different little animals; some disguised as
beetles, some like toads, some like lizards, and upon encountering each,
other, reciprocally explained their employments, which was highly
satisfactory to the people, as they performed their parts with infinite
ingenuity. Several little boys also, belonging to the temple, appeared
in the disguise of butterflies, and birds of various colours, and
mounting upon the trees which were fixed there on purpose, little balls
of earth were thrown at them with slings, occasioning many humorous
incidents to the spectators."

Something very wild and original appears in this singular exhibition;
where at times the actors seem to have been spectators, and the
spectators were actors.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS.

As a literary curiosity, can we deny a niche to that "obliquity of
distorted wit," of Barton Holyday, who has composed a strange comedy, in
five acts, performed at Christ Church, Oxford, 1630, _not_ for the
_entertainment_, as an anecdote records, of James the First?

The title of the comedy of this unclassical classic, for Holyday is
known as the translator of Juvenal with a very learned commentary, is
TEXNOTAMIA, or the Marriage of the Arts, 1630, quarto; extremely dull,
excessively rare, and extraordinarily high-priced among collectors.

It may be exhibited as one of the most extravagant inventions of a
pedant. Who but a pedant could have conceived the dull fancy of forming
a comedy, of five acts, on the subject of _marrying the Arts_! They are
the dramatis personae of this piece, and the bachelor of arts describes
their intrigues and characters. His actors are Polites, a
magistrate;--Physica;--Astronomia, daughter to Physica;--Ethicus, an old
man;--Geographus, a traveller and courtier, in love with
Astronomia;--Arithmetica, in love with
Geometres;--Logicus;--Grammaticus, a schoolmaster;--Poeta;--Historia, in
love with Poeta;--Rhetorica, in love with Logicus;--Melancholico,
Poeta's man;--Phantastes, servant to Geographus;--Choler, Grammaticus's
man.

All these refined and abstract ladies and gentlemen have as bodily
feelings, and employ as gross language, as if they had been every-day
characters. A specimen of his grotesque dulness may entertain:--

Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit.

Geographus opens the play with declaring his passion to Astronomia, and
that very rudely indeed! See the pedant wreathing the roses of Love!

"_Geog._ Come, now you sha