vanity of which he is accused, and not unjustly, could not have maintained silence had he contributed to the poetic beauty of those performances; and I am afraid we must confine his claims in poetry to his burlesque rhymes attached to Coryate's Crudities.* If the serious verses of Inigo were not worthier than those, we have lost little pleasure in being deprived of them. I like, nevertheless, to show the breadth of character of our old artists: Wykeham, Jones, Wren, and Vanbrugh made their names eminent by other pursuits than that of architecture, and we should do them injustice by treating them as brethren of the line and level alone.

The first court pageant in which the talents of Jonson and Jones were united, is the Masque of

* These are, indeed, sufficiently humble :

For France, alas! how soon, but that thou scorn'st; Couldst thou have starched thy beard, ruffled thy hose? Worn a foul shirt twelve weeks, and as thou journedst Sung falaliros through thy Persian nose?

For faces, cringes, and a saltless jest,

And been as scabbed a Monsieur as the best.

Next to the sober Dutch I turn my tale,

Who do in earnest write thee Latin letters, And thou in good pot paper ne'er didst fail

To answer them; so are you neither debtors, But sympathize in all, save when thou drinkest Thou makest a crab-tree face, shakest head, and winkest. Last, to thy book, the cordial of sad minds, Or rather cullis of our Od-comb-cock, Sodden in travel, which the critic finds

The best restorer next your Venice smocke. This book who scorns to buy or on it look, May he at sessions erave and want his book.

Explicit INIGO JONES.

Blackness, acted, or rather, as the poet himself says, personated before the Court at Whitehall, on Twelfth Night, 1605. For the character of the piece and the extent of the architect's labours, we must have recourse to the poet. We are little changed-we are pleased with what pleased our ancestors-we love pomp and pageantry, and plays addressed to the eye rather than to the understanding.

"For the scene," says Jonson, "was drawn, a landscape consisting of small woods, and here and there a void place filled with huntings; which falling, an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth as if it flowed to the land, raised with waves which seemed to move, and in some places the billows to break, as imitating that orderly disorder which is common in nature. In front of this sea were placed six Tritons, in moving and sprightly actions; their upper parts human save that their hairs were blue, as partaking of the sea colourtheir desinent parts fish, mounted above their heads, and all varied in disposition. From their backs were borne out certain light pieces of taffata, as if carried by the wind, and their music made out of wreathed shells. Behind these a pair of sea-maids, for song, were as conspicuously seated; between which two great sea-horses as big as the life put forth themselves, the one mounting aloft and writhing his head from the other; upon their backs Oceanus and Niger were advanced. Oceanus presented in a human form, the colour of his flesh blue, and shadowed with a robe of sea-green; his head gray and horned, as he is represented by the ancients, his beard of the like mixed colour; he

was garlanded with sea-grass, and in his hand a trident. Niger in form and colour of an Ethiop; his hair and rare beard curled, shadowed with a blue and bright mantle; his front, neck, and wrists adorned with pearl, and crowned with an artificial wreath of cane and paper rush. These induced the masquers, which were twelve nymphs, Negroes and the daughters of Niger, attended by so many of the Oceaniæ, which were their light-bearers.

"The masquers were placed in a great concave shell, like mother of pearl, curiously made to move on those waters, and rise with the billow; the top thereof was stuck with a cheveron of lights, which indented to the proportion of the shell, struck a glorious beam upon them as they were seated one above another, so that they were all seen, but in an extravagant order. On sides of the shell did swim six huge sea monsters, varied in their shapes and dispositions, bearing on their backs the twelve torch bearers who were planted there in several graces, so as the backs of some were seen, some in purple or side, others in face, and all having their lights burning out of whilks or murex shells. The attire of the masquers was alike in all; the colours, azure and silver, but returned on the top with a scroll and antique dressing of feathers and jewels, interlaced with ropes of pearl. And for the front, ear, neck, and wrists, the ornament was of the most choice and orient pearl, but setting off from the black. For the light-bearers, sea-green, waved about the skirts with gold and silver; their hair loose and flowing, garlanded with sea-grass, and that stuck with branches of coral. These thus presented; the scene behind seemed a vast

sea, and united with this that flowed forth, from the termination or horizon of which, (being the head of the state, which was placed in the upper end of the hall,) was drawn by the lines of perspective, the whole work shooting downwards from the eye, which decorum made it more conspicuous, and caught the eye afar off with a wondering beauty, to which was added an obscure and cloudy night-piece that made the whole set off. So much for the bodily part, which was of Master Inigo Jones's design and art.”

On these scenes Jones employed his pencil as a painter, as well as exercised his fancy in embodying forth the maritime progeny described by the dramatist. Was it to these, or to his attempts in landscape, that Vandyke alluded, when he talked of the "boldness, softness, sweetness, and sureness of his touches?" the commendation cannot well be applied to architecture.

The Masque of Hymen, performed in 1606, was a celebration of "the auspicious marriage union between Robert, Earl of Essex, and Lady Frances, daughter of the most noble Earl of Suffolk." The marriage was splendid, but the ending was shame and guilt. Who has not heard or read of the lovely and worthless Countess of Essex, the guilty Earl of Somerset, and the atrocious murder of Sir Thomas Overbury? All the youth and beauty of the court mingled in the pageant of this famous masque. Jonson, who spoke with much freedom of these works, calls it an exquisite performance. "There was not wanting," he observes, "either in riches, or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rap

ture of music. Only the envy was, that it lasted not still, or, now it is past, cannot by imagination, much less description, be recovered to a part of that spirit with which it glided by." The dresses of the young noblemen who performed were a glittering mixture of Greek and Asiatic, all cloth of silver, cloth of gold, with bushels of pearls and precious stones and Persian crowns on their heads. Our ladies love splendid dresses; but in their best attire they would look like shepherd-maidens compared with the magnificence of their great great grandmothers.

It was well, on the whole, for the fame of the architect, that he was companion to the poet: through the latter we are made acquainted with his merits in the invention of those courtly fancies; and learn, that he who designed Whitehall excelled in the dresses of dramatic divinities--clouds and sunshine-mountains and seas. We see also that he made temples worthy of his gods; and that the knights and noble ladies of the masques met and conversed under classic porticos. Those painted buildings prepared the minds of the princes and nobles for more substantial imitations of Grecian and Roman art; and Jones omitted no opportunity of introducing them into the scenery of his masques. We know not what kind of wild architecture he used in the celebrated masque of Queens, in which the witches prepare their cauldron, and sing the infernal lyric, descriptive of the atrocious ingredients. The artist astonished the court by exhibiting a hall smoaking and flaming," from whence," says Jonson," these witches, with a kind of hollow and infernal music, came forth. The device of