a mighty poetical genius, which his art frequently rather prevented from making use of unworthy means, than fettered from the attempt and attainment of its legitimate objects. There is another cause for his present neglected state;-his characters, although far from being in his best comedies individual satires, are the representatives of the embodied follies of his times; not mere abstract passions with voices, but individual enough in their respective humours, though in their excellencies, vices, or absurdities, they include the major part of mankind. With Jonson, the improvement of the times was the first object; the reprehension of their follies was the proper end of his comedies; while with Beaumont and Fletcher, and Shakspeare, they are only introduced occasionally; and these last rather attack the constant source of frivolity, and engage the passion of vanity in itself, than occupy themselves, like Jonson, with turning its outward form into ridicule. With Master Stephen, we debate the merits of a silk or a woollen stocking; in Master Slender, we behold the vanity of a man endeavouring to recommend himself to his mistress, by his valour in a bear-fight: in the former we see the bare instance, in the latter the humour is incidental, and heightened by the interest of its purpose. Still, Jonson must not be considered as the mere satirist of his age. If the gallants of this time delight not in flame-coloured stockings, their pleasures of dress are not unworthy of their critical progenitors. The breed is not lost, though its motley is composed of different patches. The affectation of a Puntarvolo may be obsolete in the generality of travel to which easier communications have given birth; but a Sordido and a Fungoso are "weeds of every soil," they will endure as long as avarice holds its iron reign in man's heart, and the respect paid to externals induces the weak to consider them the objects of highest attainment. In proportion, however, as Jonson becomes less interesting to the common-place reader, does he rise in utility to the historian of manners: in proportion as he is less understood by the crowd, is he valuable as a record of the habits of his time. If the fire of his genius were allayed by his learning, it was not in his comedy: under the name of comedy, he produced not only scenes of pure wit and humour, refined from the dross of nature in which he found them; but tragic passions and reflections, sublime elucidations of truth, which bestow on him a lustre of transcendant brightness when he wields the bolt and hurls the lightnings of anger, or wears the steady grandeur of undeviating rectitude. The name of tragedy, indeed, was a spell of dark and unwholesome magic upon the powers of Jonson. He deemed it necessary to withdraw from the contemplation of those living models, which were the evident originals of his comedy; and which, when produced, seem ennobled by a reciprocity of nature and art: he found that men were no longer heroes, and, without examining the present

beauties of the world, he endeavoured to cast his statues in the immense moulds of antique Rome. -

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Every Man in his Humour may be ranked among the first of Jonson's comedies, and, therefore, among the very first in the English language. Perhaps it is surpassed by the fire and action of Volpone, and the single character of Morose in Epicone, but by nothing else in this author. Every Man in his Humour is a conversation by Gerrard Douw; a cabinet group of the highest finish. Exactitude is as much aimed at as effect, and every face is marked with lineaments as distinct and perfect as the hand of art can trace from the varied features of nature. It may challenge comparison with any work of the kind, for the contrast, the number, and the perfection of its characters, and for the neatness and justice of its plot; and, perhaps, in no effort of the comic muse are these two excellencies so admirably combined. To examine the characters in their proper order: Old Knowell is a fine picture of the sententious gravity of a discreet old age. Weaned from the gayeties of the world, from idle poetry-that fruitless and unprofitable art," he contemns all that does not tend to worldly thrift; and with all the inconsistency of changed opinions allows, in a breath, himself to have had the very pursuits in his youth, the propriety of which he now denies in his son. The wits of this play are of the first class. Wellbred, in particular, bears the native stamp of a gentleman in his manners and conversation, and may be a proof to us that true politeness and generosity of breeding is not a matter founded on the observance of mere daily custom: for a character of this description could not be supposed unpolished in the most brilliant modern drawing-room. Next have we the two gulls. There is but one instance of the gradation of folly superior to this in the language-we mean the incomparable one in the Merry Wives of Windsor, where fathomless depth is deepened from Shallow to Slender, and from Slender to his man Simple. Here, however, the nicety of humour is most exquisitely preserved. Master Matthew is a town gull; the objects of his vanity are no less than, -his own poetry, his gallantry, his keeping company with the better sort: he is evidently an individual of some consequence to himself, and he imagines he hath the parts and appurtenances of a gallant: he hath his humours of melancholy, and times for poetic invention he is the natural link between a Bobadil and a Stephen; a fool, half transformed into a coxcomb; a grub, with one of its wings. Master Stephen has yet some time to crawl, and sighingly to look forward to this pre-eminence: he "had as leive as an angel, he could swear as well as that gentleman.' - A braggart is a character that the whole world has delighted to cudgel with wordy and with wooden weapons. It is a kind of safe revenge, which this most magnanimous world takes upon those who have more

imagination than heart-whose minds give their bodies the slip, and act deeds in their high fantasy, to which the clay that confines them denies corporeal birth. - Bobadil is the prince of conceit; the very obscure poverty of his lodging is to prevent too great resort; his science of defence is the light, and his courage the fire, of the martial world, while his oaths are the very conversation of art military and travelled boldness. If the world would good-naturedly take the character from the idea of its fanciful and creative possessor, this is Bobadil: but it is impertinent enough to break in upon his ideal grandeur, and enviously to reduce him to the feelings of inglorious frailty. A warrant, that unpoetical, that unwarlike, that anti-romantic revenge, is the last resort of poor Bobadil; and the salve for his wounded honour is the witchcraft and fascination which rendered him patient under his sufferings. -

This play is, from the number and excellence of its characters, the vivacity, interest, perspicuity, and completeness of its plot, better adapted for representation than any comedy of its time; perhaps, with very few exceptions, than any of its successors. The secret in its want of attraction is not altogether in the antiquity of its manners; these might be rendered much more amusing, by the research of those who should undertake their representation: but to the actor, the scholar and the man of industry must be added to complete the performance of any of Ben Jonson's characters. Single instances are not sufficient to uphold and demonstrate its various and contrasted merits: beautiful flowers become wild when neglected, and disfigure what they should adorn. Garrick and Cooke in Kitely, and Knight in Master Stephen, are however among the illustrious few who have felt and elucidated the beauties of their author.

To produce instances of wit and humour from a play which consists of little else, were to disgrace the performance; and the sentiment, which flows in a noble course throughout the part of the elder Knowell, is a fine specimen of Jonson's right judgment—To sum its merits, we must confess our incapacity to do justice to them, and refer the reader to the work, for its own comment.

'Who is so patient of this impious world,
That he can check his spirit or rein his tongue?
Or who hath such a dead unfeeling sense,
That heaven's horrid thunders cannot wake?
To see the earth crackt with the weight of sin,
Hell gaping under us, and o'er our heads
Black rav'nous ruin with her sail-stretch'd wings
Ready to sink us down and cover us :—
Who can behold such prodigies as these,
And have his lips seal'd up? Not I; my soul
Was never ground into such oily colours,

To flatter vice and daub iniquity;
But (with an armed and resolved hand)
I'll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth.'

' and with a whip of steel,
Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs.
I fear no mood stampt in a private brow,
When I am pleas'd t' unmask a public vice.
I fear no strumpet's drugs nor ruffian's stab,
Were I dispos'd to say they're all corrupt.
I fear no courtier's frown, should I applaud
The easy flexure of his supple hams.—
Tut, these are so innate and popular,
That drunken custom would not shame to laugh
(In scorn) at him, that he should dare to tax 'em;
And yet, not one of these but knows his works,
Knows what damnation is, the devil, and hell:
Yet hourly they persist, grow rank in sin,
Puffing their souls away in perj'rous air,
To cherish their extortion, pride, and lusts.'

* * * * *

O, but to such whose faces are all zeal,
And (with the words of Hercules) invade
Such crimes as these! that will not smell of sin,
But seem as they were made of sanctity!

Religion in their garments, and their hair

Cut shorter than their eyebrows! when the conscience
Is vaster than the ocean, and devours
More wretches than the counters,

Mitis. Gentle Asper

Contain your spirit in some stricter bounds,
And be not thus transported with the violence
Of your strong thoughts.

Cordatus. Unless your breath had power
To melt the world and mould it new again,
It is in vain to spend it in these moods.

Asper. I not observed this thronged round till now. Gracious and kind spectators, you are welcome : Apollo and the Muses feast your eyes

With graceful objects, and may our Minerva
Answer your hopes unto their largest strain.
Yet here mistake me not, judicious friends;
I do not this, to beg your patience,
Or servilely to fawn on your applause,
Like some dry brain, despairing in his merit.

Let me be censur'd by th' austerest brow;
Where I want art or judgment, tax me freely;
Let envious censors, with their broadest eyes,

Look through and through me. I pursue no favour;
Only vouchsafe me your attentions,

And I will give you music worth your ears.
O, how I hate the monstrousness of time,
Where every servile imitating spirit,
(Plagued with an itching leprosie of wit)
In a mere halting fury, strives to fling
His ulc'rous body in the Thespian spring,
And straight leaps forth a poet! but as lame
As Vulcan, or the founder of Cripplegate.'

This is the worthy prologue of a great play. This is the author who, when he speaks of himself and to his judges, disdains the trammels of imitation, and uses language which breathes the vital life of unfettered poetry in every tremendous epithet. Here Jonson felt-by this we may conceive why his conversation at the Mermaid was sometimes overbearing, but always great and noble; here we have a justification of his pride in the magnificent sublimity of the ideas which defend it. It were almost unfit, in an age of presumption, conceit, and arrogance, that the lord of so vast a domain should be humble.

The plan of Every Man in his Humour, and that of Every Man out of his Humour, assimilate almost as nearly as their titles. In each, a certain groupe of characters is drawn together for the purpose of moral comment. This play is, however, less interesting than its predecessor, from the design of the plot being more apparent. It is neither less nor more than the gratification of an envious man in beholding finally that there is nothing to be envied in the characters he has contemplated.

Macilente is the master-spring of the play; he is described by Jonson, in his 'Character of the Persons' prefixed to the play, as 'a man well parted, a sufficient scholar, and travelled; who (want'ing that place in the world's account which he thinks his merit ca'pable of) falls into such an envious apoplexy, with which his judg'ment is so dazzled and distasted, that he grows violently impatient 'of any opposite happiness in another.' The envy of Macilente, however, is of the most generous sort, at least in point of taste. The character, indeed, is half an apology for the vice-"The insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes," are at least some excuse for the feeling that fortune has not dealt kindly with us. Nature has implanted in all great minds a propensity to employ them to the full, and nothing less than great successes engage their ambitious hope. But when the force of a soul like this is driven back upon itself, it sweeps down the common