Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/81

 lips as these? After this, the anticipation of something like railways ('coaches' that 'go only with wind')—if not also of something like balloons ('a castle in the air that runs upon wheels, with a winged lanthorn')—seems but a commonplace example of prophetic instinct.

The longest of Ben Jonson's masques was expanded to its present bulk by the additions made at each successive representation before the king; to whose not over delicate or fastidious taste this Masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies would seem to have given incomparable if not inexhaustible delight. And even those readers who may least enjoy the decidedly greasy wit or humour of some among its once most, popular lyrical parts must admire and cannot but enjoy the rare and even refined loveliness of others. The fortune most unfortunately told of his future life and death to the future King Charles I. is told in the very best lyric verse that the poet could command: a strain of quite exceptional sweetness, simplicity, and purity of music: to which, as we read it now, the record of history seems to play a most tragically ironical accompaniment, in a minor key of subdued and sardonic presage. And besides these graver and lovelier interludes of poetry which