managers, because they kept them in their own hands as long as possible. With the accession of James I., in 1603, when Ben Jonson was thirty, we enter upon our poet's golden prime. Now begins that splendid series of entertainments and masques, stately, fantastic, humorous, composed for princes (as Lord Bacon says) and by princes performed; wherein "the supposed rugged old bard" lavished such inexhaustible stores of exquisite invention and lyrical grace. Now shall come forth— "The 'Fox,' the 'Alchemist' and 'Silent Woman,' Now we find him at the Mermaid, whose very name is a thrill of inspiration; in that Club founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, and composed of Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, and others only less illustrious, a constellation of genius perhaps unequalled before or since, save by the Periclean guests of the Banquet of Plato. In these reunions occurred those friendly wit-combats between Shakespeare and Jonson, so excellently characterised by Fuller, who, however, must have been guided by tradition, as he was too young at the time to witness them himself. Beaumont's lines on the subject are so hackneyed that one is rather ashamed to quote them once more, but also so fine and apposite that one can scarcely omit them from a notice of Rare Ben, to whom they are specially addressed from the dull-witted country : : "What things have we seen Done at the MERMAID! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life; then where there hath been thrown For three days past: wit that might warrant be Till that were cancelled." But these splendid years were ushered in by domestic calamity and political persecution. In 1603 the plague is said to have carried off 30,000 persons in London alone. Drummond, to whose notes we must continually recur, as they were taken down fresh from Jonson's own lips, reports: "When the King came in England at that tyme the pest was in London, he [our poet] being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton's house with old Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest sone, then a child [seven years old] and at London, appear unto him with the mark of a bloodie crosse on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Cambden's chamber to tell him; who persuaded him it was but ane apprehension of his fantasie, at which he sould not be disjected; in the mean tyme comes there letters from his wife, of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manlie shape, and of that grouth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection." * Epigram 45 is dedicated to * It seems well to remark here what might have been remarked earlier, in reference to what appears the rather incongruous spelling of some of these notes, that what is termed the "literal transcript' may be not quite literal, although strictly verbal, having been made by the well-known Edinburgh antiquary and physician, Sir Robert Sibbald, probably about the end of the eighteenth century. He may have sometimes modernised, sometimes not. G the memory of this his first son, who was named after him; it contains the distich— "Rest in soft peace, and asked, say here doth lie BEN JONSON, his best piece of Poetry." Continuing from Drummond: 66 The 'He was delated by Sir James Murray to the King, for writing something against the Scots, in a play 'Eastward Hoe,' and voluntarily imprissoned himself with Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. report was, that they should then [have] had their ears cut [i.e., slit] and noses. After their delivery, he banqueted all his friends; there was Camden, Selden, and others; at midst of the feast his old mother dranke to him, and shew him a paper which she had (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prisson among his drinke, which was full of lustie strong poison, and that she was no churle, she told, she minded first to have drunk of it herself." High-hearted old dame! lofty as the loftiest of Sparta or Rome! Can we wonder at the indomitableness of the son of such a mother? Nor must we pass without notice his own magnanimity in joining of his own free will his colleagues in prison, when secure in court-favour, and although he had no hand in the incriminated passage. "Eastward Hoe!" "an uncommonly sprightly and goodnatured comedy," seems to have been brought out in 1604; and, as the passage was suppressed in most of the copies printed in 1605, it may be well to give it, as quoted by Gifford from "Old Plays,” vol. iv., p. 250: “You shall live freely there [in the then new settlement of Virginia] without serjeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers: only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England when they are out on't, in the world, than they are: and, for my part, I would a hundred thousand of them were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than here." It would be a perfervid Scot indeed who in our days could not smile with serene superiority at such banter as this. In the following year, 1605, Jonson was again in prison with Chapman for some other play in which they had been jointly concerned, as appears by his manly letter to the Earl of Salisbury, begging his influence--not for pardon, as he denied any guilt-but for a speedy hearing, which they obtained, and were released. In this year the magnificent comedy, "Volpone; or, The Fox," was produced at the Globe, Shakespeare's name not appearing this time in the list of the chief performers. It was soon afterwards acted with great applause at both the Universities, to which, when first printed, it was inscribed: "To the most noble and most equal sisters the two famous Universities, for their love and acceptance shown to this Poem in the presentation; Ben Jonson, the grateful acknowledger, dedicates both It and Himself." The subscription is: "From my House in the BlackFriars, this 11th day of February, 1607." The whole Dedication is a model of stately and vigorous eloquence, vindicating true poetry from the disgrace which has been brought upon it by vile pretenders, and vindicating himself from any fellowship with those who pandered to the coarse and profane lusts of the populace. Here are a few of its weighty sentences: "But it will here be hastily answered, that the writers of these days are other things; that not only their manners, but their natures are inverted, and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, I am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is over true: but that all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell is a most uncharitable thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness; have loathed the use of such foul and unwashed bawdry, as is now made the food of the scene and, howsoever I cannot escape from some, the imputation of sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust to be bitter, and not my youngest infant but hath come into the world with all his teeth; I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order or state I have provoked? What public person? Whether I have not in all these preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? My works are read, allowed (I speak of those that are entirely mine), look into them, what broad reproofs have I used? where have I been particular? where personal? except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon, crea |