instead of men,-wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.

Nota bene. All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether different genius of the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,-though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw..

S

"THE ALCHEMIST.”

A

ACT I. sc. 2. Face's speech :

"Will take his oath o' the Greek Xenophon,
If need be, in his pocket."

NOTHER reading is "Testament."

Probably, the meaning is that intending to give false evidence, he carried a Greek Xenophon to pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury-as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book. Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech :—

"I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:

Down is too hard."

Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century!

“CATILINE'S CONSPIRACY."

A

FONDNESS for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that the Catiline has been rated so low. Take it and Sejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays.

We

might as rationally expect the excitement of the Vicar of Wakefield from Goldsmith's History of England, as that of Lear, Othello, &c., from the Sejanus or Catiline.

Act i. sc. 4.

"Cat. Sirrah, what ail you?

Pag. Nothing.

(He spies one of his boys not answer.)

Best. Somewhat modest.

Cat. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot," &c.

This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words "throat opens," should be removed back so as to follow the words " on this part of the house," in the speech of Catiline soon after the

entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.

Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech :—

"He is but a new fellow,

An inmate here in Rome, as Catiline calls him."

A "lodger" would have been a happier imitation of the inquilinus of Sallust.

Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:

"Can these or such be any aids to us," &c.

What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his!

"BARTHOLOMEW FAIR."

INDUCTION. Scrivener's speech :

"If there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he says, nor a nest of antiques?"

THEM

THE best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men's minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fietcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.

Act ii. sc. 3.—

"Just. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe of booty, boy, a cut purse."

Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting "booty" for "beauty" in Falstaff's speech, Henry IV. part i. act i. sc. 2. "Let not us, &c. ?"