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for the contrast, the number, and the perfection of its characters, and for, the neatness and justice of its plot; and, perhaps, in no effort of the comic muse are these two excellencies so admirably combined. To examine the characters in their proper order. Old Knowell is a fine picture of the sententious gravity of a discreet old age. Weaned from the gaieties of the world, from idle poetry-that fruitless and unprofitable art," he contemns all that does not tend to worldly thrift; and with all the inconsistency of changed opinions allows, in a breath, himself to have had the very pursuits in his youth, the propriety of which he now denies in his son. He breaks open a letter directed to his son, and finding in it some raillery of himself, his self-love magnifies the freedom of his son's manners to licentiousness. În the next scene, we are introduced to the witty Brainworm, a character of infinite jest, in a manner peculiarly appropriate, and which gives us a hint of the shrewdness he subsequently displays.

E. Knowell. Did he open it, say'st thou ?

Brainw. Yes, o' my word, sir, and read the contents.

E. Know. That scarce contents me.-What countenance, pr'ythee, made he i' the reading of it?-Was he angry or pleas'd? Brainw. Nay, sir, I saw him not read it, nor open it, I assure

your worship.

E. Know. No? how know'st thou then that he did either? Brainw. Marry, sir, because he charg'd me on my life to tell nobody that he open'd it-which, unless he had done, he would never fear to have it reveal'd.

The wits of this play are of the first class. Wellbred, in particular, bears the native stamp of a gentleman in his manners and conversation, and may be a proof to us that true politeness and generosity of breeding is not a matter founded on the observance of mere daily custom; for a character of this description could not be supposed unpolished in the most brilliant modern drawing-room. Next have we the two gulls. There is but one instance of the gradation of folly superior to this in the language-we mean the incomparable one in the Merry Wives of Windsor, where fathomless depth is deepened from Shallow to Slender, and from Slender to his man Simple. Here, however, the nicety of humour is most exquisitely preserved. Master Matthew is a town gull; the objects of his vanity are no less than,-his own poetry, his gallantry, his keeping company with the better sort: he is evidently an individual of some consequence to himself, and he imagines he hath the parts and appurtenances of a gallant: he hath his humours

of melancholy, and times for poetic invention: he is the natural link between a Bobadil and a Stephen; a fool, half transformed into a coxcomb; a grub, with one of its wings. Master Stephen has yet some time to crawl, and sighingly to look forward to this pre-eminence: he "had as leive as an angel, he could swear as well as that gentleman:"-his jest is, stealing a cloak-his firmness, buying a bad sword against his cousin's advice-his courage, telling the man who has cheated him, that " he is a rascal under his favour."

A braggart is a character that the whole world has delighted to cudgel with wordy and with wooden weapons. It is a kind of safe revenge, which this most magnanimous world takes upon those who have more imagination than heart-whose minds give their bodies the slip, and act deeds in their high fantasy, to which the clay that confines them denies corporeal birth. He who could plan, he who could, by his special rules, his punto, his reverso, his stoccata, and the like, undertake the challenge and defeat of forty thousand men, is destined by his malignant star to be the despised and confounded patient of a bastinado. Bobadil is the prince of conceit; the very obscure poverty of his lodging is to prevent too great resort; his science of defence is the light, and his courage the fire, of the martial world, while his oaths are the very conversation of art military and travelled boldness. If the world would good-naturedly take the character from the idea of its fanciful and creative possessor, this is Bobadil: but it is impertinent enough to break in upon his ideal grandeur, and enviously to reduce him to the feelings of inglorious frailty. A warrant, that unpoetical, that unwarlike, that anti-romantic revenge, is the last resort of poor Bobadil; and the salve for his wounded honour is the witchcraft and fascination which rendered him patient under his sufferings. The name of Downright speaks for itself: he is the very opposite of the airy "butcher of a silk button"-a matter-of-fact cudgellist, neither indulging in aught ideal himself, nor allowing it in others; one to whom " a rhime is worse than cheese or a bagpipe." He is no jocund companion of his brother Wellbred, and no sympathetic confidant of his brotherin-law Kitely's jealous fears; his remedies are uniform plain words, followed up by unequivocal actions. In this respect he is precisely contrasted with Kitely: jealousy forces his very speeches askance, and a hidden purport peers above the apparent one in every inconstant action.

"No, Thomas, I dare take thy word;

But if thou wilt swear, do as thou think'st good,
I am resolv'd without it-at thy pleasure.

Cash. By my soul's safety then, sir, I protest

My tongue shall ne'er take knowledge of a word
Deliver'd me in nature of your trust.

Kitely. It is too much, these ceremonies need not;
I know thy faith to be as firm as rock.

Thomas, come hither, near, we cannot be

Too private in this business-So it is-
(Now he has sworn, I dare the safelier venture)
I have of late, by divers observations—

(But whether his oath can bind him, yea or no?
Being not taken lawfully? ha! say you,

I will ask council ere I do proceed ;)
Thomas, it will be now too long to stay,

I'll spy some fitter time soon-or to-morrow."

In no instance is the passion of jealousy brought so justly within the province of the comic muse as in this play. Kitely's is of the exact kind likely to be felt by a merchant; it is an interruption to him in his business; no artificial dignity interposes to render it sentimental, and there is a kind of quaint order in it which denies a gentlemanly luxury in the feeling. The humour of Cob, the water-bearer, is obsolete: his pathetic address to his herring may have been ludicrous in those days; in these, the gallery would laugh, the pit would stare, and the boxes remain in their usual indifference.-Cash is the commonplace inhabitant of a counting-house.-Roger Formal, the justice's man, answers to his name as exactly and precisely as he would were he alive to perform his response to a volunteer muster-roll. From the latter idea only, can we frame any comparison for his ludicrous situation, when, awaking from a drunken sleep, he finds himself invested with military paraphernalia, and wedged into a coat of mail. But there is a tit-bit of the eccentric reserved for the close of the play; nothing but the various, the quick-spirited Justice Clement was fit to dispose of the pretensions of the parties whose oddities came before him in their most humourous shape.

"He is a city magistrate, a justice here, an excellent good lawyer, and a good scholar; but the only mad merry old fellow in Europe. E. Knowell. * They say he will commit a man for taking the wall of his horse.

*

Wellbred. Ay, or wearing his cloak on one shoulder, or serving of God-any thing, indeed, if it come in the way of his humour."

He may almost be pictured by his character; hawk-eyed, portly, and healthy. If Justice Clement had a living original, the city magistrates of these days are a dull degenerate race indeed.

A general fault of Jonson, and indeed of some of his cotemporaries, is the want of female interest in their plays. Not only the difficulties of performing those parts rendered it the author's interest to prevent their being too prominent, but there is another cause in the want of prominence of character in the originals themselves, whose every-day actions, being the proper models of the delineation of comedy, need the absurdities of more modern times and fashions, to bring them generally within the scope of the dramatist of humour. Hence the very few strictly comic female characters written at that period, and hence the fact, that all who are properly stiled so, are the possessors of native wit rather than peculiar humour, and are rather our friends, with whom we converse, than objects of our laughter. They are possessed of the indelible humours of their sex; not the absurd and affected peculiarities which distinguish modern life, and give a false and vitiated zest to modern comedy. In the next play, we shall have to notice one of the very few fine ladies which the old drama has admitted into its precincts. Dame Kitely is a mere woman, easily persuaded and easily dissuaded, and that is the sum of her character; but there are some hints at domestic attention and kindness, which give us no unamiable picture of the manners of those days-and Mrs. Bridget's candid love at first sight, is quite in harmony with the old frankness. Perhaps marriage then, though more in the hands of friends than now, was less a matter of bargain and sale; and the happiness of which historical records give us frequent instances, are often the rewards of the last act of filial duty. In those times, Doctor Johnson's idea of marrying, by order of the Lord Chancellor, a properly qualified helpmate, would hardly have been ridiculous, and its effects perhaps seldom unhappy. The catastrophe of the play is truly just and perfect the gay Ned Knowell and his amiable Mrs. Bridget are married; Kitely and his wife reconciled; the sign of a soldier, and the verse-making Master Matthew, are condemned to nightly penance in an outer court, in custody of the warlike Roger Formal; Master Stephen has a knife and fork in the buttery; and Brainworm, whose disguises must have required a Matthews, is the chosen companion of the merry Justice.

This play is, from the number and excellence of its characters, the vivacity, interest, perspicuity, and completeness of its plot, better adapted for representation than any comedy of its time; perhaps, with very few exceptions, than any of its successors. The secret in its want of attraction is not altogether in the antiquity of its manners; these might be rendered much more amusing, by the research of those who should undertake their representation: but to the actor, the scholar and the man of industry must be added to complete the performance of

any of Ben Jonson's characters. Single instances are not sufficient to uphold and demonstrate its various and contrasted merits: beautiful flowers become wild when neglected, and disfigure what they should adorn. Garrick and Cooke in Kitely, and Knight in Master Stephen, are however among the illustrious few who have felt and elucidated the beauties of their author.

To produce instances of wit and humour from a play which consists of little else, were to disgrace the performance ;-and the sentiment, which flows in a noble course throughout the part of the elder Knowell, is a fine specimen of Jonson's right judgment. To sum its merits, we must confess our incapacity to do justice to them, and refer the reader to the work, for its

own comment.

Who is so patient of this impious world,

That he can check his spirit or rein his tongue?
Or who hath such a dead unfeeling sense,
That heaven's horrid thunders cannot wake?
To see the earth crackt with the weight of sin,
Hell gaping under us, and o'er our heads
Black rav'nous ruin with her sail-stretch'd wings
Ready to sink us down and cover us :—
Who can behold such prodigies as these,
And have his lips seal'd up? Not I; my soul
Was never ground into such oily colours,
To flatter vice and daub iniquity;
But (with an armed and resolved hand)
I'll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth.

and with a whip of steel,
Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs.
I fear no mood stampt in a private brow,
When I am pleas'd t'unmask a public vice.
I fear no strumpet's drugs nor ruffian's stab,
Were I dispos'd to say they're all corrupt.
I fear no courtier's frown, should I applaud
The easy flexure of his supple hams.-
Tut, these are so innate and popular,
That drunken custom would not shame to laugh
(In scorn) at him, that he should dare to tax 'em;
And yet, not one of these but knows his works,
Knows what damnation is, the devil, and hell:
Yet hourly they persist, grow rank in sin,
Puffing their souls away in perj'rous air,

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