r may see the
great poet anxiously united with Inigo Jones in working the machinery.
Jonson, before "a sacrifice could be performed, turned the globe of the
earth, standing behind the altar." In this globe "the sea was expressed
heightened with silver waves, which stood, or rather hung (for no axle
was seen to support it), and _turning softly_, discovered the first
Masque,"[12] &c. This "turning softly" producing a very magical effect,
the great poet would trust to no other hand but his own!

It seems, however, that as no Masque-writer equalled Jonson, so no
machinist rivalled Inigo Jones. I have sometimes caught a groan from
some unfortunate poet, whose beautiful fancies were spoilt by the
bungling machinist. One says, "The _order of this scene_ was carefully
and ingeniously disposed, and as happily put in act (for the _motions_)
by the king's master carpenter;" but he adds, "the _painters_, I must
needs say (not to belie them), lent small colour to any, to attribute
much of the spirit of these things to their pencil." Campion, in one of
his Masques, describing where the trees were gently to sink, &c., by an
engine placed under the stage, and in sinking were to open, and the
masquers appear out at their tops, &c., adds this vindictive marginal
note: "Either by the _simplicity_, _negligence_, or _conspiracy_ of the
_painter_, the passing away of the trees was somewhat hazarded, though
the same day they had been shown with much admiration, and were left
together to the same night;" that is, they were worked right at the
rehearsal, and failed in the representation, which must have perplexed
the nine masquers on the tops of these nine trees. But such accidents
were only vexations crossing the fancies of the poet: they did not
essentially injure the magnificence, the pomp, and the fairy world
opened to the spectators. So little was the character of these Masques
known, that all our critics seemed to have fallen into repeated
blunders, and used the Masques as Campion suspected his painters to have
done, "either by simplicity, negligence, or conspiracy." Hurd, a cold
systematic critic, thought he might safely prefer the Masque in the
_Tempest_, as "putting to shame all the Masques of Jonson, not only in
its _construction_, but in the _splendour_ of its show;"--"which," adds
Gifford, "was danced and sung by the ordinary performers to a couple of
fiddles, perhaps in the balcony of the stage." Such is the fate of
criticism witho