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Eros and Anteros.

Er. We have cleft the bough,

And struck a tally of our loves too now. An. I call to mind the wisdom of our mother

Venus, who would have Cupid have a brother

Er. To look upon and thrive. Me seems

I grew
Three inches higher since I met with you.
It was the counsel that the oracle gave
Your nurses, the glad Graces, sent to crave
Themis' advice. You do not know, quothshe,
The nature of this infant. Love may be
Brought forth thus little, live awhile alone,
But ne'er will prosper, if he have not one
Sent after him to play with, such another
As you are, Anteros, our loving brother.
An. Who would be always planted in
your eye;

For love by love increaseth mutually.
Er. We either, looking on each other,
thrive;

An. Shoot up, grow galliard-
Er. Yes, and more alive!

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Enter PHILALETHES.

No more of your poetry, pretty Cupids, lest presuming on your little wits, you profane the intention of your service. The place, I confess, wherein (by the providence of your mother Venus) you are now planted, is the divine School of Love: an academy or court, where all the true lessons of Love are thoroughly read and taught. The reasons, the proportions and harmony, drawn forth in analytic tables, and made demonstrable to the senses. Which if you brethren should report and swear to, would hardly get credit above a fable, here in the edge of Darbyshire, the region of ale, because you relate in rhyme. O that rhyme is a shrewd disease, and makes all suspected it would persuade. Leave it, pretty Cupids, leave it. Rhyme will undo you, and hinder your growth and reputation in Court more than anything beside you have either men

An. When one's away, it seems we both tioned or feared. If you dabble in poetry are less.

! We have already had this fable in the Tilting at a Marriage. There is not much to be said of it here. In fact, these effusions, which attended the king in his progresses, and which perhaps came upon him unexpectedly, are merely

once, it is done of your being believed or
little artifices of love and duty on the part of the
noble hosts, to keep their sovereign with them as
long as possible, and should not be too rigo-
rously judged: they are, as Jonson says,
denly thought upon."

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BOOK I.

EPIGRAMS.] From the folio of 1616. The Collection is there called Book I., from which it may be collected, that Jonson intended, at the period of its appearance, to make a further selection. It is to be lamented, on many accounts, that he subsequently changed his purpose. The character of the illustrious nobleman to whom this manly and high-spirited dedication is addressed, must be looked for in the history of the times. It may be necessary to admonish the reader not to take up these poems with the general expectation of finding them terminate in a point of wit. This, indeed, is the modern construction of the word; but this was never Jonson's: by Epigram he meant nothing more than a short poem, chiefly restricted to one idea, and equally adapted to the delineation and expression of every passion incident to human life. The work is, in short, an Anthology, and may occasionally remind those who are studious of antiquity, of the collections which pass under that name.

TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE OF HONOUR AND VIRTUE, THE MOST NOBLE

MY LORD,

WILLIAM EARL OF PEMBROKE,

LORD CHAMBERLAIN, &C.

While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title: it was that made it, and not I. Under which name, I here offer to your lordship the ripest of my studies, my EPIGRAMS; which, though they carry danger in the sound, do not therefore seek your shelter; for, when I made them, I had nothing in my conscience, to expressing of which I did need a cipher. But, if I be fallen into those times wherein, for the likeness of vice and facts, every one thinks another's ill deeds objected to him; and that in their ignorant and guilty mouths, the common voice is, for their security, Beware the poet! confessing therein so much love to their diseases, as they would rather make a party for them than be either rid, or told of them; I must expect, at your Lordship's hand, the protection of truth and liberty, while you are constant to your own goodness. In thanks whereof, I return you the honour of leading forth so many good and great names (as my verses mention on the better part) to their remembrance with posterity. Amongst whom, if I have praised unfortunately any one that doth not deserve; or, if all answer not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them; 1 hope it will be forgiven me that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like the persons. But I foresee a nearer fate to my book than this, that the vices therein will be owned before the virtues (though there I have avoided all particulars, as I have done names), and that some will be so ready to discredit me as they will have the impudence to belie themselves: for if I meant them not, it is so. Nor can I hope otherwise. For why should they remit anything of their riot, their pride, their self-love, and other inherent graces, to consider truth or virtue, but with the trade of the world, lend their long ears against men they love not, and hold their dear mountebank or jester in far better condition than all the study, or studiers of humanity? For such, I would rather know them by their visards still, than they should publish their faces, at their peril, in my theatre, where Cato, if he lived, might enter without scandal.

Your Lordship's most faithful honourer,

BEN JONSON.

In my theatre.] i.e., in the ensuing collection of epigrams. This would not have deserved mention had not Oldys, in his MS. notes to Langbaine, gravely produced the passage to prove that Jonson was "master of a playhouse!" "He (Ben) mentions something of his theatre to the Earl of Pembroke, before his epigrams." So men sometimes read !

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hit.

Deceive their malice who could wish it so; And by thy wiser temper let men know Thou art not covetous of least self-fame Made from the hazard of another's shame; Much less, with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,

To catch the world's loose laughter or vain gaze.

1 Send it to Bucklers-bury, there'twill well.] "The whole street (Stow says) called Buckle'sbury, on both the sides throughout, is possessed of grocers and apothecaries." So that there must have been a terrible consumption of poetry, and, of course, a never-failing demand for it. "The pepperers," also, it appears from the same authority, mightily affected this street.

How, best of kings, &c.] "Dr. Hurd," Whalley says in the margin of his copy, "has severely but justly reprehended Jonson for the gross adulation in these verses." Reprehensions of adulation come with a good grace from Hurd, it must be confessed! But why this outcry against our poet? His epigram was probably written soon after the accession of James, and when this good prince had surely given little cause for complaint to any one. With respect to his boyish poetry, of which I presume Hurd never read a line, it is really creditable to his talents. Some of the Psalms are better translated by him than they were by Milton at his years; and surrounded as he was by the hirelings of Elizabeth, who betrayed his mother, and only waited for the word to do as much by him, it is greatly to his honour that he turned his VOL. II.

He that departs with his own honesty For vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.

III.

TO MY BOOKSELLER.

Thou that mak'st gain thy end, and wisely well,

Call'st a book good or bad, as it doth sell, Use mine so too; I give thee leave: but

crave,

For the luck's sake, it thus much favour have,

To lie upon thy stall till it be sought;
Not offered, as it made suit to be bought;
Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls,
Or in cleft-sticks, advanced to make calls

For termers, or some clerklike serving-man,
Who scarce can spell th' hard names; whose
If, without these vile arts, it will not sell,
knight less can.
Send it to Bucklers-bury, there 'twill well.'

IV.

TO KING JAMES.

How, best of Kings, dost thou a sceptre bear!? How, best of Poets, dost thou laurel wear!

studies to so good an account. But why, let me ask again, this eternal outcry against Jonson ? Hurd had not very far to look for those who flattered much more grossly than Jonson, without his plea for it. James was his munificent patron, and gratitude, which none felt more ardently than our poet, might excuse some little exaggeration of praise.-But what extraordinary inducement had Shakspeare for his adulation? Hurd never asked himself this question. What plea had Drummond, or his friend Alexander (Lord Stirling) for their gross sycophancy? The latter has a panegyric on James for a sonnet greatly inferior to anything which his Majesty had written at the date of this Epigram, in which he says,

"He, prince or poet, more than man doth

prove!"

and, after a deal of fulsome rant, concludes thus: "But all his due who can afford him then,

A God of poets, and a king of men !"

Ard this is addressed to the queasy Drummond, who is so grievously scandalized at the "insincerity" of his "dear friend" Jonson. I trust

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that the reader will not be mortified at discovering that our author has partners in his delinquency: a fact that never appears to have been suspected by those who write against him.

[King James was a very tolerable versifier, and studied poetry as an art. Besides The Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie, which were published in Edinburgh eighteen years before he came to England, he was also the author of Some Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie.

Bishop Hurd, before he reprehended Jonson for adulation of James I., should have remembered the Dedication of the Bible to the "Sun in his strength."- F. C.]

A bagnio. Thus Shakspeare: "Now she professes a hot-house, which I think is a very house too."-Measure for Measure.

ill

2 That haunt Pickt-hatch, Marsh-Lambeth,

Begged Ridway's pardon: Duncote now doth cry,

Robbed both of money, and the law's relief, "The courtier is become the greater thief."

IX.

TO ALL TO WHOM I WRITE.

May none whose scattered names honour my book,

For strict degrees of rank or title look :

'Tis 'gainst the manners of an Epigram; And I a Poet here, no Herald am.

X.

TO MY LORD IGNORANT.

Thou call'st me POET, as a term of shame;
But I have my revenge made, in thy name.

XI.

ON SOMETHING, THAT WALKS

SOMEWHERE.

At court I met it, in clothes brave enough,
To be a courtier; and looks grave enough,
To seem a statesman: as I near it came,
It made me a great face; I asked the name.
A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh and blood,
And such from whom let no man hope least
good,

For I will do none; and as little ill,
For I will dare none: Good Lord, walk dead
still.

XII.

ON LIEUTENANT SHIFT. SHIFT, here in town, not meanest among squires

That haunt Pickt-hatch, Marsh-Lambeth, and White-friars, 2

Keeps himself, with half a man, and defrays The charge of that state with this charm, god pays.3

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