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.

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Macilente is the master-spring of the play; he is described by Jonson, in his "Character of the Persons" prefixed to the play, as as "a man well parted, a sufficient scholar, and travelled; who (wanting that place in the world's account which he thinks his merit capable of) falls into such an envious apoplexy, with which his judgment 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. ture 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 boundaries of right, and almost makes evil admirable. The groupe of characters upon which the envy of Macilente is exercised will prove, that he did no wrong to noble or gentle spirits, and that the superior aggrandisement of knaves and fools alone excited his spleen. First, we have the traveller Sir Puntarvolo, whose character, as well as that of most of his brethren, we shall give in Jonson's own words :-" A vain-glorious knight, over-Englishing his travels, and wholly consecrated to singularity; the very Jacob's staff of compliment; a sir that hath lived to see the revolution of time in most of his apparel. Of presence good enough, but so palpably affected to his own praise, that (for want of flatterers) he commends himself, to the floutage of his own family-He deals upon returns and strange performances, resolving (in despight of public derision) to stick to his own particular fashion, phrase, and gesture." It it said that Jonson has drawn many of the characters in this play from living originals; if so, Puntarvolo is certainly among the number. There are so many

real occurrences in life, so many absurdities of character and affected singularities, which far transcend the most monstrous inventions of comedy, that to offer these fearlessly to the public eye, requires external evidence as well as internal truth to prove their correctness. Of this sort is Puntarvolo. The age, too, seems likely to have produced him: all his follies are the offspring of a chivalrous and romantic imagination. He is the last decayed ruin of ancient heroism, which totters with every breath though once thought certain of immortal endurance. The flattery which he has taught his servant and which she repeats to him when he approaches, as though he were a stranger, is not, however, perishable in principle. The secrets of many modern publications, and those of the first reputation too, would shew that we are not always displeased with our own praises of ourselves at second-hand. Macilente, though a fit minister for the misfortunes of Puntarvolo, is not his commentator in the play. Upon the ridiculous properties of most of the other gulls, he entertains us with a perpetual lecture, which, though tinged with the envy of his character, is a grand moral test to which all their actions are reduced. The follies of Puntarvolo are not however of the description to be envied in themselves, or their effects; and consequently, Jonson (whose aim has been in this play not to throw away a single stroke of wit for the want of its being pointed out) has provided him a companion and critic in the person of Carlo Buffone: "A public, scurrilous, and profane jester, that (more swift than Circe) with absurd similes will transform any person into deformity. A good feasthound or banquet-beagle, that will scent you out a supper some three miles off, and swear to his patrons (damn him) he came in oars when he was but wafted over in a sculler. A slave that hath an extraordinary gift in pleasing his palate, and will swill up more sack at a sitting than would make all the guard a posset.

His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry. They stand highest in his respect, whom he studies most to reproach." Buffone, however, is not confined in his remarks to the subject of the vain-glorious knight. It is his province to give the lighter colouring to the picture, to exhibit what is ludicrous rather than pernicious. Fearful of Macilente's superior genius, he yet aids him in his plots against the other characters, and in the end gets a good beating for his pains. Puntarvolo, though unable to reply to his wit, is his superior in point of physical power; and a contest of mind is here, as sometimes elsewhere, ended by blows, which silence if they do not convince. Next in the groupe is a figure full of life and gaiety, that rides on the airy pinions of vanity over the world, which he scarce deigns to notice, unless to impart to it something in the best taste. The court is the heaven into which he soars, and the fair Saviolina

his gentle deity; "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier; one that wears clothes well, and in fashion: practiseth by his glass how to salute, speaks good remnants (notwithstanding the bass viol and tobacco,) swears tersly and with variety, cares not what lady's favour he belies, or great man's familiarity; a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man's horse to praise, and backs him as his own; or, for a need, on foot can post himself into credit with his merchant only by the jingle of his shin, and the jirk of his wand.” This is a proper personage to feed the humour of the splenetic Macilente." Well, would my father had left me but a good face for my portion yet; though I had shar'd the unfortunate wit that goes with it, I had not car'd-I might have past for somewhat i'the world then."-And though he is not the first, he certainly becomes the most important object of Macilente's attention: not content with seeing him disgraced by his mistress, he pursues him into a prison, and discovers his amour with Deliro's wife to that enraged creditor. From his consequence_in the play, he is worthy of such complicated punishment. Not only does Fallace doat upon him, but her brother Fungoso is his servile copyist. In dress, indeed, he is altogether so fantastical as to be worthily in the vaward of the fashion.

In his account of a duel, our sympathy for massacred gold twist and amputated spangles can only be equalled by our feeling for the minute taste of the illustrious wearer. Blood, which would not follow the thrusts of the combatants, is drawn by the wearer's spur, which likewise overthrows him, rending two pair of silk stockings, and a pair of Spanish leather boots: the vanquisher takes horse, and the wounded Fastidius pursues and embraces him at the court-gate, after having bound up his hurts with parts of his wrought shirt. Fungoso, though he does not aim at the gentlemanly valour here so punctiliously displayed, spends all he can wring from his father's avarice and his sister's doating passion for the courtier, upon the rendering himself the looking glass of Monsieur Brisk. However, he only follows the fashion "afar off like a spie," "and still lights short a suit," till at length he swoons for very despair, and being obliged to pay a tavern reckoning, in which he has had no share, he resolves in future to quit this part of his absurdities. The extract following is an example of his character and that of his sister:

"Fallace. Brother, sweet brother, here's four angels I'll give you towards your suit: for the love of gentry, and as ever you came of Christian creature, make haste to the water-side (you know where Master Fastidius uses to land) and give him warning of my husband's malicious intent; and tell him of that lean rascal's treachery: O

Heavens, how my flesh rises at him! Nay, sweet brother, make haste: you may say I would have writ to him, but that the necessity of the time would not permit. He cannot chuse but take it extraordinarily from me: and commend me to him, good brother-say, I sent you.

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Fungoso. Let me see; these four angels, and then forty shillings more I can borrow on my gown in Fetter Lane. Well, I will go presently, 'say on my suit, pay as much money as I have, and swear myself into credit with my taylor for the rest.”

It is not to be wondered at, that the means Fallace uses to quicken Fungoso's diligence effectually retards it. Saviolina is the remaining satellite of Fastidius Brisk. She is "a court lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by herself and one more, her servant Brisk." In order to put her out of her humour, Sogliardo is introduced to her " an essential clown, yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman, that he will have it though he buys it. He comes up every term to learn to take tobacco, and see new motions. He is in his kingdom when he can get himself into company, where he may be well laught at." He is presented to her as counterfeiting that which he is; and her discrimination, in discovering his hidden gentility, is highly amusing. It not only affords a practical lesson upon the prejudice of names, and the desire of being considered wiser than we are, but perhaps as justly shews that extremes often meet, and that a gentleman counterfeiting a clown would not be very unlike a clown counterfeiting a gentleman. We may, indeed, go farther and observe, that the excess of politeness is vulgarity, and that vulgar familiarity is sometimes very near the excess of common-place politeness. Even Sogliardo is, however, amiable as compared with his brother Sordido. Their punishments are proportionate that of the former is only to discover that the man he had loved, upon his own description of his feats as a highwayman, never committed a robbery-the last hangs himself, but, being saved, repents and reforms. Jonson describes him," a wretched hob-nail'd chuff, whose recreation is reading of almanacks, and felicity foul weather. One that never pray'd but for a lean dearth, and ever wept in a fat harvest." Every passion, when its prevalence over the heart occasions it to fill it with unmixed and elemental purity and singleness, becomes in a degree sublime. His chuckling over the almanack, which prognosticates ill to all but himself-his revelling upon the misery which increases his riches, give him somewhat of demoniac awfulness. If there be none now who will own his sentiments, we could wish that none had adopted his principles. When he is informed by his hind, that he must bring his corn to market, his observations are characteristic of the spirit of selfishness in all ages.