Masques and Entertainments

these ornaments were designed, and the inexpressible grace with which they were executed, appear to have left a vivid impression on the poet's mind; and there is, accordingly, no part of his description in which he seems to labour so much for adequate language to mark his admiration as that of the dances.

"In curious knots and mazes so,

The Spring, at first, was taught to go;
And Zephyr, when he came to woo
His Flora, had their motions too :
And thus did Venus learn to lead

The Idalian brawls, and so to tread
As if the wind, not she, did walk,

Nor pressed a flower, nor bowed a stalk.”

It is after witnessing the "measures" here so beautifully delineated that Aurora thus interrupts the performers—

"I was not wearier where I lay,
By frozen Tithon's side, to-night,
Than I am willing now to stay
And be a part of your delight:
But I am urgéd by the Day,

Against my will, to bid you come away."

While Jonson thus laboured to perfect the more elegant parts of these gay fancies, he did not forget to provide amusements of another kind, which he called Antimasques (parodies, or opposites of the main Masques), borrowed, it would seem, from the old masquerade, and already familiar to the people. These were calculated to diversify the entertainment, and to afford a breathing-time to the principal performers. The poet was here tied to no rules; he might be as wild and extravagant as he pleased the whole world of fancy was before him. "Satyres, Fooles, Wildemen, Antiques, Ethiopes, Pigmies, and Beastes," as Lord Bacon has it (with an eye perhaps to our author), came trooping at his call. These were probably played by the menials of the palace, assisted by actors from the regular theatres. In this part of the plot Jonson stands almost alone: his antimasques are not, like those of his contemporaries, mere extravagancies, independent

of the main story. Generally speaking, they serve to promote or illustrate it, however fantastic they appear, and are not unfrequently the vehicle of useful satire, conveyed with equal freedom and humour. Whatever they were, however, they were the occasion of much mirth they were eagerly "hearkened after," as the cook says in Neptune's Triumph, and always received with pleasure.

In these devices, as has been already observed, our author took great delight, and during the life of his royal patron, never failed to exert his best faculties on the composition of them. "Had nature," says Cumberland, "been as liberal in her gifts to Jonson as learning was in opening her stores to his acquirements, the world might have seen a poet to whom there had been nothing since the days of Homer, aut simile aut secundum." But nature had been no stepmother to Jonson; and when the critic adds, that the poet "stocked his mind with such a mass of other men's thoughts that his imagination had not power to struggle through the crowd," he does not perceive that he has taken up a different question, and proved no part of what he supposed himself to have decided. But, omitting the consideration of this, whatever may be the case of the poet in his severer studies, in his Masques his imagination is neither oppressed nor obscured. In these, he makes his appearance like his own DELIGHT, "accompanied with Grace, Love, Harmony, Revel, Sport, and Laughter." If, as the critic will have it, he was a "literary behemoth," it must be granted that here, at least, he writhed his lithe proboscis with playfulness and ease. His unbounded learning is merely an adjunct to his fancy. His mythological personages, amid the most scrupulous preservation of their respective attributes, move with elasticity and vigour; and while the_dialogue is distinguished by a masculine strength and freedom, the lyrical part of these gay pastimes is clothed with all the richness and luxuriance of poetry. Araspes, the friend and confidant of Cyrus, could only account for his perfidy to the man whom he loved and revered, by supposing that he had two souls, one prompting him to evil, the other to good. A notion of a similar kind will

sometimes suggest itself to the reader of Jonson. In his tragedies he was cautious and strict, tremblingly apprehensive of starting from the bounds of regularity, and constantly rejecting every idea which was not supplied by the authorities before him. In some of his comedies too, and in several of his longer poems, the same hardness and severity are displayed; he perseveres in the ungrateful task of compression till the finer parts of his machinery are deprived of play, and the whole stiffened, cramped, and impaired; but no sooner has he taken down his lyre, no sooner touched on his lighter pieces, than all is changed as if by magic, and he seems a new person. His genius awakes at once, his imagination becomes fertile, ardent, versatile, and excursive; his taste pure and elegant; and all his faculties attuned to sprightliness and pleasure.