has been observed in the musical circles of Weatherbury and its vicinity that this melody, at the end of three quarters of an hour of thunderous footing, still possesses more stimulative properties for the heel and toe than the majority of other dances at their first opening. "The Soldier's Joy" has, too, an additional charm, in being so admirably adapted to the tambourine aforesaid—no mean instrument in the hands of a performer who understands the proper convulsions, spasms, St. Vitus's dances, and fearful frenzies necessary when exhibiting its tones in their highest perfection.

The immortal tune ended, a fine D D rolling forth from the bass-viol with the sonorousness of a cannonade, and Gabriel delayed his entry no longer. He avoided Bathsheba, and got as near as possible to the platform, where Sergeant Troy was now seated, drinking brandy-andwater, though the others drank without exception cider and ale. Gabriel could not easily thrust himself within speaking distance of the sergeant, and he sent a message, asking him to come down for a moment. The sergeant said he could not attend.

"Will you tell him, then," said Gabriel, "that I only stepped ath'art to say that a heavy rain is sure to fall soon, and that something should be done to protect the ricks?"

“Mr. Troy says it will not rain,” returned the messenger," and he cannot stop to talk to you about such fidgets." In juxtaposition with Troy, Oak had a melancholy tendency to look like a candle beside gas, and ill at ease, he went out again, thinking he would go home; for, under the circumstances, he had no heart for the scene in the barn. At the door he paused for a moment; Troy was speaking: "Friends, it is not only the Harvest Home that we are celebrating to-night; but this is also a Wedding Feast. A short time ago I had the happiness to lead to the altar this lady, your mistress, and not until now have we been able to give any public flourish to the event in Weatherbury. That it may be thoroughly well done, and that every man may go happy to bed, I have ordered to be brought here some bottles of brandy and kettles of hot water. A treblestrong goblet will be handed round to each guest." Bathsheba put her hand upon his arm, and, with upturned pale face, said imploringly, "No- don't give it to them pray don't, Frank. It will only do them harm: they have had enough of everything."

"Trewwe don't wish for no more, thank ye," said

one or two.

66

"Pool!" said the sergeant contemptuously, and raised his voice as if lighted up by a new idea. Friends," he said, "we'll send the women-folk home! 'Tis time they were in bed. Then we cockbirds will have a jolly carouse to ourselves. If any of the men show the white feather, let them look elsewhere for a winter's work."

Bathsheba indignantly left the barn, followed by all the women and children. The musicians, not looking upon themselves as "company," slipped quietly away to their spring wagon and put in the horse. Thus Troy and the men on the farm were left sole occupants of the place. Oak, not to appear unnecessarily disagreeable, stayed a little while; then he, too, arose and quietly took his departure, followed by a friendly oath from the sergeant for not staying to a second round of grog.

Gabriel proceeded towards his home. In approaching the door, his toe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and distended, like a boxing-glove. It was a large toad humbly travelling across the path. Oak took it up, thinking it might be better to kill the creature to save it from pain; but finding it uninjured, he placed it again among the grass. He knew what this direct message from the Great Mother meant. And soon came another.

When he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged across it. Oak's eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other side, where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which bad come indoors to-night for reasons of its own. It was Nature's second way of hinting to him that he was to prepare for foul weather.

Oak sat down meditating for nearly an hour. During this time two black spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses, promenaded the ceiling, ultimately dropping to the floor. This reminded him that if there was one class of manifestation on this matter that he thoroughly understood, it was the instincts of sheep. He left the room, ran across two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a hedge, and looked over among them.

They were crowded close together on the other side, around some furze bushes, and the first peculiarity observ able was that, on the sudden appearance of Oak's head over the fence, they did not stir or run away. They had now a terror of something greater than their terror of man. But this was not the most noteworthy feature: they were all grouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception, were towards that half of the horizon from which the storm threatened. There was an inner circle closely huddled, and outside these they radiated wider apart, the pattern formed by the flock as a whole being not unlike a vandyked lace collar, to which the clump of furze-bushes stood in the position of a wearer's neck.

This was enough to reestablish him in his original opinion. He knew now that he was right, and that Troy was wrong. Every voice in nature was unanimous in bespeaking change. But two distinct translations attached to these dumb expressions. Apparently there was to be a thunder-storm, and afterwards a cold, continuous rain. The creeping things seemed to know all about the latter rain, but little of the interpolated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the thunder-storm and nothing of the latter rain.

This complication of weathers, being uncommon, was all the more to be feared. Oak returned to the stack yard. All was silent here, and the conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky. There were five wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley. The wheat when threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the barley at least forty. Their value to Bathsheba, and indeed to anybody, Oak mentally estimated by the following simple calculation:

66

Seven hundred and fifty pounds in the divinest form that money can wear that of necessary food for man and beast should the risk be run of deteriorating this bulk of corn to less than half its value, because of the instability of a woman? Never, if I can prevent it!" said Gabriel. Such was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him. But man, even to himself, is a cryptographic page having an ostensible writing, and another between the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: "I will help, to my last effort, the woman I have loved so dearly."

eye.

He went back to the barn to endeavor to obtain assistance for covering the ricks that very night. All was silent within, and he would have passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had not a dim light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish whiteness outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors. Gabriel looked in. An offensive picture met his The candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched. Many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank, grease dropping from them upon the floor. Here, under the table, and leaning against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except the perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the workfolk, the hair of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops and brooms. In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure of Sergeant Troy, leaning back in a chair. Coggan was on his back, with his mouth open, buzzing forth snores, as were several others; the united breathings of the horizontal assemblage forming a subdued roar like London from a distance. Joseph Poorgrass was curled round in the fashion of a hedge

hog, apparently in attempts to present the least possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him was dimly visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury. The glasses and cups still stood upon the table, a waterjug being overturned, from which a small rill, after tracing its course with marvellous precision down the centre of the long table, fell into the neck of the unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip, like the dripping of a stalactite in a cave.

Gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two exceptions, comprised all the able-bodied men upon the farm. He saw at once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the next morning, he must save them with his own hands.

A faint " ting-ting" resounded from under Coggan's wai-tcoat. It was Coggan's watch striking the hour of two. Oak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook the rough thatching of the homestead, and shook him. The shaking was without effect.

Gabriel shouted in his ear, "Where's your thatchingbeetle and rick-stick and spars?"

"Under the staddles," said Moon mechanically, with the unconscious promptness of a medium.

Gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl. He then went to Susan Tall's husband. "Where's the key of the grinary?”

No answer. The question was repeated, with the same result. To be shouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to Susan Tall's husband than to Matthew Moon. Oak flung down Tall's head into the corner again and turned away.

To be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and demoralizing termination to the evening's entertainment. Sergeant Troy had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should be the bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly liked to be so unmannerly under the circumstances. Having from their youth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider or mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all with extraordinary uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour.

Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that wilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt within him as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless.

He put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be endangered, closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious skep, and went again into the lone night. A hot breeze, as if breathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the globe, fanned him from the south, while directly opposite in the north rose a grim, misshapen body of cloud, in the very teeth of the wind. unnaturally did it rise that one could fancy it to be lifted by machinery from below. Meanwhile the faint cloudlets had flown biek into the southeast corner of the sky, as if in terror of the large cloud, like a young brood gazed in upon by some monster.

So

Going on to the village, Oak flung a small stone against the window of Laban Tall's bedroom, expecting Susan to open it; but nobody stirred. He went round to the back door, which had been left unfastened for Laban's entry, and passed in to the foot of the staircase.

"Mrs. Tall, I've come for the key of the granary, to get at the rick-cloths," said Oak, in a stentorian voice. "Is that you?" said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.. "Yes," said Gabriel.

"Come along to bed, do, you draw-latching roguekeeping a body awake like this!"

-

"It isn't Laban — 'tis Gabriel Oak. I want the key of the granary."

"Gabriel! What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban for?"

"I didn't. I thought you meant'

--

Gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the tirade. Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen dragging four large water-proof cov erings across the yard, and soon two of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug two cloths to each. Two hundred pounds were secured. Three wheat-stacks remained open, and there were no more cloths. Oak looked under the staddles and found a fork. He mounted the third pile of wealth and begun operating, adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one over the other; and, in addition, filling the interstices with the material of some untied sheaves.

So far all was well. By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba's property in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided always that there was not much wind.

Next came the barley. This it was only possible to protect by systematic thatching. Time went on, and the moon vanished, not to reappear. It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war. The night had a baggard look, like a sick thing; and there came finally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death. And now nothing was heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which drove in the spars, and the rustle of the thatch in the intervals.

(To be continued.)

BEN JONSON.

"IIE is a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth); a dissembler of all parts which reign in hin; a bragger of some goods that he wanteth; thinketh nothing well but what either he himself or some of his friends or countrymen have said or done; he is passionately kind and angry; careless either to gain or keep; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself. For any religion, as being versed in both; interpreteth best sayings and deeds often to the worst. Oppressed with phantasy, which hath ever mastered his reason, a general disease in many poets. His inventions are smooth and easy; but above all, he excelleth in translation."

Such is the character of "Rare Ben Jonson," given to him by the gentle Drummond of Hawthornden, after his most unfortunate visit; a visit nearly the most unlucky ever known, leading to nothing but abuse and misunderstanding. What Drummond said of Jonson behind his back, immediately after writing to him, "There is nothing I wish more than to be in the calendar of them that love you," we have seen above. Drummond having ventured to give his opinion on Jonson. Gifford finds it necessary to vilify Drummond by calling him every name he could lay his tongue to. He, the gentle Drummond, was a " a bird of prey;" he "sought to injure a man whom he had decoyed under his roof; "" he was of a very depraved mind;" and so on, scolding Drummond and others on Ben Jonson's behalf to that extent that the most incautious reader, from sheer instinct, and without inquiry, takes part against Ben Jonson, and not for him. Scolding is an utter mistake. When a woman takes to scolding, her intimates know that, if she does not scold about one thing she will about another, and so no one takes any practical action with regard to it. When a critic or biographer takes to the same method of action, he is rever much attended to; and so it comes that though ful people, reading such a biography as that of Gifford's, are generally sure to seek others.

With regard to Ben Jonson's life and character, we shall be necessarily very brief; we shall only, so to speak, remind our readers of what they doubtless knew before. Our object is to see what is the value of those works which this rough and uncouth man left behind him. Personally one of the best abused men who ever lived, he has come down to us with a reputation almost next to that of Shakespeare.

He was a Scotchman, though he never was but once in Scotland, and then he had far better have kept away. His grandfather was a man of gentle repute in Annandale, but went to Carlisle. His father was a minister of the gospel, apparently a Puritan, for he was deprived of his property under Queen Mary. At the time during which we are writing, there is a claim for the peerage of Annandale by a Johnstone, who is evidently a clansman of the great Ben. The Johnstones have made no small mark in Border history, but they will possibly be like the Tichbornes, best known to posterity through the most eccentric member of their family. No family on the face of the earth have done better for the parent state, in their way, than the Johnstones, but they have not been so successful as the Campbells; and their greatest man is certainly the remarkable Ben.

Born in 1574, after his father's death, he entirely missed that moulding which a man can only get from a father; a moulding which is as much more valuable than the forming of a mother as the stamping of a guinea is than the casting of a coiner. A father leaves a much more certain mark upon his son than the best of mothers can. The merest common-sense, the most ordinary knowledge of the world, proves that fact so clearly that it is hardly worth ink to write it down. At the turning-point of every great man's life occur things which he could never speak to his mother about; if he did, she could not understand him. On the other hand, a father who gains his son's confidence can advise, persuade, and warn. The loss of a good mother is bitter enough, in all conscience. The loss of the one woman who precedes the wife, and who in some points has an authority higher than the wife herself, is irremediable. But the loss of the father, the dear friend, the tender, gentle companion, from whom nothing is concealed; the man who understands you beyond all others; the man in whose broad, kindly bosom you bury secrets of disappointed love, of idleness, of carelessness, of a thousand things, only known to men, and which, while forgiven by the mother, cannot be sympathized with; that loss-the loss of the father - is more than irremediable; we have no word for it; it must pass as nameless.

Jonson had no father. He was, in our opinion, the very man of all others who should have had one. He was essentially a man's man; and there is a curious undercurrent of misogyny in his writings which seems at times as strong as that of Swift. "Why does Nature waste her time in making such things?" he says once. A good father would have given him more experience of the excellence of women than he ever seems to have had; but he sinned in that respect with a large school, which is not quite extinct yet.

While he was a baby his mother married again, so practically he had no mother.. No blame can be attached either to her or to the master bricklayer whom she married, for Jonson had a good private education at a school at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and from thence went to Westminster, to receive a sound classical education under no less a man than the great Camden. Every man who has put pen to paper knows these facts, but no one seems to be able to deduce from them. Ben Jonson had no domestic life; he was a child of the pedagogues; not by any means of Jesuit pedagogues, who carefully excerpt everything objectionable from the classical authors, but of free Protestant schoolmasters, who teach a boy Latin, and turn him into the library with Xenophon, Petronius, Ovid, Virgil, and Juvenal, all ready to his hands. Good people who shiver and shudder at the nameless horrors of "Volpone," must really remember that the child Jonson's first knowledge of the world was gained through books, some of which most certainly would bring the author into serious trouble nowadays, if it were possible to find a publisher for them. It is true that we are carefully trained to read such books now, but it is bad for a lad to do so without the indefinable atmosphere of a pure and intellectual home around him. Jonson had not this; he was a child of the pedagogues, and they are more proud of him than we are. He from the first looked at life through classical spectacles, and we

have the result before us. His tragedy is like Euripides, his comedy like Terence. When he looks straight from his own eyes on what surrounds him, he is invaluable, as giving us a hint of the manners of the times, but he is singularly dull. Of the delicate little touches of domestic life which we find alike in Shakespeare, Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot, and which will make all men love them for all time. he had no knowledge. He lived in books, not in life. He must have known, as we all have, Mrs. Quickly, Rebecca Sharp, Miss Betsy Trotwood, and Aunt Glegg, but he never had the power of seeing them. Characters, to live, must be typical. He is never natural; he would have made Mr. Glegg jealous of Bob Jakin, and would have given us to understand that there was more in the matter than Mrs. Glegg chose to say. He never could keep the juste milieu in fiction; like Victor Hugo he must be on the stilts or in the mud, for his own satisfaction; but unlike Victor Hugo he is utterly incapable of those middle tones, which, when we are laughing heartily at Victor Hugo's worst absurdities, make us put down the book in awe, and revere him like a great man. For example, in the two children playing with the kitten, Eponine says:

"Vois-tu, ma sœur, cette poupée-là est plus amusante que l'autre. Elle remue, elle crie, elle est chaude. Vois-tu, ma sœur, jouons avec. Ce serait ma petite-fille. Je serais une dame. Je viendrais te voir et tu la regarderais. Peu à peu tu verrais ses moustaches, et cela t'étonnerait; et tu me dirais ; Ah! mon Dieu!' et je te dirais: Oui, madame, c'est une pe tite-fille que j'ai comme ca. Les petites-filles sont comme ca à présent.'"

No living man except Victor Hugo could write that, and few dead ones. Certainly not Ben Jonson. Take Dickens again, in one of his most exquisitely nonsensical passages, which we quote, to show that Dickens was Victor Hugo's master in the art of child's babble. The question is, What do sea-side lodging-house keepers do out of the season?

"Whether they pretended to take one another's lodgings, or to open one another's tea caddies for fun? Whether they cut off slices of their own beef and mutton, and made believe that it belonged to somebody else? Whether they played little dramas of life like children do, and said, 'I ought to come and look at your apartments, and you ought to ask two guineas a week too much; and then I ought to say that I must have the rest of the day to think about it, and then you ought to say that another lady and gentleman with no children in family had made a better offer, and that you were just going to take the bill down when you heard the knock.'"

These fancies about children make us laugh as happily and heartily as anything can. The three greatest of our recent writers of prose fiction, in truth, infinitely the best writers of prose we ever had, treat children with an amount of respectful study which would have rather astonished the overrated novelists of the last century. To Ben Jonson they were a sealed book. The question arises, "Was Ben Jonson ever a child himself? Did he ever know much of that domestic life which leaves such a strong imprint on the nature of most men?" If he did not, we are saying more to excuse him on certain points than a thousand infuriated Giffords could do.

He went to St. John's College, Cambridge, for a short time; for how long it is not easy to determine. His mother and his step-father, who had already done all they could for his education, were unable to maintain him in a university career, and he was fetched home to work at the trade of his stepfather. And in the name of confusion, why not? What on earth is there degrading in the matter? There is a certain sort of kid-glove critic to whom the fact seems to be horrible. We can only say that he was much better employed at bricklaying than he was in writing certain parts of his plays. This part of his life seems extremely negative. He was certainly not tutor to Sir Walter Raleigh's boy, because the boy was not born. He did not do a great many other things attributed to him, but he certainly left his trade and went as a soldier to the Low Countries. Here he served one campaign, and then returned to England, his step-father being dead, but his mother still living, Jonson

asked the reason, begins to lie with the volubility of Falstaff, but without a grain of his immortal wit. Bobadil, however, knows a sword when he sees one, and points out to Stephen that the sword he has brought of Brainworm is not worth twopence. While Stephen is vowing vengeance, in comes the irrepressible Brainworm, who coolly confesses the cheat, but so dexterously that S ephen is obliged to accept his apology. He declares himself to young Knowell, and tells him that his father is at his heels. A scene follows, in which Kitely tries to make up his mind to tell his jealous fears to his confidential clerk Card, but he cannot do it. After he is gone out of the house it is filled by the characters to whom he so much objects, and although the plot does not advance, the play is amusing for those who care about antiquarian slang Cob goes to Justice Clement's house, and tells Kitely; his jealousy is once more aroused, and he gets as absurd as Ford, until Cob informs him that there are no ladies. Then, however, he gets worse than ever, because he thinks that the ladies will have come in to the gentlemen, and that he will be in time to catch them. This part of the play is rather poor stuff, at least in most modern eyes. Judging from plays, there was a period in our history, extending over about two hundred years, when the violation of the marriage vow was considered as probable an event as running up milliners' bills unknown to the husband, and when the jealous husband was as ordinary a character on the stage as the careless one is now; but to resume. The merry Justice Clement now appears on the stage a capital character, with which Shakespeare might have done much. Cob comes to him for a warrant against Bobadil for beating hi n, but as Bobadil only did so because Cob abused tobacco, Clement threatens to send him to jail for abusing tobacco. Clement, having sent Cob about his business with a warrant on Bobadil, comforts Knowell about his son, showing him that he is a good young fellow, but, like himself, mirthful.

Then comes a scene between Downright and his sister, Mrs. Kitely. He blames Mrs. Kitely for allowing Wellborn's riotous companions in the house. She defends herself. There is a good scene, in which Mathew, Bobadil, and the other objectionable characters come in, and Downright flings out of the room in disgust at the folly of Mathew's verses, and returns only more infuriated than ever at the fantastic company which is gathered in his sister's house. He abuses his half-brother Wellborn so roundly that there is a furious riot, and they draw on one another. When the servants have come in and everything is perfectly safe, Bob adil is taken with a violent desire to run Downright through the body, and is with dif ficulty prevented. Kitely appears on the cene and the rioters go out. The ladies stand up for young Knowell, particularly Mrs. Kitely. Kitely at once sets him down for her lover. Then the scene changes, for no particular reason, to Cob's house, v here he and his wife exchange some purpose'ess blackguardisms. Here young Knowell tells Wellborn that he loves his sister Bridget, and Wellborn promises that he shall marry her. We come again to old Knowell (Shakespeare ?), and find him with his own servant Brainworm, whom he has again hired in disguise, it will be remembered, not knowing him to be his own groom. The cross-purposes are, of course, very amusing. Brainworm, in his character of Fitzsword, tells old Knowell that his son is to meet a woman at Cob's house. Knowell determines to prevent this. He having gone, Brainworm gets hold of Formal. Justice Clement's clerk, and cheats him. Next we have Bobadil lying furiously with his astonishing plan for killing forty thousand of the enemy every year by the practice of duell ng. He expresses his intention of beating Downright, but on the appearance of that gentleman, turns out to be an arrant coward. Downright beats him, and exit, leaving his cloak. Master Stephen takes it, saying that he will say he bought it. Kitely gets more absurd, and fancies that he is poisoned. Brainworm enters, disguised in the clothes of Formal (Justice Clement's clerk); he gets Kitely to go out on a false errand, and then Wellborn causes him to make an appointment with young Knowell to meet his sister Bridget and himself at the

Tower. Mrs. Kitely hars her husband talking of Cob, and Wellborn persuades her that he has an assignation there. She goes after him; he returns in a rage at having been sent for to Justice Clement's for nothing, and finds her gone. He follows, furious, Wellborn having told him whither she is gone. Then Mathew and Bobadil meet Brainworm disguised as Formal, who tries to get a sum of money out of them for a warrant to arrest Downright, but they have only twopence between them. Mathew gives him his money, and Bobadil his silk stockings.

There is a general rendezvous before Cob's house. Old Knowell comes there after his son, Mrs. Kitely after her husband, and Kitely after his wife. She spies her husband, and flies at him, accusing him of coming there for no good, and calling him every name she can lay her tongue to. He, thinking her a lost woman, tells her so. But the absurdity of the situation lies in the fact that the virtuous and innocent old Knowell is charged by the jealous Kitely as having met his wife there by appointment. They move off to the justices. Meanwhile all kinds of absurdities occur from Stephen having stolen and worn Downright's cloak. Stephen is taken to the justices for th ft. Here all the characters are at last assembled, and the explanations are given, and every one is satisfied. Instead of following the last scene to the end, we will, with the reader's leave, do exactly what most old playgoers do as soon as they see how matters will end, take our hats and go out, leaving the curtain to come down.

We have been purposely prolix over the play for more than one reason. In the first place it was Ben Jonson's first unaided effort, and it made his fortune. In the second place he never really beat it, in our opinion; and in the third, it represents him at his best as a writer of acting comedy. Every Man in his Ilumor" may be the best constructed of all his plays, with the exception of “Bartholomew Fair," that strange medley of farce and of something we do not name now. We see, in spite of the wild lurid effort of " Volpone" and the delicious absurd ty of the "Alchemist," a steady decadence in construction from the first of his plays. His career was very m ch like that of some other authors: he suddenly made a great name, and wrote carelessly; he found that his reputation was waning, and made furious efforts to retrieve it. He tried the styles of other people, as in " Sejanus; "it was no good. He tried to revert into his own first style; that was no good either - it was too late.

"The tender grace of a day that is dead
Shall never come back to me."

In "Every Man out of his Humor," we find some really powerful writing, though apt to grow bombastic. We have (we suppose) the bad taste to admire this passage beyond

measure:

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"Would to Heaven,

In wreck of my misfortunes, I were turned
To some fair water-nymph, that, set upon
The deepest whirlpit of the ravening seas,
Mine adamantine eyes might headlong bale
The iron world to me, and drown it all."

O Rare Ben Jonson, indeed, when you write like that! Cynthia's Revels" and the " Poetaster" bring on one of the greatest quarrels of Jonson's life. In the former piece Marston and Decker considered themselves held up to ridicule as the two characters of Hedon and Anaiedes, and headed an attack on Jonson, the rank and file of which consisted of all whose vanity or ill-conscience made them consider that they were alluded to. Jonson at once gave battle, and, that there should be no mistake in the matter, introduced his two enemies into the "Poetaster" as Crispinus and Demetrius, while Decker answered with an attack on Jonson in "The Satiromastix." These pieces may once have been lively in consequence of their personal scurrility, but the key is lost to all but a very few, and they are very dull reading to the general world. The same, we think, may be said of a great deal of "Sejanus," by most people considered to be Jonson's greatest effort; he wrote it because he had become disgusted with comedy; not only