Nor were the feats of this sagacious horse unrivalled by the wonderful acquirements of other animals. The praise of Morocco is frequently combined by the poets and satirists of the age, with an account of the extraordinary tricks of his contemporary brutes: thus John Taylor, the water-poet, places Holden's camel on a level with Banks's horse:

"Old Holden's camel, or fine Bankes his cut,"

and Bishop Hall, in his satires, brings us acquainted with a sagacious elephant, to which he kindly adds a couple of wonders of a different description; a bullock with two tails, and a fiddling friar. He is describing the metamorphosis which London had produced in the person and manners of a young farmer, and adds,

"The tenants wonder at their landlord's sonne,

And blesse them at so sudden coming on,
More than who vies his pence to view some trick
Of strange Marocco's dumb arithmetick,
Of the young elephant, or two-tayl'd steere,

Or the rigg'd camel, or the fiddling frere." *

The catalogue of wonders, monsters, and tricks, may be augmented by a reference to Ben Jonson, who, in his Bartholomew Fair, among other spectacles, speaks of a Bull with five legs and two pizzles, Dogs dancing the morrice, and a Hare beating the Tabor. †

But of all the amusements which distinguish the age of Shakspeare, none could vie in richness, splendour, or invention, with the costly spectacles, called MASQUES, and PAGEANTS. The frequency of these exhibitions during the reigns of Elizabeth and James is astonishing, if we consider the immense expense which was lavished on their production; the most celebrated poets and the most skilful artists often assisted in their formation; nor was it uncommon to behold nobility,

* Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 274. col. 2. Satires, book iv. sat. 2. + Works of Ben Jonson; act v. sc. 4.

the learned pig, had been anticipated both in skill and perseve
Decker, after conducting his " mere country gentleman" to
of St. Paul's, proceeds thus :-" Hence you may descend, to ta
the horse that went up; and strive, if you can, to know his
take the day of the month, and the number of the steps;
yourself to believe verily that it was not a horse, but son
in the likeness of one: which wonders you may publis
return into the country, to the great amazement of
daughters, that will almost swoon at the report, and
till their bans be asked twice in the church." *

This is the dancing-horse alluded to by Shaksp
Labour's Lost; an English bay gelding, fourtee
named Morocco. He had been taught by one Bat
and their fame was spread over a great part of
had lived in older times," remarks Sir Walter
have shamed all the inchanters in the world: fc
famous among them, could never master, or i
did." It was the misfortune, indeed, of th
be taken for enchanters; while at Paris, th
being imprisoned for dealing with the devi
on the magistrates discovering that the w
of human art §; but at Rome they fell a s
superstitions of the people, and were bo
to which Ben Jonson adverts in the foll

Nothing, indeed, shows the romantic disposition of Elizabeth, and, indeed, of her times, more evidently than the Triumph, as it was called, devised and performed with great solemnity, in honour of the French commissioners for the Queen's marriage with the Duke of Anjou, in 1581. The contrivance was for four of her principal courtiers, under the quaint appellation of "four foster-children of Desire," to besiege and carry, by dint of arms, "The Fortress of Beauty;" intending, by this courtly ænigma, nothing less than the Queen's Majesty's own person. The actors in this famous triumph were, the Earl of Arundel, the Lord Windsor, Master Philip Sidney, and Master Fulk Grevil. And the whole was conducted so entirely in the spirit and language of knight-errantry, that nothing in the Arcadia itself is more romantic. *

The example of the court was followed with equal profusion by the citizens, and various corporate bodies of the capital, who contended with each other in the cost bestowed on these performances. In 1604, when King James and his Queen passed triumphantly from the Tower to Westminster, the citizens erected seven gates or arches, in different parts of the space through which the procession had to proceed. Over the first arch "was represented the true likeness of all the notable houses, towers, and steeples, within the citie of London. -The sixt arche or gate of triumph was erected above the Conduit in Fleete-Streete, whereon the Globe of the world was seen to move, &c. At Temple-bar a seaventh arche or gate was erected, the forefront whereof was proportioned in every respect like a Temple, being dedicated to Janus, &c.—The citie of Westminster, and dutchy of

lace. Their Mantils were of severall colour'd silkes, distinguishing their qualities as they were coupled in paires; the first, skie colour; the second, pearle colour; the third, flame colour; the fourth, tawny: and these cut in leaves, which were subtilly tack'd up, and imbroydered with Oo's, and between every ranck of leaves, a broad silver lace. They were fastened on the right shoulder, and fell compasse down the back in gracious folds, and were again tyed with a round knot, to the fastening of their swords. Upon their legs they wore silver greaves." P. 143.

* Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. Preface, p. 10.

Lancaster, at the Strand, had erected the invention of a rainbow, the moone, sunne, and starres, advanced between two Pyramids.” *

In 1612-13, the gentlemen of the inns of court presented a masque in honour of the marriage of the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, with the Princess Elizabeth, of which the poetry was the composition of Chapman, and the machinery the invention of Inigo Jones. The expense of this pageantry amounted, according to Dugdale†, to one thousand and eighty-six pounds eight shillings and eleven pence, and was conducted with uncommon splendour. "First rode," relates Howes," fiftie choyce gentlemen richly attyred, and as gallantly mounted, with every one his footemen to attend him: These rode very stately like a vauntguard." Next to these appeared an antique or mock-masque. "After them came two chariots triumphal, very pleasant and full of state, wherein rode the choyce musitians of this kingdome, in robes like to the Virginian priests, with sundry devises, all pleasant and significant, with two rankes of torches: Then came the chiefe maskers with great State in white Indian habit, or like the great princes of Barbary, richly imbrodered with the golden sun, with suteable ornaments in all poynts, about their necks were rufs of feathers, spangled and beset with pearle and silver, and upon their heads lofty corronets suteable to the rest."+

Nor were these fanciful and ever varying pageants productive merely of amusement; they had higher aims, and more important effects, and, while ostensibly constructed for the purposes of compliment and entertainment, either indirectly inculcated some lesson of moral wisdom, or more immediately obtained their end, by impersonating the vices and the virtues, and exhibiting a species of ethic drama.

They had also the merit of conveying no inconsiderable fund of instruction from the stores of mythology, history, and philosophy.

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 137. note by Malone, from Stowe's Annals.

+ Origines Juridiciales, folio, p. 346, edit. 1671.

+ Stowe's Annales, by Howes, folio, p. 1006. edit. 1631.

Of this the masques of Jonson afford abundant proof, containing, as they do, not only the common superficial knowledge on these subjects, but displaying such a mass of recondite learning, illustrative of the manners, opinions, customs, and antiquities of the ancient world, as would serve to extend the information of the educated, while they delighted and instructed the body of the people.

To these classical diversions, these eruditæ voluptates, which were remarkably frequent during the whole era of Shakspeare's existence, we may confidently ascribe some portion of that intimacy with the records of history, the fictions of paganism, and the reveries of philosophy which our poet so copiously exhibits throughout his poems and plays, as well as no small accession to the wild and fantastic visionary forms that so pre-eminently delight us in the golden dreams of his imagination.

Among the numerous scenes and descriptions which owe their birth, in our author's dramas, to these superb combinations of mechanism and poesy, we shall select two passages that more peculiarly point out the manner in which he has availed himself of their scenery and arrangement.

"There is a passage in Antony and Cleopatra," observes Mr. Warton, "where the metaphor is exceedingly beautiful; but where the beauty both of the expression and the allusion is lost, unless we recollect the frequency and the nature of these shows (the Pageants) in Shakspeare's age. I must cite the whole of the context, for the sake of the last hemistick.

"Ant. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,
A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion;

A towred citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon't, that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air: Thou hast seen these signs;
They are Black Vesper's Pageants."

This illustrious critic, however, should have continued the quotation

* History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 365. note...