pieces which Mr. Dryden hath called Jonson's dotages. The Tale of a Tub is by no means equal to the Fox or Silent Woman; but there is sufficient discrimination and consistency of character, with propriety of sentiment and expression, to mark the hand of a master. The poet, in shewing
The cotes of clowns are from the courts of kings,
accommodated his diction to the fable, and may be said to have purposely underwritten himself. I would speak of it as Cicero does of his Paradoxes : "Non est, ut in arce poni possit quasi ilia Minerva Phidiae: sed tamen, ut ex eadem officina exisse appareat." Whal. My predecessor is sufficiently complimentary to this play, and yet he has not noticed the perplexities and distresses of master high constable Turfe and his intended son-in-law, which are ac- cumulated upon their unfortunate heads with an effect truly comic. The Tale of a Tub was performed at court on the 16th of January, 1634, and, to use sir Henry Herbert's words, "not likte." But Jonson was less to blame in this than his royal master. The play was not adapted to the meridian of a court, and Jonson might have addressed Charles as Antiphanes did Alexander the Great, upon a similar occasion, and told him that "the fault lay more in his Majesty's not being acquainted with the humours and pursuits of the vulgar, than in any deficiency of fidelity in the description of them."
