by Truewit, the author's favourite, discover great knowledge and shrewdness of observation, mixed with the acuteness of malice, and approach to the best style of comic dialogue. But I must refer to the play itself for them.

The Fox, or Volpone, is his best play. It is prolix and improbable, but intense and powerful. It is written con amore. It is made up of cheats and dupes, and the author is at home among them. He shews his hatred of the one and contempt for the other, and makes them set one another off to great advantage. There are several striking dramatic contrasts in this play, where the Fox lies perdue to watch his prey, where Mosca is the dextrous go-between outwitting his gulls, his employer, and himself, and where each of the gaping legacy-hunters, the lawyer, the merchant, and the miser, eagerly occupied with the ridiculousness of the other's pretensions, is blind only to the absurdity of his own: but the whole is worked up too mechanically, and our credulity overstretched at last revolts into scepticism, and our attention overtasked flags into drowsiness. This play seems formed on the model of Plautus, in unity of plot and interest; and old Ben, in emulating his classic model, appears to have done his best. There is the same caustic unsparing severity in it as in his other works. His patience is tried to the utmost. His words drop gall.

'Hood an ass with reverend purple,

So you can hide his too ambitious ears,
And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.'

The scene between Volpone, Mosca, Voltore, Corvino, and Corbaccio, at the outset, will shew the dramatic power in the conduct of this play, and will be my justification in what I have said of the literal tenaciousness (to a degree that is repulsive) of the author's imaginary descriptions.

Every Man in his Humour, is a play well-known to the public. This play acts better than it reads. The pathos in the principal character, Kitely, is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.' There is, however, a certain good sense, discrimination, or logic of passion in the part, which affords excellent hints for an able actor, and which, if properly pointed, gives it considerable force on the stage. Bobadil is the only actually striking character in the play, and the real hero of the piece. His well-known proposal for the pacification of Europe, by killing some twenty of them, each his man a day, is as good as any other that has been suggested up to the present moment. His extravagant affectation, his blustering and cowardice, are an entertaining medley; and his final defeat and

exposure, though exceedingly humorous, are the most affecting part of the story. Brain-worm is a particularly dry and abstruse character. We neither know his business nor his motives: his plots are as intricate as they are useless, and as the ignorance of those he imposes upon is wonderful. This is the impression in reading it. Yet from the bustle and activity of this character on the stage, the changes of dress, the variety of affected tones and gipsy jargon, and the limping affected gestures, it is a very amusing theatrical exhibition. The rest, Master Matthew, Master Stephen, Cob and Cob's wife, were living in the sixteenth century. That is all we all know of them. But from the very oddity of their appearance and behaviour, they have a very droll and even picturesque effect when acted. It seems a revival of the dead. We believe in their existence when we see them. As an example of the power of the stage in giving reality and interest to what otherwise would be without it, I might mention the scene in which Brain-worm praises Master Stephen's leg. The folly here is insipid from its being seemingly carried to an excess, till we see it ; and then we laugh the more at it, the more incredible we thought it before.

Bartholomew Fair is chiefly remarkable for the exhibition of odd humours and tumbler's tricks, and is on that account amusing to read once.-The Alchymist is the most famous of this author's comedies, though I think it does not deserve its reputation. It contains all that is quaint, dreary, obsolete, and hopeless in this once-famed art, but not the golden dreams and splendid disappointments. We have the mere circumstantials of the sublime science, pots and kettles, aprons and bellows, crucibles and diagrams, all the refuse and rubbish, not the essence, the true elixir vita. There is, however, one glorious scene between Surly and Sir Epicure Mammon, which is the finest example I know of dramatic sophistry, or of an attempt to prove the existence of a thing by an imposing description of its effects; but compared with this, the rest of the play is a caput mortuum. scene I allude to is the following:

"Mammon. Come on, Sir. Now, you set your foot on shore,

In Novo Orbe; here's the rich Peru:

And there within, Sir, are the golden mines,

Great Solomon's Ophir! He was sailing to 't

Three years, but we have reached it in ten months.

This is the day wherein, to all my friends,

I will pronounce the happy word, BE RICH;
This day you shall be Spectatissimi.

You shall no more deal with the hollow dye,
Or the frail card, *

*

* *

*

* * *

The

You shall start up young viceroys,

And have your punks and punketees, my Surly,
And unto thee, I speak it first, BE RICH.

Where is my Subtle, there? Within, ho!

Face. [within] Sir, he'll come to you, by and by.
Mam. That is his Firedrake,

His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals,

Till he firk nature up in her own centre.

You are not faithful, Sir. This night I'll change
All that is metal in my house to gold :

And early in the morning, will I send

To all the plumbers and the pewterers

And buy their tin and lead up; and to Lothbury,
For all the copper.

Surly. What, and turn that too?

Mam. Yes, and I'll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall, And make them perfect Indies! You admire now ? Surly. No, faith.

Mam. But when you see th' effects of the great medicine, Of which one part projected on a hundred

Of Mercury, or Venus, or the Moon,

Shall turn it to as many of the Sun;

Nay, to a thousand, so ad infinitum ;
You will believe me.

Surly. Yes, when I see't, I will—
Mam. Ha! why?

Do you
think I fable with you? I assure you,
He that has once the flower of the Sun,
The perfect ruby, which we call Elixir,
Not only can do that, but, by its virtue,
Can confer honour, love, respect, long life;
Give safety, valour, yea, and victory,

To whom he will. In eight and twenty days,
I'll make an old man of fourscore, a child.
Surly. No doubt; he's that already.

Mam. Nay, I mean,

Restore his years, renew him, like an eagle,

To the fifth age; make him get sons and daughters,

Young giants; as our philosophers have done,

The ancient patriarchs, afore the flood,

But taking, once a week, on a knife's point,
The quantity of a grain of mustard of it;

Become stout Marses, and beget young Cupids.

*

*

*

You are incredulous.

*

Surly. Faith, I have a humour,

*

I would not willingly be gull'd. Your stone
Cannot transmute me.

Mam. Pertinax Surly,

Will you believe antiquity? records?

I'll shew you a book where Moses and his sister,

And Solomon have written of the art;

Ay, and a treatise penn'd by Adam

Surly. How!

Mam. Of the philosopher's stone, and in High Dutch.
Surly. Did Adam write, Sir, in High Dutch?
Mam. He did;

Which proves it was the primitive tongue.

*

*

*

*

*

[Enter Face, as a servant. How now !

Do we succeed? Is our day come, and holds it?
Face. The evening will set red upon you, Sir:
You have colour for it, crimson; the red ferment
Has done his office: three hours hence prepare you
To see projection.

Mam. Pertinax, my Surly,

Again I say to thee, aloud, Be rich.

This day thou shalt have ingots; and to-morrow
Give lords the affront.

*

* * * Where's thy master?

Face. At his prayers, Sir, he;

Good man, he's doing his devotions
For the success.

Mam. Lungs, I will set a period

To all thy labours; thou shalt be the master

Of my seraglio.

For I do mean

I will have all my beds blown up, not stuft:
Down is too hard; and then, mine oval room
Fill'd with such pictures as Tiberius took
From Elephantis, and dull Aretine
But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses
Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse
And multiply the figures, as I walk.
I'll have of perfume, vapoured about the room
To lose ourselves in; and my baths, like pits
To fall into: from whence we will come forth,
And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.
Is it arriv'd at ruby? Where I spy

A wealthy citizen, or a rich lawyer,

*

Have a sublimed pure wife, unto that fellow

I'll send a thousand pound to be my cuckold.
Face. And I shall carry it?

Mam. No. I'll have no bawds.

* My mists

But fathers and mothers. They will do it best,
Best of all others. And my flatterers

Shall be the pure and gravest of divines

That I can get for money.

We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the medicine.
My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells,

Dishes of agat set in gold, and studded

With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies.
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camel's heels
Boil'd in the spirit of Sol, and dissolv'd pearl,
Apicius' diet, 'gainst the epilepsy;

And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamond and carbuncle.

My footboys shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons,
Knots, godwits, lampreys; I myself will have
The beards of barbels serv'd instead of salads;
Oil'd mushrooms; and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,

Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce;

For which I'll say unto my cook, There's gold,
Go forth, and be a knight.

Face. Sir, I'll go look
A little, how it heightens.
Mam. Do. My shirts

I'll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light,
As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment,

It shall be such as might provoke the Persian,
Were he to teach the world riot anew.

My gloves of fishes and birds' skins, perfum'd
With gums of Paradise and eastern air.

Surly. And do you think to have the stone with this?
Mam. No, I do think t' have all this with the stone.
Surly. Why, I have heard, he must be homo frugi,
A pious, holy, and religious man,

One free from mortal sin, a very virgin.

Mam. That makes it, Sir, he is so; but I buy it.
My venture brings it me. He, honest wretch,
A notable, superstitious, good soul,

Has worn his knees bare, and his slippers bald,
With prayer and fasting for it, and, Sir, let him
Do it alone, for me, still; here he comes;
Not a profane word afore him: 'tis poison.'

Act 11. scene 1.

I have only to add a few words on Beaumont and Fletcher. Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, the Chances, and the Wild Goose Chase, the original of the Inconstant, are superior in style and execution to any thing of Ben Jonson's. They are, indeed, some of the best comedies on the stage; and one proof that they are so, is, that they still hold possession of it. They shew the utmost alacrity of in