re appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part
being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave,
and on the right a thicket, from which issued Orpheus. At the back part
of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on
the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly
vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played
about the house of Prometheus--a bright and transparent cloud, reaching
from the heavens to the earth, whence the eight masquers descending with
the music of a full song; and at the end of their descent the cloud
broke in twain, and one part of it, as with a wind, was blown athwart
the scene. While this cloud was vanishing, the wood, being the under
part of the scene, was insensibly changing; a perspective view opened,
with porticoes on each side, and female statues of silver, accompanied
with ornaments of architecture, filling the end of the house of
Prometheus, and seemed all of goldsmiths' work. The women of Prometheus
descended from their niches, till the anger of Jupiter turned them again
into statues. It is evident, too, that the size of the proscenium, or
stage, accorded with the magnificence of the scene; for I find choruses
described, "and changeable conveyances of the song," in manner of an
echo, performed by more than forty different voices and instruments in
various parts of the scene. The architectural decorations were the pride
of Inigo Jones; such could not be trivial.

"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 reade