on matters of taste to town apprentices, and of politics to their conceited masters, must utterly eradicate from the mind that simple and subdued elegance, that softened grace which is so essential a characteristic of the poet's mind. The poem before us is an imitation of the ancient Mask, upon which Mr. Hunt has written an essay which, in our opinion, is infinitely the best part of the volume, and if we except occasional flippaucies, is both an amusing and instructive performance. From this we shall extract with pleasure a portion of Mr. Hunt's history of the antiquity and the variety of Masks. Pageant and Mask are common terms in Shakspeare and Spenser for something more than ordinarily striking in the way of vision; they often furnish them with resemblances and reflec tions; and a great deal of the main feature of the Faerie Queen has with great probability been traced to the influence of these congenial spectacles. Milton, it is true, who objected to kings on earth and filled heaven with regalities,-who denied music to chapelgoers and allowed it to angels,-who would have had nothing brilliant in human worship and sprinkled the pavement before the deity's throne with roses and amaranths,-has a passage in which he speaks contemptuously of "Court-amours, Mix'd dance, or wanton Mask, or midnight ball; but it was after he had learnt to quarrel with the graces of the world, as something which Providence had sent us only to deny ourselves. He is speaking here too of the entertainment in it's abuse rather than it's proper character. In his younger, happier, and it may be added, not less poetical days, he counted "Mask and antique Pageantry among the rational pleasures of cheerfulness, and gave them perhaps the very highest as well as most lovely character of abstract and essential poetry, by calling them "Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. In short, Comus had been the result of his early feelings; and it was curious, that he who inveighed against Masks in his more advanced age, should have been fated to leave to posterity the very piece by which this species of composition is chiefly known. "Comus, however, though an undoubted Mask in some respects, as in it's magic, it's route of monsters, and it's particular allusion to an event in the noble family that performed it, is more allied, from it's regularity of story and it's deficiency in scenic shew, to the Favole Boschereccie, or Sylvan Tales of the Italian poets, which had just then been imitated and surpassed by the Faithful Shep herdess herdess of Fletcher. A Mask may be pastoral or not as it pleases; but scenic shew and personification are, upon the whole, it's dis tinguishing features; and Milton, with the Faithful Shepherdess on his table (his evident prototype) was tempted to deviate more and more from the title of his piece by the new charm that had come upon him. "On the other hand, Spenser, who appears at one time to have written a set of Pageants, has introduced into his great poem an allegorical procession into which Upton conjectures them to have been worked up*, and which the author has expressly called a Maske,' though it is in the other extreme of Comus, and has no thing but shew about it. It is in Book the third, Canto the twelfth, where Britomart, in the strange Castle, and in the silence and solitude of night is awaked by a shrilling trumpet,' and after a storm of wind and thunder, with the clapping of doors, sees the Maske of Cupid' issue from the Enchanted Chamber, and pace about her room. The whole scene is in his noblest style of painting; but as it is only a mute spectacle, and that too rather described than acted, it does not include the dramatic character necessary to complete the more general idea of the Mask. 6 "The Mask which is introduced in the Tempest, and which Warburton had unluckily forgotten when he thought to countenance his opinion of these fooleries' by saying that Shakspeare bad written none †, is a much completer thing of it's kind. In addition to supernatural agency, it has songs and a dialogue, and is called up by Prospero for the purpose of celebrating a particular event.-the betrothinent of Ferdinand and Miranda. It is not, of course, as the mere contingency of a play, to be compared with the work of Milton, nor is it, though not without marks of a great hand, so lively and interesting as Spenser's Pageant; but it comes much nearer than either to the genuine Mask, and indeed only differs from it inasmuch as it is rather an incident than a piece by itself,-rather a Mask in a drama, than a drama in the form of a Mask. Of a similar kind, and not without touches of poetry, is the Mask in the Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the spirited little sketch of another, after Spenser, in Fletcher's Wife for a Month." P. xxvii. Of Mr. Hunt's own performance we cannot speak in very high terms. After allowing him all the credit due to a fruitful imagination we have little else to say in his favour. We have all the quaintness and conceit of the older poets, unredeemed by any of those softer touches, which shew the hand of a Master. -1805." "* See a note on the passage. Todd's Spenser, vol. 5. p. 106. *Note to Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Sc. 4." What What beauty can any of our readers discover in the following lines. "Then the flowers on all their beds- With a leaf for all that come; view. "Phan. Come along, and share my "Mabiel flies up across the scene, whisking his coloured wings in the sunshine." P. 28. There is a sort of vulgarity in this and numberless other passages which will still obtrude itself on our view though covered with the antiquated garb of conceit. The dialogue is too ponderous and prosy to allow us to make any favourable report of its merits. The descriptions of the action or the directions for its performance are sometimes so long and sometimes so absurd as to set the imagination of the reader at defiance. Let us take the following as an example. "Here Poetry waves her wand, and several stately and gorge ous visions pass through the air, the actual back-ground of the scene scene changing with them. For the first, the back-ground changes into groves, temples, and mountains, such as those of Delphos and Parnassus; and a music striking up, consisting of pipes, lyres and timbrels, with a smell of incense accompanying, there passes through the air a line of ancient deities, Jupiter, the Muses, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Cupid and Psyche, &c. who, vanishing all at once, are succeeded by the forms of Homer, Pindar, Theocritus, and the Greek tragedians, all crowned with laurel, and seated on a cloud in chairs of marble. "These vanish in the same manner; the back-ground shifts into a delicious scene of gardens and palaces, with castles at intervals and spots of wildness; and the music after a short and rustic amatory strain on the harp, changes into an ardent flourish of trumpets, when a vision, in two groups, of horse and horsemen appears, part riding with dignity, others with a lightsome ease, others with a forward or rearing eagerness. The horses are variously trapped, but the horsemen all mantled with red cloaks over their suits of armour; and by their banners are recognized, in the first group, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Launcelot, Tristran, &c. and in the second, Charlemagne and his Peers, Roland, Rinaldo, and others, They are followed by bearded enchanters attired in long cloaks, and riding on griffins and other animals, with wands and books in their hands; when the whole suddenly vanishing are succeeded by the forms of Pulci, Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, crowned with laurel and seated on thrones of tapestry. "The back-ground then changes, for the third time, to an ethereal scene, in which hangs the Earth like a planet with the Moon moving round it; and to the sound of various and delightful music, a troop of fairies first cross the air with gestures of quaint pretension and tricksome loveliness,-then a company of ordinary human beings from the king to the peasant,—and then again, creatures of the fancy, Ariel, Caliban, Comus, &c. ending with the majestic but melancholy form of Satan, sailing along in a swarthy mist. These vanishing in their turn, are replaced by three Gothic seats, in which are enthroned the shapes of Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Milton, crowned with laurel, and holding globes in their hands,-the first a terrestrial, the third a celestial, and the second a double one of both. The whole then disappears; a tremendous and small music is heard as in conclusion; and while the original scene is returning in the back-ground, Poetry descends on the wing, and seats herself in a reclining posture, on an upper part of the cloud, a little behind the head of Liberty." P. 58. When we are called upon to imagine Homer, &c. sitting on a cloud in chairs of marble, we must really call impossibility into our aid, and totally forget all the ideas which we ever yet attached either to a cloud or to marble. We would willingly produce a favourable 7 VOL. IV. AUGUST, 1815. P favourable specimen of Mr. Hunt's poetical powers; the following perhaps is altogether the best which we can discover. "By the lingering day forlorn, And the dread of the drear morrow, Waiting for its' world of sorrow, "By the griefs of many lands, And hearts that waste in secret places, And the tears on furrow'd faces, Spirit dear, put forth a voice. SPIRIT SINGS. "To the griefs of many lands, And the tears on furrow'd faces, To Beauty's and to Virtue's voice, I am come to bid rejoice. Two Echoes. Rejoice! Rejoice! RECITATIVE. *'Tis my brethren of the sky, Couriers we of Liberty, Coming hither, one by one, Like the streaks before the sun. She herself is now not far, But has passed the -morning-star ; What shall help to set ye free, From the greenwood start ye forth, And turn your eyes from south to north. (A symphony of pipes mingles in; and the spirit sings again). "Elsewhere now I take my voice; Locks of grey! And lips of May! And shepherds all, rejoice, rejoice. Echoes dying off. Rejoice! Rejoice!" P. 15. ART. |