"I suppose," says the writer of this Masque, "few have ever seen more neat artifice than Master Inigo Jones showed in contriving their motion; who, as all the rest of the workmanship which belonged to the whole invention, showed extraordinary industry and skill, which if it be not as lively expressed in writing as it appeared in view, rob not him of his due, but lay the blame on my want of right apprehending his instructions, for the _adoring_ of his art." Whether this strong expression should be only _adorning_ does not appear in any errata; but the feeling of admiration was fervent among the spectators of that day, who were at least as much astonished as they were delighted. Ben Jonson's prose descriptions of scenes in his own exquisite Masques, as Gifford observes, "are singularly bold and beautiful." In a letter which I discovered, the writer of which had been present at one of these Masques, and which Gifford has preserved,[11] the reader 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