But who could less expect from you, His falling temples you have rear'd, And on them burn so chaste a flame, And you are he; the deity To whom all lovers are design'd, Who, as an offering at your shrine,5 Which, if it kindle not, but scant 5 Who, as an offering, &c.] The folio reads offspring. Corrected by Whalley. XL. AN ELEGY. AIR friend, 'tis true, your beauties move I neither love, nor yet am free, It little wants of love but pain; 'Tis not a passion's first access But like love's calmest state it is It is like love to truth reduc'd, 'Tis either fancy or 'tis fate, To love you more than I: I love you at your beauty's rate, Less were an injury. Like unstampt gold, I weigh each grace, So that you may collect Th' intrinsic value of your face, Safely from my respect. This little piece, which is not without merit, is carelessly thrown in towards the conclusion of the old folio, where it is united to "A New-year's Gift to king Charles !' And this respect would merit love, XLI. AN ODE. TO HIMSELF. HERE dost Thou careless lie Buried in ease and sloth? It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and [so] destroys them both :7 Are all the Aonian springs Dried up? lies Thespia waste? To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defac'd? If hence thy silence be, As 'tis too just a cause; Should not on fortune pause, 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause. 7 That eats on wits and arts, and destroys them both.] A syllable is evidently lost, necessary to complete the measure; I have inserted a monosyllable that helps it out, Versus fultura cadentis. WHAL. Whalley's choice fell on quite; I prefer so: the reader, perhaps, may stumble upon a better substitute than either. What though the greedy fry Be taken with false baits Of worded balladry, And think it poesy? They die with their conceits, And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits. Then take in hand thy lyre, Strike in thy proper strain, With Japhet's line, aspire Sol's chariot for new fire,8 To give the world again : Who aided him, will thee, the issue of Jove's brain. And since our dainty age Cannot indure reproof, Make not thyself a page, To that strumpet the stage, But sing high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof. 8 With Japhet's line aspire Sol's chariot for new fire.] He means Prometheus, the son of Japetus, who, as the poets say, was assisted by Minerva, in the formation of his man, whom he animated with fire taken from the chariot of the Sun. WHAL. This spirited Ode was probably among our author's early performances. A part of the concluding stanza we have already had in the "Apologetical Dialogue" at the conclusion of the Poetaster; and the whole might be written about the period of the appearance of that drama. Jonson's dislike to the stage here breaks out :but, in truth, this is not the only passage from which we are authorized to collect that necessity alone led him to write for the theatres. XLII. THE MIND OF THE FRONTISPIECE TO A BOOK.9 ROM death and dark oblivion (near the same) Wise Providence would so that nor the good Of Truth, that searcheth the most hidden springs, And guided by Experience, whose straight wand Doth mete, whose line doth sound the depth of things; She cheerfully supporteth what she rears, Assisted by no strengths but are her own, 9 These lines are prefixed to sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, fol. 1614: they are descriptive of the ornamental figures in the serious frontispiece to that volume, and can scarcely be understood without a reference to the plate itself. Jonson assisted Raleigh in this great work; and, indeed, there were not many literary undertakings of importance, in his days, to which "the envious Ben" did not liberally afford his aid. The folio has been corrected from Raleigh's copy. It seems that Whalley was not acquainted with the purport of this little piece, or with its appearance in any volume previously to that of 1641. |