TO THE

Great Example of Honour and Virtue,

THE MOST NOBLE

WILLIAM, EARL OF PEMBROKE,

LORD CHAMBERLAIN, &c.'

MY LORD,

N so thick and dark an ignorance, as now almost covers
the age,
I crave leave to stand near your light, and by
that to be read. Posterity may pay your benefit the
honour and thanks, when it shall know, that you dare,

in these jig-given times, to countenance a legitimate Poem. I call it so, against all noise of opinion; from whose crude and airy reports, I appeal to the great and singular faculty of judgment in your lordship, able to vindicate truth from error. It is the first, of this race, that ever I dedicated to any person,2 and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less ambition. Now it approacheth your censure cheerfully, and with the same assurance that innocency would appear before a magistrate.

Your Lordship's most faithful honourer,

BEN JONSON.

1 William, earl of Pembroke.] This nobleman, the third earl of Pembroke, was in the first year of James I. made knight of the Garter; and in the fifteenth of the same reign, on the resignation of lord Ellesmere, elected chancellor of the University of Oxford. To him also, our author dedicated his Epigrams. WHAL.

2 It is the first, of this race, that ever I dedicated to any person.] Meaning his first tragedy: for Sejanus was published without any dedication. WHAL.

TO THE

READER IN ORDINARY.

HE muses forbid that I should restrain your meddling, whom I see already busy with the title, and tricking over the leaves:

it is your own. I departed with my right, when I let it first abroad; and now, so secure an interpreter I am of my chance, that neither praise nor dispraise from you can affect me. Though you commend the two first acts, with the people, because they are the worst; and dislike the oration of Cicero, in regard you read some pieces of it at school, and understand them not yet: I shall find the way to forgive you. Be any thing you will be at your own charge. Would I had deserved but half so well of it in translation, as that ought to deserve of you in judgment, if you have any. I know you will pretend, whosoever you are, to have that, and more: but all pretensions are not just claims. The commendation of good things may fall within a many, the approbation but in a few; for the most commend out of affection, self-tickling, an easiness, or imitation: but men judge only out of knowledge. That is the trying faculty: and to those works that will bear a judge, nothing is more dangerous than a foolish praise. You will say, I shall not have yours therefore; but rather the contrary, all vexation of censure. If I were not above such molestations now, had great cause to think unworthily of my studies, or they had so of me. But I leave you to your exercise. Begin.

I

TO THE READER EXTRAORDINARY.

You I would understand to be the better man, though places in court go otherwise: to you I submit myself and work.

Farewell.

BEN JONSON.3

3 This address to the reader, is taken from the 4to. 1611. It has so much merit, and is altogether so curious a mode of soothing a reader's prejudices, that it ought by no means to be lost. WHAL. It does not appear in the 4to. 1635.

Soldiers, Porters, Lictors, Servants, Pages, &c.

The SCENE, partly at Rome, and partly in

The Ghost of Sylla rises.

OST thou not feel me, Rome? not yet! is night

So heavy on thee, and my weight so light?

Can Sylla's ghost arise within thy walls, Less threatening than an earthquake, the quick falls Of thee and thine? Shake not the frighted heads Of thy steep towers, or shrink to their first beds?

1 Dost thou not feel me, Rome? not yet! is night

So heavy on thee, and my weight so light ?] "The poet opens his play with the ghost of Sylla. This is an imitation of Seneca's Thyestes, in which the ghost of Tantalus appears, attended by the Furies. Perhaps this first scene ought rather to be considered as a prologue:" (no doubt of it.) "There are other instances in the ancient dramatic writers, where these shadowy beings are introduced in the beginning of a play. In the Hecuba of Euripides, the ghost of Polydorus opens the tragedy. WHAL.

Oldham informs us that his "first satyr" (that on the Jesuits) "was drawn by Sylla's ghost in the great Jonson, which may be perceived (he adds) by some strokes and touches therein, however short they come of the original."