470 M A 
or Sylvan Tales, of the Italian poets, which had juft then 
been imitated and furpafled by the Faithful Shepherdefs 
of Fletcher, A malk may be paftoral or not,as it pleafes; 
but fcenic fhow and perfonification are, upon the whole, 
its diftinguifning features; and Milton, with the Faithful 
Shepherdefs on his table (his evident prototype), was 
tempted to deviate more and more from the title of his 
piece by the new charm that had come upon him. On 
the other hand, Spenfer, who appears at one time to have 
written a fet of Pageants, has introduced into his great 
poem an allegorical proceflion into which Upton conjec¬ 
tures them to have been worked up, and which the au¬ 
thor has exprefsly called a “ Mafke,” though it is in the 
other extreme of Comus, and has nothing but fnow about 
it. It is in book the third, canto the twelfth, where Bri- 
fomart, in the ftfange caftle, and in the filence and foli- 
tude of night, is awaked by a “ Ihrilling trumpet,” and 
after a (form of wind and thunder, with the clapping of 
doors, fees the “Mafke of Cupid” iffue from the en¬ 
chanted chamber, and pace about her room. The whole 
fcene is in his nobleft ftyle of painting ; but as it is only a 
mute fpeCtacle, ? and that too rather described than afted, 
it does not include the dramatic character necelfary to 
complete the more general idea of the mafk. The mafk 
which is introduced in the Temped, and which Warbur- 
ton had unluckily forgotten when he thought to counte¬ 
nance his opinion of thefe “ fooleries” by faying that 
Shakefpeare had written none, (Note to Romeo and Juliet, 
fc. 4.) is a much completer thing of its kind. In addi¬ 
tion to fupernatural agency, it lias fongs and a dialogue, 
and is called up by Profpero for the purpofe of celebrating 
a particular event, the betrothinent of Ferdinand and 
Miranda. It is not, of courfe, as the mere contingency 
of a play, to be compared with the work of Milton; nor is 
it, though not without marks of a great hand, fo lively 
and interefting as Spenfer’s Pageant; but it comes much 
nearer than either to the genuine mafk, and indeed only 
differs from it inafmuch as it is rather an incident than a 
piece by itfelf, rather a mafk in a drama than a drama in 
the form of a mafk. Of a fimilar kind, and not without 
touches of poetry, is the mafk in the Maid's Tragedy of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, and the fpirited little fketch of 
another, after Spenfer, in Fletcher’s Wife for a Month. 
The pieces, written for more direft occafions, and alto¬ 
gether prefenting 11s with the complete and diItin 61 cha¬ 
racter of this entertainment, may be divided perhaps into 
two claffes; thofe written to be feen only, and thofe that 
had the ambition alfo to be read. Of the former clafs 
(for it feems but fair to allow them this privilege) are the 
mafks of Ben Jonfon. It may feem a hardy thing to a'flert, 
thatjonfon was in one refpeCt eminently qualified for this 
kind of production, by the luxuriance and volatility of 
his fancy; but the ancients, inftead of furnilhing cordials 
to his aCiual deficiency, will be found perhaps, upon a 
due infight into the more poetical part of him, to have 
been the bane of his natural ffrength. A clafiical edu¬ 
cation may have given him an accidental inclination to¬ 
wards them, as it will do with molt poets at firft; but, 
upon companion of his learning with his fancy, it feems 
likely that nothing but a perverfion of the love of origi¬ 
nality, and perhaps a confcioufnefs that he could never 
meet Shakefpeare on equal terms in the walk of humanity, 
determined him on being a local hurnorift in the grave 
cloak of a fcholar. What he wanted, befides the gene¬ 
ralizing power, was fentiinent. His turn of mind, doubly 
diftorted perhaps by the thwarting of his genius, was fo 
unfortunate on this fcore, and appears to have acquired 
fuch a general tendency to contradiction, that he almoff 
feems to be playing the HeClor with his own performances, 
and to delight in fhaming the occafional elegance of his 
fancy by following it up with an additional coarfenefs 
and heyday vulgarity. Of the numerous mafks which he 
wrote for the court of James the Firft, thofe perhaps that 
contain the moft poetical paffages are two with very at¬ 
tractive titles, the Vifion of Delight, and Plealure recon- 
4 
S K. 
died to Vertue; but neither is free from this fort of bit- 
ternefs. That they are poor in other refpeCts is not to be 
wondered at. The author probably wrote them with little 
good-will. Not only was the honour of the inventions 
partaken by the celebrated Inigo Jones, whom he has fre¬ 
quently endeavoured to gall in his epigrams, (fee vol. xi. 
p. 248.) but the king, whofe tafte, when he was not hunt¬ 
ing or difputing, ran upon finery, moft likely exprefled 
a greater admiration of the machinift's beauties than the 
poet’s; and to futii up all, the talk was an official one. If 
this cannot excufe the coarfenefs of the humour, or even 
the grofs fervility of the adulation, it may reafonably apo¬ 
logize for the reft ; and fomething of the fame kind may 
be obferved for the poverty of mafks in general. Apaffage 
in Beaumont and Fletcher will at once illuftrate this ob- 
fervation, and fhow the opinion which two real poets, 
who wrote mafks themfelves, entertained of their general 
aukwardnefs: 
Lyfppus. Strato, thou haft fome fkill in poetry; 
What think’ffc thou of the mafque? Will it be well? 
Strato. As well as mafque can be? 
Lyfippus. As mafque can be ? Strato. Yes. 
They moll commend their king, and fpeak in praife 
Of the aflembly ;—blefs the bride and bridegroom 
In perfon of fome god. They’re ty’d to rules 
Of flattery. Maid's Tragedy. 
Tafte and good temper, however, would make a confider- 
able difference in the merit even of flattery ; and it is to 
be recollected, after all, that the mafk was not of neceffity 
to be complimentary, though it was generally produced 
on complimentary occafions. Beaumont, in a piece called 
the Mafque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, and 
written in honour of the EleCtor Palatine’s marriage with 
James’s daughter, has exhibited equal delicacy and in¬ 
vention. Carew, in the fucceeding reign, when the prince, 
whatever political errors he had derived from a bad edu¬ 
cation, was a man of tafte and refpeClability, compli¬ 
mented the court in a mafk, entitled Ccelum Britannicum, 
which, contrary to the ufual corruptnefs of the author’s 
tafte, is in fome parts worthy the dignity of Milton him- 
felf; and among the variety of productions of this kind, 
which the gentlemen of the law appear to have got up, 
as the phrafe is, for their own amufement, there is one, 
of a general defeription, founded on the fable of Circe, 
and written by William Browne, a ftudent of the Temple 
in the beginning of James’s reign, which reminds us of 
Milton, and has been fuppofed by fome to have been one 
of the various productions which furniflied hints for his 
Comus. Browne, though lie was deficient in that per¬ 
vading tafte, or (eleCtnels, which can alone bring down a 
man to polterity, or at lealt enable him to furyive but 
with the curious, was a true poet, with a luxuriant fancy 
and great powers of defeription, and has undoubtedly 
been imitated by Milton in fome inftances. Thefe three 
pieces, the Mafque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn 
by Beaumont, the Ccelum Britannicum of Carew, and the 
Inner Temple Malk or Circe of Browne, are of the clafs 
that aim to be read ; and may be pronounced, perhaps, 
upon the whole, the beft fpecimens of the mafk, in its 
ftriCler fenfe, that are to be found. They are far below 
fuch a work as Comus ; but, confidered as an inferior 
fpecies of compofition, of no great extent, and, two of 
them, with a courtly purpofe, they poffefs no fmall por¬ 
tion of poetry ; and may be characterized, the firft by 
fancy and elegance, the fecond by a lofty ftrain of fenti- 
ment, and the third by a certain full and repofing luxury. 
The firft of thefe pieces (that by Beaumont) is prefaced 
with the following “ Device or Argument,” which con¬ 
tains an analyfis of the entire performance, and will ex¬ 
hibit at once the main fabric of a mafk. 
“ Jupiter and Juno, willing to do honour to the marriage 
of the two famous rivers, Thamefis and Rhine (an allu- 
fion to the Princefs Elizabeth and the EleClor Palatine), 
employ their meffengers feverally, Mercury and Iris, for 
that 
