painter of individual comic characters in real life he is probably unequalled. To the finest faculty of observation he united the power of abstracting what was essential to the type, and reproducing it in an imaginative dramatic form. When his actors speak we are able at once to divine their true character: the pretentious solemnity of Bobadil, the impudent bonhomic of Tucca, the blind zeal of Ananias, the pious avarice of Tribulation Wholesome, the reforming hypocrisy of Busy, all express themselves precisely in the style and language required to make us believe in the reality of their existence. So powerful is the conception that fashions of vice or folly long extinct, Alchemy, Arcadianism, Euphuism, and forgotten institutions like Bartholemew Fair, live again in our imagination. We listen to the critical chatter of the spectators in the Hope or the Fortune theatres; we move among the shifting scenes of gossip or imposture in the middle aisle of old St. Paul's. Nor is the drama presented to us a mere dissolving view of obsolete knavery, such as is reflected in the comedies of Middleton, who wrote merely to amuse the spectators of the moment. The genuine moral indignation of Jonson made him seize on what was universal in the spirit of his age; and whether he is exposing the boundless lechery of Sir Epicure Mammon, or the petty quackeries of Cavalier Shift, some enduring form of human meanness reveals itself in all his characters through each particular and temporary disguise.

The delight which Jonson felt in comtemplating the abstract "humours” of individual character caused him to undervalue that external machinery of comedy by which inconsistencies of character are revealed through the freaks of fortune. Gifford, it is true, praises his plots. He says:

In the plots of his comedies, which were constructed from his own materials, he is deserving of undisputed praise. Without violence, without indeed any visible effort, the various events of the story are so linked together that they have the appearance of accidental introduction; yet they all contribute to the main design, and support that just harmony which alone constitutes a perfect fable. Such, in fact, is the rigid accuracy of his plans,

that it requires a constant and almost painful attention to trace out their various bearings and dependencies. Nothing is left to chance before he sat down to write he had evidently arranged every circumstance in his mind; preparations are made for incidents which do not immediately occur, and hints are dropped which can only be comprehended at the unravelling of the piece.1

This is an excellent description of Jonson's abstract method of composition; but Gifford ought to have added that in no other existent type of comedy is the imagination of the audience so completely left out of account. In the New Comedy of Athens, the moral of the play, whatever it might be, was revealed entirely through the action, as afterwards in the plays of Molière. In the Old Comedy, indeed, the moral was more prominent; and probably the comic dramatist to whom Jonson is most nearly allied is Aristophanes. He resembled the Attic poet in his didactic aim, in the selection and the allegorical treatment of his subjects, in his conservative sympathies. He imitated, in his Inductions, Aristophanes' practice of directly addressing the spectators in the person of the chorus. His plays abound in recollections of Aristophanic situations; and one of them, The Staple of News, borrows its leading idea from the Plutus. But Aristophanes, however he might assert his didactic rights as a poet, never allowed himself to get out of touch with his audience. Audacious as was his conception of the sphere of comic action, it was suited to the bacchanalian revelry of the Dionysia; the allegorical chorus by which he enforces his moral was an established institution of the stage; the initial impossibility of his comic situations once granted, everything in the machinery of the plot appears consistent and probable, and contributes to the movement of the play. In Jonson's comedies, on the other hand, the action has a tendency to stand still, while the poet exhibits to us the "humour" at which he wishes us to laugh. Every Man out of his Humour, in particular, consists of a series of unconnected scenes, ridiculing various kinds of folly; and the contrivances of Macilente, the envious man, for bringing about 1 Gifford's edition of Ben Jonson's Works (1816), vol. i. pp. ccxiv.-ccxv.

the catastrophe by which each of the personages is cured of his humour, are devoid of all comic invention. In the same way, in Bartholomew Fair, one ridiculous episode of low life succeeds another without reference to the progress of the action as a whole. Even in Volponeon the whole, the best constructed of Jonson's comediesthe poet does not succeed in producing that convinced feeling of probability which enables the spectator or reader to live for the moment in the ideal situation: there is, for example, nothing in the opening of the play to raise an expectation of the scene between Volpone and Celia, which is the climax of the "complication"; attention is concentrated on the characters of the Fox, his parasite, and his different flatterers; and the story with which the conspirators endeavour to hoodwink justice is such as could scarcely have deceived the most gullible of mankind. While the secret which leads to the catastrophe in The Silent Woman is admirably preserved, the movement of that play is retarded by the introduction of a number of characters not essential to the plot; and the scenes between Captain Otter and his wife, between the two boasting cowards La Foole and Daw, and between Dauphine and the Ladies Collegiate, are in no way connected with the fortunes of Morose. The plot of The Alchemist is of so slender a kind that the incidents can scarcely be said to have any complication; on the other hand, the dénouement, whereby the cheating Face escapes from the difficulties of his situation without any punishment, is, from Jonson's moral point of view, hardly satisfactory.

3. While Jonson's conception of tragedy and comedy was thus opposed to the Romantic principle which blended the medieval lyric spirit with the medieval epic forms, there was one side of his genius which was entirely Romantic. He was in a special sense the poet of the Court. The Court, as the progress of this history has, I trust, made abundantly clear, had become the last home for the forms and traditions of the dying spirit of chivalry. Long after knighthood had lost its raison d'être as a

military instrument, the exercises and amusements of the knight were regarded as essential to the training of the courtier; and in the tournament and the chase the feudal nobility preserved an image of the primitive customs of barbaric warfare. Closely associated with these knightly institutions, the genius of the Middle Ages added the pomp of allegory to the exhibition of arms and horsemanship. Reference, for example, has already been made to the allegorical device with which Sidney and his companions entertained the Duke of Alençon at the tournament in Whitehall in 1581; and the following testimony of a complete gentleman of the period, himself inclined to the Puritanic school of thought, will show how much of the spirit of the Middle Ages survived in the Court of Elizabeth :

:

The first that I shall propose to you is the noble exercise of riding the great horse. A knight on horseback is one of the goodliest sights of the world. Methinks I see Sir James Scudamore, your thrice noble grandfather (a brave man at arms at tilt and barriers), after the voyage of Cales and the Canary Islands (wherein he performed very remarkable and signal service under the Earl of Essex), enter the tilt-yard in a handsome equipage, all in complete armour, embellished with plumes, his beaver close, mounted upon a very high bounding horse (I have seen the shoes of his horse glister above the heads of the people), and, when he came to the encounter or shock, break as many spears as the most; Her Majesty Q. Elizabeth, with a train of ladies, like the stars in the firmament, and the whole Court looking upon him with a very gracious aspect.1

In the Court of James the chivalric spirit greatly declined. The King himself, timid and peace-loving, had nothing of the magnanimous temper which, with all her defects, raised the character of the great Gloriana: Somerset and Buckingham were but petty successors of men like Sidney, Raleigh, and Essex. But both King and Queen, in different ways, had a genuine love of art and learning, and under their patronage the external forms of the chivalrous shows were cultivated with equal splendour and refine

1 Institution of a Gentleman, by William Higford, Harleian Miscellany, vol. ix. p. 595.

ment.

Out of this taste arose the great development of the Masque. Painting, architecture, and poetry, represented by the alliance between Inigo Jones and Jonson, for a long time harmoniously combined their powers to produce an entertainment worthy of the royal and erudite spectators. Jonson here found himself in his own element. Seizing on the various picturesque forms symbolical of mediæval life, chivalry, allegory, pastoralism, he enriched them with the treasures of his vast classical learning. Sometimes he briefly illustrates an abstract moral theme by the action of allegorical figures, as in the Masques Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly; Pleasure Reconciled with Virtue; Love Restored. More often the Masque is designed to enliven some festival, as The Masque of Christmas, presented at Court in 1616; Twice Vindicated, an entertainment for Twelfth Night, 1623; Prince Henry's Barriers, written for the tournament held to celebrate the creation of Henry Prince of Wales in 1610. But whatever was the occasion, Jonson never failed to improve, with an inexhaustible fund of invention, on the example set him with such conspicuous success by Peele in his Arraignment of Paris. The enjoyment of the spectators in witnessing these spectacles arose from guessing the meaning of the allegory of the Masque. While the eye feasted on the sumptuous splendour of the decorations, the mind derived pleasure and instruction from the study of details, each of which was supported by the precedents of ancient art and literature. A general idea of the character of Jonson's Masques and Anti-Masques may be obtained from the account he himself gives of The Masque of Queens, in which Anne of Denmark, with her ladies, played on 2nd February 1609

It increasing now to the third time of my being used in these services to Her Majesty's personal presentations with the ladies whom she pleaseth to honour; it was my first and special regard to see that the nobility of the invention should be answerable to the dignity of their persons. For which reason I chose the argument to be, A celebration of honourable and true fame, bred out of virtue: observing that rule of the best artist, to suffer no