And thus, in the most exquisite verse, is the Hue and Cry after the mischievous little runaway continued, until 'Cupid, attended by the sports and pretty lightnesses,' comes forth, and in equally graceful numbers summons them to the dance. We have remarked upon the great beauty of Jonson's songs; the short lyrics interspersed throughout these masques fully vindicate for him the high station we have claimed. Here is a short snatch of song,' but very graceful, from the Vision of Delight, sung after the ladies had concluded a most elegant and curious dance:'

In curious knots and mazes so,

The Spring at first was taught to go;
And Zephyr, when he came to view
His Flora, had these motions too;
And thence did Venus learn to lead
Th' Idalian dance, and so to tread,
As if the wind, not she, did walk,

Nor pressed a flower, nor bowed a stalk.'

Left to the promptings of his own genius, Jonson, in his Masques, seems always to have chosen poetical subjects, and treated them gracefully. We doubt whether the anti-masques were his free choice; in one of them, however, it is interesting to see how nearly he approaches Shakespere himself: this is the introduction to his Masque of Queens, with its almost appalling chorus of witches, and their horrible incantations. This is worth reading, revolting as it is, not only for the mass of information

His Introduction to the Masque of Queens.

317

respecting witchcraft which it contains, but for the strange fact that, in an age when witchcraft was not only an article of popular belief, but of the very judges of the land, and under the reign of a King who had publicly declared himself as 'Jacobus bellipotens against those detestable slaves of the Devil,'-Whitehall should actually present a company of witches summoning their mistress Hecate, and their familiar spirits, with the selfsame charms, and well nigh the selfsame rhymes, for using which many an old crone was even then awaiting the gallows tree! No wonder James and his court were profane; or that they spoke with blasphemous lightness of holy things, if even infernal terrorsso much better fitted to tell upon their lower natures-failed to move them. As to Jonson, for a poet, and more especially for a poet of that age, he was strangely free from all belief in the supernatural-sure proof to us that his imagination, however fanciful and graceful, was not of the highest order. So he, not much unlike the conjuror of modern days who laughs at the terrors he creates, assures us that, by the twelve 'hags or witches,' he intended ignorance, suspicion, credulity, &c., the opposites of good fame!' The copious notes to this 'introduction' are very curious, exhibiting alike the learning and the utter scepticism of the poet. We doubt whether Marlowe ever thought of giving chapter and verse for the incantations in Faustus; or whether Shakespere considered learned authorities needful to establish the claim of his weird sisters;' but Jonson, with a diligence that must have rejoiced the pedant King, collects together a long catalogue of writers on witchcraft, while their dame' cannot appear, or the hags even mount their broomsticks, save by the authority of Apuleius, Remigius, Bartholinus de Spinâ, and a score besides.

The merry interlude of old Gregory Christmas' and his twelve sons and daughters, was, we think, a pleasant jeu d'esprit, thrown off, perhaps, after some jovial entertainment, and is very humorous in its allusions to old London and its Christmas-tide observances. Those portions of the Gipsies Metamorphosed which give the humours,' and the slang too, of the gipsies-although the masque appears to have been commanded by the favourite Buckingham, who took the part of the chief gipsy himself. seem to have been written con amore by the rough old poet, who evidently had a partiality, not singular at this time, to those joyous reckless vagabonds and their wild and thievish life. And admirable is the humour of those scenes where the rustics are tricked and robbed, reminding us of the sheepshearing feast and the inimitable Autolycus; and then, combined with low humour and even coarsest ribaldry, what fine gleams of poetry break

forth!—that most joyous of songs, 'To the old long life and treasure, that wild rhyme, The faery beam upon you,' but above all the graceful tributes to each fair court lady. Here is the gipsy's address to the still beautiful Lady Hatton:

'Mistress of a fairer table,

Hath no history nor fable:
Other's fortunes may be shown,
You are builder of your own.

And whatever heaven hath gi'en you,
You preserve the state still in you.
That which time would have depart,
Youth, without the aid of art,
You do keep still, and the glory

Of your sex is but your story.'

This, is to the beautiful daughter of that beautiful mother, the unhappily married Lady Purbeck:

'Help me wonder! here's a book,
Where I would for ever look:
Never yet did gipsy trace
Smoother lines in hands or face;
Venus here doth Saturn move,
That you should be queen of love;
And the other stars consent;
Only Cupid's not content,

For, though you the theft disguise,
You have robbed him of his eyes;
And to show his envy further,
Here he chargeth you with murther;
Says, altho' that at your sight
He must all his torches light,
Tho' your either cheek discloses,
Mingled baths of milk and roses,
Tho' your lips be banks of blisses,
Where he plants, and gathers kisses,
And yourself, the reason why,
Wisest men for love may die,
You will turn all hearts to tinder,

And will make the world one cinder.'

We might have quoted other, and finer passages from these beautiful Masques, but we have been compelled to select those which could best be detached from the context.

We have but little space left for any remarks on Jonson's poems. We have, however, frequently recurred to them, in tracing his life, and have there pointed to the gracefulness of his love-songs, and the condensed force of his epigrams and poetical

His Great Variety of Styles-Conclusion.

319

addresses. One of the chief peculiarities observable in these poems seems to us their great variety of style, ranging from the delightful sweetness of our early poetry down to the polished verse, and neat, though often affected, sentiment of the last century. In his fine 'Celebration of Charis,' his exquisite numbers flow just like Marlowe's and Shakespere's; while the very next poem, The Musical Strife,' belongs to the school of Donne. Thus, too, while most of his pieces in heroic verse, in their varied cadence, and rough, sometimes almost jolting measure, belong to his own age, there are passages-many of these will be found in his masques-which fall scarcely below the polished numbers of Pope in elaborate sweetness. And later poets, too, he often strikingly resembles. These lines, from his Farewell to the World for a Gentlewoman virtuous and noble," might not Cowper have written them?

'No, I do know that I was born

To age, misfortune, sickness, grief;
But I will bear them with that scorn,
As shall not need thy false relief;
Nor for my peace will I go far,
As wanderers do that still must roam,
But make my strengths such as they are,
Here in my bosom, and at home.'

These, again, from 'An Elegy,' have the style, as well as the

rhythm of Tennyson :

'But who could less expect from you,

In whom alone Love lives agen ?
By whom he is restored to men,

And kept, and bred, and brought up true?

His falling temples you have reared,
The withered garlands ta'en away;
His altars kept from the decay
That envy wished, and nature feared;

And on them burns so pure a flame,
With so much loyalty's expense,

That Love, t' acquit such excellence,
Is gone himself into your name,
And you are he.'

It would indeed be difficult, we think, to find any poetcertainly not of that age-whose style exhibits so many varieties as Ben Jonson's. On the whole, especially in regard to his poems, he must be viewed not only as belonging to our first school of poetry, but, in his less beautiful compositions, as the

precursor of the second. Jonson is, indeed, the link between them both. He outlived all his early contemporaries, and ere he ceased to write, the graceful, but diluted elegancies of Carew and Lovelace were fast superseding the rich and noble poetry of Jonson's earlier day. We look too late, when we refer the great change that passed over our poetic literature to the days of the Restoration. The blight had already begun in the reign of Charles the First, and its earliest effects, we think, may be seen in the neglect with which the aged court poet, he who had offered such devoted homage both to father and son-too precious incense for such unworthy shrines-was treated in his desolate old age.

Still, notwithstanding courtly neglect, he was not forgotten; while Shakespere was neglected, and all his great fellow-dramatists cast aside, as though they had never been, 'rare Ben Jonson' continued to be a name of note. But he owed it not to his poetic merits, but to those true cavalier qualities, his equal devotion to the King and the wine-cup; and when in more modern times his name was still quoted, he owed it to his learned notes, not to the fine poetry which they illustrated. All this has passed, still rare Ben Jonson' will hold a high station among us; and though he must take lower place as a dramatic writer, his Forest, his Underwoods, and his Masques, will vindicate for him a foremost place among our poets.

ART. II. (1.) Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, 1854, 1855. By ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., U.S.N. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Childs and Peterson. London: Trübner and Co. 1856.

(2.) An Earnest Appeal to the British Public on behalf of the Missing Arctic Expedition. By LIEUTENANT BEDFORD PIM, R.N., F.R.G.S. London: Hurst and Blackett. 1857.

ON a summer's day, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three-to employ the language of novelists-a small vessel might be seen entering the harbour of Fiskernaes, on the coast of that misnamed country, Greenland. It was a brig of 144 tons burden, with not more than eighteen persons on board. To this little troop an Esquimaux hunter-a youth who could spit a bird on the wing with his javelin-was added from the population of the place. After a short detention, by reason of contrary winds, the voyagers put out to sea, passed the last Danish outposts of