moral enticements, even when clad in the most seductive garments, never making use of those light touches, by which appearances are saved and ingenuous minds insnared. The purity and healthfulness of his poetry in some measure regenerate the heart, restoring to it all the freshness of its primitive sensations, and may serve for an antidote to the sickliness of thought, and the many falsehoods, by which we are surrounded - God save the mark! almost from our cradles. - Clever wit and a happy turn for mockery will prove insufficient to constitute a good satirist, whose office it must be to scourge and set in its proper light whatever is bad and perverse, and, in general, contrary to the destiny of the human species; to be able to do which, he must be endowed with a sense the most pure and incorruptible of the right and wrong, and abhor the principles of that philosophy of selfishness and worldly cunning spreading, alas! through all branches of social intercourse. Steele and Addison more especially the latter whose undying merit consists in having diverted the ridicule from the deluded victims. of society to their deceivers, deserve, in this point of view, the title of true satirists.

Ben Jonson, too, was sensible of this; "if, says he,*) men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet, without first being a good man. He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover them to their first strength; that comes forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the business of mankind: this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon." In another passage he argues against the common error that it was the only end and aim of comedy to excite laughter: "The parts of a comedy are the same with a tragedy, and the end is partly the same; for they

*) Dedication of the Volpone.

both delight and teach: the comics are called dának (!) of the Greeks, no less than the tragics." Again: "Nor is the moving of laughter always the end of comedy, that is rather a fowling for the people's delight, or their fooling. For as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude, that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease . . . . And this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he presented the gods sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of Aristotle, that to seem ridiculous is a part of dishonesty, and foolish."*)

This should seem rather strongly put, but it is in the right direction that he has overshot himself. As soon, however, as he comes to act up to his precepts, he will entirely forget them, and give a loose to an itch of surprising his spectators with flashes of wit and brand-new conceits. Would that were all! But he too frequently turns into ridicule not the corruption which corrodes the most sacred ties of society, but these ties themselves; by doing which he contributed not a little towards the diffusion in literature of that shameless materialism, prevalent from all time in the practice of the world, but unknown to true poetry and to minds susceptible of uncorrupted nature. Cheating of married men into cuckolddom; marriages for money, not love; nay even picking of other people's pockets, or any the like meanness, these are the glorious feats of some of the heroes in the comedies of Ben Jonson as well as his junior fellow-poets. His play "The Devil is an Ass" shall serve us for an example in what manner he spoils, by giving way to his love of bantering, his best-devised plans. Pug "the less devil," having taken it into his head to live on earth a week or two, to make the acquaintance and try the characters of men, asks leave of Satan, "the great devil," and expresses his desire to take a Vice along with him. Called upon by Satan

Enter Iniquity.

Iniq. What is he calls upon me, and would seem to lack a Vice?

Ere his words be half spoken, I am with him in a trice;

Here, there, and every where, as the cat is with the mice:

*) Discoveries, ed. Cornwall p. 764.

True Vetus Iniquitas. Lack'st thou cards, friend, or dice?
I will teach thee to cheat, child, to cog, lie and swagger,
And ever and anon to be drawing forth thy dagger:
To swear by Gogs-nowns, like a lusty Juventus,
In a cloak to thy heel, and a hat like a pent-house.
Thy breeches of three fingers, and thy doublet all belly,
With a wench that shall feed thee with cock-stones and jelly.
Pug. Is it not excellent, chief? how nimble he is!

Iniq. Child of hell, this is nothing! I will fetch thee a leap From the top of Paul's steeple to the standard in Cheap:

And lead thee a dance thro' the streets without fail,

Like a needle of Spain, with a thread at my tail.

We will survey the suburbs, and make forth our sallies,
Down Petticoat-lane and up the Smock-alleys,

To Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and so to St. Kathern's,

To drink with the Dutch there, and take forth their patterns:
From thence, we will put in at Custom-house key there,
And see how the factors and prentices play there
False with their masters, and geld many a full pack,
To spend it in pies at the Dagger and the Woolsack.
Pug. Brave, brave Iniquity! will not this do, chief?

Iniq. Nay, boy, I will bring thee to the bawds and the roysters,

At Billingsgate, feasting with claret-wine and oysters;

From thence shoot the Bridge, child, to the Cranes in the Vintry,
And see there the gimblets, how they make their entry!

Or if thou hadst rather to the Strand down to fall,
'Gainst the lawyers come dabbled from Westminster hall,
And mark how they cling with their clients together,
Like ivy to oak, so velvet to leather:

Ha, boy, I wou'd shew thee

Pug. Rare, rare!

Sat. Peace, dotard,

And thou, more ignorant thing, that so admir'st;
Art thou the spirit thou seem'st? so poor, to choose,

This for a Vice, to advance the cause of hell,
Now, as vice stands this present year? Remember
What number it is, six hundred and sixteen.
Had it but been five hundred, though some sixty
Above; that's fifty years agone, and six,
When every great man had his Vice stand by him,
In his long coat. shaking his wooden dagger,
I could consent, that then this your grave choice
Might have done that, with his lord chief, the which
Most of his chamber can do now. But, Pug,

As the times are, who is it will receive you?

What company will you go to, or whom mix with?
Where canst thou carry him, except to taverns,

To mount upon a joint-stool, with a Jew's trump,
To put down Cokely, and that must be to citizens?
He ne'er will be admitted there, where Vennor comes.
He may perchance, in tail of a sheriff's dinner,
Skip with a rhyme on the table, from New-nothing,
And take his Almain leap into a custard,
Shall make my lady mayoress and her sisters
Laugh all their hoods over their shoulders. But
This is not that will do, they are other things
That are received now upon earth, for Vices;
Stranger and newer; and changed every hour.
They ride them like their horses, off their legs,
And here they come to hell, whole legions of them,
Every week tired. We still strive to breed,
And rear up new ones; but they do not stand;
When they come there, they turn them on our hands.
And it is fear'd they have a stud o' their own
Will put down ours: both our breed and trade
Will suddenly decay, if we prevent not.

Unless it be a vice of quality,

Or fashion now, they take none from us.

Carmen.

Are got into the yellow starch, and chimney-sweepers
To their tobacco, and strong waters, Hum,
Meath and Obarni. We must therefore aim

At extraordinary subtle ones now,
When we do send to keep us up in credit;
Not old Iniquities. Get you e’en back, sir,
To making of your rope of sand again:
You are not for the manner, nor the times.
They have their vices there, most like to virtues :
You cannot know them apart by any difference:
They wear the same clothes, eat the same meat,
Sleep in the self-same beds, ride in those coaches,
Or very like, four horses in a coach,

As the best men and women.

Tissue gowns, Garters and roses, fourscore pound a pair, Embroider'd stockings, cut-work smocks and shirts,. More certain marks of letchery now and pride: Than e'er they were of true nobility! (Exit Iniq.) But, Pug, since you do burn with such desire To do the commonwealth of hell some service,

I am content, assuming of a body,

You go to earth, and visit men a day.

But you must take a body ready made, Pug:

I can create you none: nor shall you form
Yourself an airy one, but become subject
To all impression of the flesh you take,
So far as human frailty. So, this morning,
There is a handsome cut-purse hang'd at Tyburn,
Whose spirit departed, you may enter his body:
For clothes, employ your credit with the hangman,
Or let our tribe of brokers furnish you.

And look how far your subtlety can work
Thorough those organs, with that body, spy
Amongst mankind, (you cannot there want vices,
And therefore the less need to carry them with you,)
But as you make your soon at night's relation,
And we shall find it merits from the state,

You shall have both trust from us, and employment.

This introduction, surely, is promising enough. It were a theme worthy of the greatest poet, to place vices and virtues together, "wearing the same clothes and eating the same meat," with a sharp-sighted devil at hand to mark the difference. The speech of Satan contains abundance of fine remarks concerning the fickleness of human nature, and to view this inconstancy even in bad habits, this variable surface of strong-bodied society, would have been an interesting spectacle. But Jonson knew to make nothing of it. Pug enters the service of a simpleton, who long ago wished to make the acquaintance of the devil, and is charged with watching his master's wife, a coquette, who is agog for horning her husband, being in love with a young and of course most clever gentleman. This spark contrives a series of stratagems and plots, and raises a host of vagabonds, in order to attain his object; Pug and his master behaving awkwardly to a degree hardly credible. At last the author himself startles, as would appear, at the abyss of wickedness to which he was led, and makes the lover assure the teazed husband of his wife's chastity and virtue: which is as much as to make the reader believe that he has only dreamt through the whole play. The edifying end and purpose of the play if it have any at all - may be to teach, that the devil himself hardly