with a bean and a pease;" the latter being indicative of those
generally inserted in a Christmas cake, which, when cut into slices
and distributed, indicated by the presence of the bean the person
who should be king; the slice with the pea doing the same for the
queen. Neither of these characters speak, but make part of the show
to be described by Father Christmas. Jonson's inventive talent was
never more conspicuous than in the concoction of court Masques.

[5] The first employment of these two great men was upon _The Masque
of Blackness_, performed at Whitehall on Twelfth-Night, 1603; and
which cost nearly 10,000_l._, of our present money.

[6] The music of Whitelocke's _Coranto_ is preserved in Hawkins's
"History of Music." Might it be restored for the ladies as a waltz?

[7] This was _Chloridia_, a Masque performed by the queen and her
ladies at court, on Shrovetide, 1630; upon the title-page of which
is printed "the inventors--Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones." Jonson was, by
reason of the influence of Inigo, deprived of employ at court ever
after, supplanted by other poets named by the architect, and among
them Heywood, Shirley, and Davenant.

[8] George Chapman's _Memorable Maske_, performed at Whitehall,
1630, by the gentlemen of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, cost
the latter society nearly 2000_l._ for their share of the expenses.

[9] Ben Jonson records the names of the noble ladies and gentlemen
who enacted his inventions at court.

[10] The figures and actions of dancers in Masques were called motions.

[11] Memoirs of Jonson, p. 88.

[12] See Gifford's Jonson, vol. vii. p. 78. This performance was in
the _Masque of Hymen_, enacted at court in 1605, on the occasion of
the marriage of the Earl of Essex to the daughter of the Earl of
Suffolk.

[13] Splendour ultimately ruined these works; they ended in gaudy
dresses and expensive machinery, but poetry was not associated with
them. The youthful days of Louis XIV. raised them to a height of
costly luxuriance to sink them ever after in oblivion.

OF DES MAIZEAUX, AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF ANTHONY COLLINS'S MANUSCRIPTS.

Des Maizeaux was an active literary man of his day, whose connexions
with Bayle, St. Evremond, Locke, and Toland, and his name being set off
by an F.R.S., have occasioned the dictionary-biographers to place him
prominent