writes to Carleton: "Entertainment given to the French Ambassador by the King, Lord Mayor, Duke of Lenox, and Lord Hay, who makes love to the Earl of Northumberland's younger daughter. Excessive cost at banquets. The Queen's musicians made her a Masque." It does not appear that the young lady Lucy Percy was present at these entertainments. Her father was then a prisoner in the Tower, and happening to pay him a visit, he took the opportunity of making her a captive along with him, by directing her to keep him company, adding, "withall that he was a Percy, and could not endure that his daughter should dance any Scottish jigs."

P. 273. Humanity with her lap of flowers.] The original has, of course, "lap full of flowers."

P. 274. Note. The whole masque was sung after the Italian manner stylo recitativo, by master Nicholas Lanier; who ordered and made both the scene and the music.] This "making of the scene" prepares us for hearing that Lanier was a painter and engraver as well as a musician, and that a lengthened notice of him is to be found in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters of the reign of Charles the First (ed. Wornum, p. 362). In addition to these accomplishments we are told by Horace Walpole, in his semi-French jargon, which already requires notes, that he "understood hands." On that last account he was employed by Charles to hunt out and purchase paintings, and he is known to have afforded able and judicious assistance in the formation of the Royal Gallery. The same "understanding of hands" also stood him in good stead in making purchases on his own account when the Long Parliament sent the noble collection to the hammer. He died in November, 1646, at the age of seventy-four, and was buried in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Only a small portion of the royal pictures had been sold when he died.

NOTES TO THE VISION OF DELIGHT.

Page 282.

HE Vision of Delight.] Southey had for many years toiled in a literary review of Aikin's, and he enjoyed as much as Gifford

his memorable remark about the "once celebrated author," Jonson having, however, written a song in the Silent Woman which "relieved the prevalent coarseness of his tedious effusions"! This exquisite Vision of Delight being at once so coarse and so tedious, affords an excellent opportunity for raking up the criticism.

P. 287. Some that are halter'd, and some that wear scarfs.] In the folio this line stands:

"Some that were haltered, and some that wear scarfs." Perhaps the true reading would be:

"Some that wear halters and some that wear scarfs."

P. 287. For say the French verdingale, and the French hood.] The French hood was an object to be preached at so long ago as Latimer's time.

P. 289. With a chain and a trundle-bed following at th' heels.] Trundle bed was the same as truckle bed, "a small low bedstead, moving on wheels or castors, which ran in under the principal bed."

P. 289. And the tail of a Kentish man to it: why not?] Southey here writes in the margin, "Thus this was still a current jest."

P. 290. As if Favonius, father of the spring.] The passage of Milton referred to is in the Sonnet to Mr. Lawrence:

"Time will run

On smoother 'till Favonius re-inspire

The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire

The lily and the rose, that neither sowed nor spun."

P. 291. Nor purple pheasant when his aunt doth sport her.] 1 am surprised that Gifford did not quote the Winter's Tale, A. iv.

S. 3:

"The lark that tirra lirra chaunts,

With heigh with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay!"

P. 293. Only their heads are crisped by his stroke.] Milton also applies this word to water:

"How from that sapphire fount the crispéd brooks

Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold."

Paradise Lost, iv. 237.

P. 293. Make wanton salts about their dry-suck'd dams.] Salts are leapings, or boundings, from the Latin saltus. Jonson used the same word in the Devil is an Ass, vol. v. p. 63. Nares does not think that it is used by any other writer.

P. 294. By frozen Tithon's side to-night.] Southey chuckles greatly over George Chalmers' "glorious confounding of Titan with Tithonus." Common Place Book, Fourth Series, p. 236.

NOTES TO PLEASURE RECONCILED

TO VIRTUE.

Page 297..

IFFORD is certainly wrong about the date of this masque, and, strange to say, he has been followed in his error by Mr. Collier (Annals of the Stage, vol. i. p. 413). They both give Twelfth Night, 1618-19, but it should be the year pre

vious.

Jonson says that the king was pleased with it (see p. 311), but nobody else appears to have been so. On January 10th, 1617-18, Sherburn writes to Carleton: "The Masque on Twelfth Night was poor, and Inigo Jones has lost reputation, for something extraordinary was expected, as it was the first in which the Prince ever played." And on the same day two other correspondents wrote to him to the same effect. Nathaniel Brent says: "The Masque on Twelfth Night is not commended of any. The poet is grown so dull that his device is not worth the relating, much less the copying out. Divers think he should return to his old trade of bricklaying again." Chamberlain simply says: "The Prince's Masque proved dull."

And on February 21st, 1617-18, Brent writes to Carleton: "The Prince's Masque exhibited again, with the addition of goats and Welsh speeches." This last notice is of itself quite decisive as to the year; but if anything further were required to prove the absurdity of Gifford's date, it would be supplied by the fact that Jonson was in Scotland during the whole of this Christmas period, 1618-19.