Nor less the castled glory stands in force,
And bridged and flanked. And round its circuit winds
The deepened moat, showing a regal size.
Here with my lord I cast my sweet sojourn,
With holy love, and with supreme content;
And hence I bless the month, and bless the day!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Book ii. lett. 17.

MASQUES.

It sometimes happens, in the history of national amusements, that a name
survives while the thing itself is forgotten. This has been remarkably
the case with our court Masques, respecting which our most eminent
writers long ventured on so many false opinions, with a perfect
ignorance of the nature of these compositions, which combined all that
was exquisite in the imitative arts of poetry, painting, music, song,
dancing, and machinery, at a period when our public theatre was in its
rude infancy. Convinced of the miserable state of our represented drama,
and not then possessing that more curious knowledge of their domestic
history which we delight to explore, they were led into erroneous
notions of one of the most gorgeous, the most fascinating, and the most
poetical of dramatic amusements. Our present theatrical exhibitions are,
indeed, on a scale to which the twopenny audiences of the barn
playhouses of Shakspeare could never have strained their sight; and our
picturesque and learned _costume_, with the brilliant changes of our
scenery, would have maddened the "property-men" and the "tire-women" of
the Globe or the Red Bull.[2] Shakspeare himself never beheld the true
magical illusions of his own dramas, with "Enter the Red Coat," and
"Exit Hat and Cloak," helped out with "painted cloths;" or, as a bard of
Charles the Second's time chants--

Look back and see
The strange vicissitudes of poetrie;
Your aged fathers came to plays for wit,
And sat knee-deep in nut-shells in the pit.

But while the public theatre continued long in this contracted state,
without scenes, without dresses, without an orchestra, the court
displayed scenical and dramatic exhibitions with such costly
magnificence, such inventive fancy, and such miraculous art, that we may
doubt if the combined genius of Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, and Lawes, or
Ferobosco, at an era most favourable to the arts of imagination, has
been equalled by the modern _spectacle_ of the Opera.

But this circumstance had entirely escaped the knowledge of our critics.
The critic of a Masque must not only hav