interrupted by Cutbeard, who comes to say that all is for the best; for Morose is so enraged at the intrusion, which he supposes to have been managed by Dauphine, that he is determined to marry the Silent Lady that very day, and has sent Cutbeard for her and a parson. The Silent Woman's interview with Morose is admirable. He admires her beauty and modesty, his only difficulty is that she can scarcely be made to speak at all, and when she does, it is so low he has to make her say every thing twice over. She refers all things to his superior wisdom; and Morose is in an ecstasy of happiness at having found a partner who exceeds in reticence and taciturnity his fondest hopes, and he triumphs in anticipation over the disappointed expectations of his nephew. He, on his side, secure in the marriage, is determined to invade his uncle with the noisiest possible celebration of his nuptials. He and his friends arrange to divert La-Foole's grand party into Morose's house; and a certain Captain Otter, famous for his alternate servile submission to his wife in her presence, and his bold and passionate execration of her in her absence, and for his ridiculous humours in drinking from his three favourite cups, which he calls his bear, his bull, and his horse, is to be of the party. To give a further zest to the jest, and to accumulate horrors on the head of poor Morose, they hire all the musicians they can get, especially trumpets and drums. Cutbeard obeys his master's injunctions, and supplies him with a parson well suited to his humour; "one that has catched a cold, sir, and can scarce be heard six inches off; as if he spoke out of a bulrush that were not picked, or his throat were full of pith :" and the next scene opens immediately after the performance of the ceremony which has united Morose and Epicone. There are few things in the whole range of the comic drama equal to this situation, when Morose finds, to his inexpressible consternation, that the lady to whom he has just been bound by indissoluble ties has a concealed tongue and temper of her own; and when, to add to his misery, he is invaded by the whole company of gentlemen, collegians, fools, and musicians. Fortunately part of it is decent enough to bear quotation.

"SCENE II.

A room in Morose's House.

Enter MOROSE, EPICENE, Parson, and Cutbeard.

Mor. Sir, there's an angel for yourself, and a brace of angels for your cold. Muse not at this manage of my bounty. It is fit we should thank fortune, double to nature, for any benefit she confers upon us; besides, it is your imperfection, but my solace.

Par. [speaks as having a cold.] I thank your worship; so it is mine,

now.

Mor. What says he, Cutbeard?

Cut. He says, præsto, sir, whensoever your worship needs him, he can be ready with the like. He got this cold with sitting up late, and singing catches with cloth-workers.

Mor. No more. I thank him.

Par. God keep your worship, and give you much joy with your fair spouse!--uh, uh, uh!

Mor. O, O! stay, Cutbeard! let him give me five shillings of my money back. As it is bounty to reward benefits, so it is equity to mulct injuries. I will have it. What says he?

Cler. He cannot change it, sir.
Mor. It must be changed.

Cut. Cough again.

Mor. What says he?

Cut. He will cough out the rest, sir.

Par. Uh, uh, uh!

[Aside to Parson.

Mor. Away, away with him! stop his mouth! away! I forgive it.[Exit Cut. thrusting out the Par. Epi. Fie, master Morose, that you will use this violence to a man of the church.

Mor. How!

Epi. It does not become your gravity, or breeding, as you pretend in court, to have offered this outrage on a waterman, or any more boisterous creature, much less on a man of his civil coat.

Mor. You can speak, then!

Epi. Yes, sir.

Mor. Speak out,

I mean.

Epi. Ay, sir. Why, did you think you had married a statue, or a motion only one of the French puppets, with the eyes turned with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you?

Mor. O immodesty! a manifest woman! What, Cutbeard!

Epi. Nay, never quarrel with Cutbeard, sir; it is too late now. I confess it doth bate somewhat of the modesty I had, when I writ simply maid : but I hope I shall make it a stock still competent to the estate and dignity of your wife.

Mor. She can talk!

Epi. Yes, indeed, sir.

Mor. What, sirrah! Cutbeard?

Enter MUTE.

None of my knaves there? where is this impostor [Mute makes signs. Epi. Speak to him, fellow, speak to him! I'll have none of this coacted unnatural dumbness in my house, in a family where I govern.

[Exit Mute.

Mor. She is my regent already! I have married a Penthesilea, a Semiramis; sold my liberty to a distaff.

Enter TRUEWIT.

True. Where 's master Morose?

Mor. Is he come again? Lord have mercy upon me!

True. I wish you all joy, mistress Epicone, with your grave and honourable match.

Epi. I return you the thanks, master Truewit, so friendly a wish deserves. Mor. She has acquaintance too!

True. God save you, sir, and give you all contentment in your fair choice, here! Before, I was the bird of night to you, the owl; but now I am the messenger of peace, a dove, and bring you the glad wishes of many friends to the celebration of this good hour.

Mor. What hour, sir?

True. Your marriage hour, sir. I commend your resolution, that, notwithstanding all the dangers I laid afore you, in the voice of a night-crow, would yet go on, and be yourself. It shows you are a man constant to your own ends, and upright to your purposes, that would not be put off with lefthanded cries."

He tells him the barber has betrayed him, and announces the arrival of company to felicitate him :

"Mor. Bar my doors! bar my doors! Where are all my eaters! my mouths, now ?—

Bar up my doors, you varlets!

Enter Servants.

Epi. He is a varlet that stirs to such an office. Let them stand open. I would see him that dares move his eyes toward it. Shall I have a barricado made against my friends, to be barred of any pleasure they can bring in to me with their honourable visitation? [Exeunt Ser.

Mor. O Amazonian impudence!"

She forgets his hatred of noise in joining Truewit in overwhelming the barber with witty curses; but soon the crowd of visitors breaks in like a sea, and overwhelms him. Epicene receives them with all the graces of a fine lady, welcomes them to the feast; and the scene ends in the ladies disputing for precedence with shrill voices, and a grand crash of trumpets and drums. The wretched Morose, after an ineffectual resistance, betakes himself to flight; and Dauphine thus describes his city of refuge :

"Daup. O, hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else. He has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and locked himself up in the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peeped in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of the roof, like him on the sadler's horse in Fleet-street, upright; and he will sleep there."

The action is now filled up for some time by the ridiculous humours of the lady collegians and the two foolish knights. The former are all betrayed into declarations of love for Dauphine by the skill of Truewit; and the latter are engaged in a preposterous quarrel, in which each separately betrays his craven spirit, and voluntarily submits to be beaten by the other; a composition of which the wits take the execution into their own hands by blindfolding the victims. Morose comes among them again, and is terribly tormented; his new wife affects to think him mad, and his misery culminates when he learns that she talks ten times worse in her sleep, and snores like a porpoise. All his hopes turn upon a divorce, and he is obliged to have recourse to his nephew and implore his assistance. He goes, indeed, himself to the lawyers; but makes nothing of it. There is such a noise in the court of wrangling lawyers, that he says "the riot at home is a sort of calm midnight to it." Hence he grasps eagerly at a suggestion of True

wit's, who engages to provide him with two learned doctors, who shall discuss the matter quietly in a chamber for him, and satisfy him what hopes he may entertain of getting rid of his incubus of a talking wife. The confederates dress-up Otter as a divine, and Cutbeard as a canon-lawyer; and the two argue the whole question of the grounds of divorce with unparalleled humour and an utter disregard of decency; they cavil and dispute over every one of their twelve impedimenta, with a profusion of Latin terms of wit, and with warming temper and rising voices. Each hoped-for impediment is in turn disposed of as inapplicable to the case in hand. Daw and La-Foole, who plume themselves on a reputation for irresistibility with women, are seduced by the wits to boast of the favours of Epicone; but even this brings no relief to Morose. His nephew at last asks him what he shall deserve, if he shall free him absolutely and for ever from his unhappy condition; and Morose, though incredulous of his ability, eagerly agrees to give him an allowance for life, and leave him all his property; and in spite of the eager protestations and lamentations of Epicone, he signs deeds to this effect: and then comes the sudden catastrophe:

"Mor. Come, nephew, give me the pen; I will subscribe to any thing, and seal to what thou wilt, for my deliverance. Thou art my restorer. Here, I deliver it thee as my deed. If there be a word in it lacking, or writ with false orthography, I protest before [heaven] I will not take the advantage. [Returns the writings.

Daup. Then here is your release, sir. [Takes off Epicone's peruke and other disguises.] You have married a boy, a gentleman's son, that I have brought up this half year at my great charges, and for this composition, which I have now made with you.-What say you, master doctor? This is justum impedimentum, I hope, error persona?

Ott. Yes, sir, in primo gradu.

Cut. In primo gradu."

And with this discovery, which comes in its startling suddenness, not only on the spectators, but on all the actors, even the confederates of Dauphine, the play briefly winds up. It is perhaps the best unravelling of a plot that has ever been invented; it is like the pulling of a single thread which loosens and betrays all the structure of a complex web. And the play is worthy of the plot; it is one of the few of Jonson's in which we seem to be associating with real living people; and Dryden said truly of it, that "there is more wit and acuteness of fancy in it than in any of Ben Jonson's." It does not carry much of praise to modern ears, to say that the time occupied by the events of the play is not longer than that in which they are played, that the continuity of scenes is almost unbroken, and the change of scene restricted to the narrowest limits; but it is real praise to say that, whatever may be the advantages of

such an arrangement, it is here obtained without the least sacrifice of ease or richness.

We have no space to discuss the less famous comedies of our author, though many of them would afford ground for special criticism. They have all one distinction common to them, which Jonson himself admits, and which has been patent to all his readers. They deal not with men so much as with what he calls "humours" of men. Every character is selected for some special humour, and his situations and actions are all arranged so as to show this humour off. In the Poetaster, he makes his opponent describe himself (Jonson) as "a mere sponge; nothing but humours and observation: he goes up and down sucking from every society, and when he comes home squeezes himself dry again;" and the description is in the main a true one. Aubrey says he gathered humours of men daily wherever he went. In his earlier plays, such as The Case is altered and Every Man in his Humour, this description of personal eccentricities is united to a body of personal character. Kitely is a man, and so is Bobadil, however caricatured; but in his later comedies, such as The Magnetic Lady and A Tale of a Tub, his characters degenerate into mere bundles of oddities, and introduce us to a world ridiculous enough, but neither real nor natural.

There is little of geniality in Jonson's writings. He is by nature a satirist, and was possessed by a settled conviction that the display and satire of existing manners was the most legitimate function of comedy; and the mass of all his amusement is extracted either from the caricature of some individual monstrosity, or from the affected and ridiculous habits of some particular class. He adopts Cicero's definition, "who would have a comedy to be imitatio vitæ, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis." The court especially is a favourite subject with him; and absurd and overcharged as some of his descriptions seem, we must be cautious in discrediting them. Jonson, though a caricaturist, was a keen and accurate observer; he had little tendency or power to invent, and a basis of matter-of-fact no doubt underlies all his fictions. He is one of the best and completest authorities we have for ascertaining the manners of the court and city in the time of James I.

His strength lies in his wit. Generally it has a special character of its own: it is ponderous built-up mirth, heavy unsparing caricature. He lays on coat after coat of the same paint without relief or variety; yet he covers a wider field of wit than most men, and it would be difficult to say in which department he has proved himself most successful. The Fox is most witty, The Silent Woman most humorous, The Alchymist