from it, and put to ane other craft (I think was to be a wright or bricklayer),1 which he could not endure; then went he to the Low Countries; but returning soone he betook himself to his wonted studies. In his service in the Low Countries, he had, in the face of both the campes, killed ane enemie and taken opima spolia from him; and since his comming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversarie, which had hurt him in the arme, and whose sword was 10 inches longer than his; for the which he was emprissoned, and almost at the gallowes.3 Then took he his religion by trust, of a priest who visited him in prisson. Thereafter he was 12 yeares a Papist. He was Master of Arts in both the Universities, by their favour, not his studie.5 He maried a wyfe who was a shrew, yet honest: 5 yeers he had not bedded with her, but remayned with my Lord Aulbanie.

In the tyme of his close imprisonment, under Queen Elizabeth, his judges could get nothing of him to all their demands but I and No. They placed two damn'd villains to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertised by his keeper: of the Spies he hath ane epigrame.7

When the King came in England at that tyme the pest was in London, he being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton's house with old Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest sone, then a child and at London, appear unto him with the mark of a bloodie crosse on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a suord, 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.8

1 The trade, no doubt, was that of a layer of bricks. Peter Levins in his Manipulus Vocabu larum, A.D. 1570, translates Wright by Faber lignarius, but Faber by itself would have been

more accurate.

2 Jonson refers to his military career with conscious pride in his Epigram To True Soldiers, ante, p. 250 b.

See vol. i. p. xiii., and note. Mr. Collier in his Memoirs of Alleyn, p. 50, has printed a letter of Philip Henslowe's to his address, which for the first time revealed the name of Jonson's adversary. "26th of September, 1598.-Sence yow weare with me I have lost one of my company which hurteth me greatley, that is Gabrell, for he is slayen in Hogesden fylldes by the hands of bergemen Jonson, bricklayer; therfore I wold fayne have a littell of your cownsell yf I cowld." Henslowe no doubt adds "bricklayer" to Jonson's name in bitterness of spirit for the loss of Gabriel Spenser, an actor whom he found it difficult to replace. That most inaccurate of all gossips, Aubrey, made out that the victim was no less a man than Christopher Marlowe, who more than five years before had been laid in his bloody grave at Deptford.

* See Gifford's remarks on this conversion, vol. i. p. xiii., and note.

5 There is some difficulty here, for according to Antony Wood he was not created M.A. of Oxford till the 19th of July, 1619, immediately after his return from Scotland. His words are, "Benjamin Johnson, the father of English poets and poetry, and the most learned and judicious of the comedians, was then actually created Master of Arts in a full House of Convocation." Would it be contrary to University usage to suppose that the degree had already been bestowed upon him in an informal manner? His Volpone (11th Feb. 1607-8) is dedicated, "To the most noble and most equal Sisters, the two Famous Universities." See vol. i. p. 333.

Jonson dedicated his Sejanus to the "no less noble by virtue than blood, Esme, Lord Aubigny" and he addressed one of his best "Epistles" to Katherine, his wife. See ante, p. 273There is also an Epigram (p. 256) commencing→

"Is there a hope that man would thankful be,

If I should fail in gratitude to thee,
To whom I am so bound, loved Aubigny ?"

The most

7 The Epigram No. lix. p. 236 a. So much vigilance was required to baffle the ever-renewed plots against the Queen, that the trade of spying became a very flourishing one. zealous and daring tools of the Jesuits were found among the converts, such as Jonson then was. 8 In 1603, the year of Elizabeth's death, 30,578 persons died of the plague in London alone. See ante, p. 233 6, for the Lines which Jonson wrote on this occasion

"Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy:
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay-

As he was seven years old in 1603, he must have been born in 1596, and if he had an elder sister

1

He was delated by Sir James Murray to the King, for writting something against the Scots, in a play Eastward Hoe, and voluntarily imprissonned himself with Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. The report was, that they should then [have] had their ears cut and noses. After their delivery, he banqueted all his friends; there was Camden, Selden, and others; at the 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.1

He had many quarrells with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him," wrote his Poetaster on him; the beginning of them were, that Marston represented him in the stage, in his youth given to venerie. He thought the use of a maide nothing in comparison to the wantoness of a wyfe, and would never have ane other mistress. He said two accidents strange befell him: one, that a man made his own wyfe to court him, whom he enjoyed two yeares ere he knew of it, and one day finding them by chance, was passingly delighted with it; ane other, lay divers tymes with a woman, who shew him all that he wished, except the last act, which she would never agree unto.

This

S. W. Raulighe sent him governour with his Son, anno 1613, to France. youth being knavishly inclyned, among other pastimes (as the setting of the favour of damosells on a cwd-piece), caused him to be drunken, and dead drunk, so that he knew not wher he was, therafter laid him on a carr, which he made to be drawen by pioners through the streets, at every corner showing his governour stretched out, and telling them, that was a more lively image of the Crucifix then any they had: at which sport young Raughlie's mother delyghted much (saying, his father young was so inclyned), though the Father abhorred it.3

He can set horoscopes, but trusts not in them.4 He with the consent of a friend cousened a lady, with whom he had made ane appointment to meet ane old Astrologer, in the suburbs, which she keeped ; and it was himself disguysed in a longe gowne and a whyte beard at the light of dimm burning candles, up in a little cabinet reached unto by a ledder.

Every first day of the new year he had 20lb. sent him from the Earl of Pembrok to buy bookes.5

After he was reconciled with the Church, and left of to be a recusant, at his first communion, in token of true reconciliation, he drank out all the full cup of wyne.6

(see vol. i. p. xiv. and ante, p. 229 a) the father must have been married at least as early as 1594, when he was twenty-one years old. Gifford speaks of this piece of the Conversations, as one of the "spiteful attempts made by the vile calumniator Drummond to injure Jonson !"

1 Mr. Collier thinks ("Hist. Dram. Poetry," vol. i. p. 356) that Eastward Ho! was acted before the end of 1604. In some few of the printed copies of 1605 there is one passage about the Scots which is omitted in the great majority of the existing copies. But there is not enough point in it to justify its quotation here. Jonson was again in trouble about a play in 1605. On this occasion his fellow prisoner was George Chapman. See his letter to Cecil, vol. i. p. xlix. The old mother producing the paper of "lustie strong poison" before Camden and Selden and Jonson would make a fine subject for a painter.

2 See ante, note, p. 477.

$ Raleigh's son Walter accompanied his father on his last fatal expedition, and was slain in an ambush on the banks of the Orinoco on New Year's Day, 1618, in his twenty-third year. He had been matriculated at Corpus so early as 1607, and in his Oxford career had differences with his tutors, in which, as in the present case, he was applauded by his mother and condemned by his father after patient inquiry. It is strange that Mr. Edwards, the author of the latest and best Life of Raleigh (2 vols. 8vo, 1868) should have been ignorant of the existence of this note of Drummond's. Among Aubrey's MSS. was a note, said to have been in Izaak Walton's handwriting, in which it is mentioned that Jonson accompanied a son of Raleigh's on his travels, and that they had an angry parting. But Walton was in extreme old age when he wrote the note, and antedated the employment by about twenty years. See Aubrey's Letters, &c., vol. iii. p. 416. Gifford was thus misled into a denial of the truth of the tradition. See note, vol. i. p. lxii.

It was hardly necessary to record that the author of The Alchemist had studied astrology, or that he disbelieved in the results obtained from it.

5 A generous deed could not have been performed in a more delicate manner, and Jonson more than repaid it by telling the latest posterity that to be "Pembroke's mother" might be boasted of in the same breath with being "Sidney's sister."

In reference to this statement, Gifford says that "Jonson's feelings were always strong, and

Being at the end of my Lord Salisburie's table with Inigo Jones, and demanded by my Lord, Why he was not glad? My Lord, said he, yow promised I should dine with yow, bot I doe not, for he had none of his meate; he esteemed only that his meate which was of his own dish.1

He heth consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, feight in his imagination.2 Northampton was his mortall enimie for beating, on a St. George's day, one of his attenders: He was called before the Councell for his Sejanus, and accused both of poperie and treason by him.3

Sundry tymes he hath devoured his bookes, i.[e.] sold them all for necessity.

He heth a minde to be a churchman, and so he might have favour to make one sermon to the King, he careth not what therafter sould befall him: for he would not flatter though he saw Death.5

At his hither comming, Sr Francis Bacon said to him, He loved not to sie Poesy goe on other feet than poeticall Dactylus and Spondaeus.6

1

XIV.

HIS NARRATIONS OF GREAT ONES.

He never esteemed of a man for the name of a Lord.7

Queen Elizabeth never saw her self after she became old in a true glass; they painted her, and sometymes would vermilion her nose. She had allwayes about Christmass evens set dice that threw sixes or five, and she knew not they were other, to make her win and esteame herself fortunate. That she had a membrana on her, which made her incapable of man, though for her delight she tried many. At the comming over of

the energy of his character was impressed upon every act of his life," and that "more wine was drunk at the altar in the poet's day than in ours.' But while thus admitting the anecdote to be characteristic both of the man and of the times, he goes on to say that it is "foisted" into the Conversations by Drummond, by whom it was most probably "wantonly invented to discredit" Jonson !

1 The younger Cecil died May 24, 1612, so that this must have taken place before the quarrel with Inigo, and most probably either in July, 1606, or May, 1607. See the two Entertainments at Theobalds, vol. ii. p. 583 and 585. But Jonson, we may well believe, never let an opportunity slip of asserting the dignity of letters.

Jonson was a free liver, and loved generous wines. He seems to be describing sleepless nights during a well earned attack of gout.

Sejanus his Fall was "first acted in the yeare 1603, by the King's Maiesties Servants." One of the principall Tragoedians" being "Will. Shakespeare." It was unequivocally condemned by the "multitude :"

"Who screwed their scurvy jaws and looked awry,

Like hissing snakes adjudging it to die,
When wits of gentry did applaud," &c.

See vol. i. p. 271. As Jonson tells us that the printed copy "is not (in all numbers) the same with that which was acted on the public stage," it is impossible to say what matters of "treason" the original may not have contained. It is impossible not to smile at an accusation of popery coming from Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, the very man against whom Lady Bacon warns her sons Anthony and Francis as "a dangerous intelligencing man, and no doubt a subtile papist inwardly; a very instrument of the Spanish papists.' In another place she calls him subtiliter subdolus, and a subtle serpent." He was a son of the Poet Earl of Surrey.

"

* Jonson was thus a helluo librorum in a double sense. But besides the occasional selling of books it must always be remembered that no man ever made a better use of them while in his possession, or was more generous in giving them. "I am fully warranted in saying that more valuable books given by individuals to Jonson are yet to be met with than by any person of that age. Scores of them have fallen under my own inspection, and I have heard of abundance of others." Gifford, vol. i. p. li.

5 The successful clerical careers of Joseph Hall and John Donne were often in Jonson's mind (see Discoveries, ante). Besides, his own father had been a " minister."

Alluding of course to Jonson's performing the journey to Scotland on foot. It is delightful to think of the kindly feeling which existed between the Prince of Philosophers and this great poet and scholar.

7 No man that ever breathed, not even his namesake Samuel, had a more independent spirit than Ben Jonson.

Monsieur, ther was a French chirurgion who took in hand to cut it, yett fear stayed her and his death.1 King Philip had intention by dispensation of the Pope to have maried her.

Sir P. Sidneye's Mother, Leicester's sister, after she had the litle pox, never shew herself in Court therafter bot masked.2

The Earl of Leicester gave a botle of liquor to his Lady, which he willed her to use in any faintness; which she, after his returne from Court, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and so he died.3

Salisbury never cared for any man longer nor he could make use of him.4

My Lord Lisle's daughter, my Lady Wroth, is unworthily maried on a jealous husband.5

Ben one day being at table with my Lady Rutland, her Husband comming in, accused her that she keept table to poets, of which she wrott a letter to him [Jonson], which he answered. My Lord intercepted the letter, but never chalenged him.6

My Lord Chancelor of England wringeth his speeches from the strings of his band, and other Councellours from the pyking of their teeth.7

Pembrok and his Lady discoursing, the Earl said, The woemen were men's shadowes, and she maintained them. Both appealing to Johnson, he affirmed it true; for which my Lady gave a pennance to prove it in verse: hence his epigrame. 8

Essex wrote that Epistle or preface befor the translation of the last part of Tacitus, which is A. B. The last book the gentleman durst not translate for the evill it containes of the Jewes.9

9

1 Jonson had opportunities, beyond any literary man of his generation, of collecting information regarding the secret history of Elizabeth's Court. This story of the Chirurgion, if true, would account for the Queen's extraordinary conduct to Monsieur. See Froude's History, passim.

2 This is referred to by Lord Brooke in his Life of Sir Philip Sidney. "The mischance of sickness having cast such a kind of veil over her excellent beauty, she chose rather to hide herself from the curious eyes of a delicate time, than come upon the stage of the world with any disparagement."-P. C.

3 Sir Walter Scott quotes this passage in the Introduction to Kenilworth, p. x., and appears to give credit to it. The famous satirical epitaph on the Earl of Leicester is also given in Kenilworth (note to Chap. xxiv.) from the MS. copy in the Hawthornden papers. Mr. Laing suggests that it may have been communicated to Drummond by Jonson.

"Here lies a valiant warrior,
Who never drew a sword;
Here lies a noble courtier,
Who never kept his word;

Here lies the Earle of Leister,
Who governed the Estates;

Whom the Earth could never living love,

And the just Heaven now hates.

Both Burghley and Salisbury were intensely selfish in their distribution of patronage. Their great kinsman Francis Bacon, in a letter of advice to Buckingham, tells him to "Countenance and encourage and advance able men in all kinds, degrees, and professions. For in the time of the Cecils, the father and the son, able men were by design and of purpose suppressed."

5 Lady Mary was the daughter of Robert, Earl of Leicester, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney. Jonson dedicated The Alchemist to her (vol. ii. p. 2). See also Epigram ciii. p. 248 6. She was married to Sir Robert Wroth, of Durance, co. Middlesex.

6 Lady Rutland being unhappy in her marriage, cultivated her hereditary talent for literature, and loved to have men of letters about her. 'Chalenged," of course, means "took to task." 7 The Lord Chancellor during Jonson's visit to Scotland was Francis Bacon. It is interesting to know the action which he employed when "the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end" (see Discoveries, p. 400, ante). By the "pyking of their teeth," I think Jonson means that what was mere play to Bacon was serious toil to others. 8 See the graceful and ingenious song at p. 267 a. co-heiress of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury. life was "most unhappy," for he paid much too dear into the bargain."

Lady Pembroke was eldest daughter and Clarendon says that Pembroke's domestic for his wife's fortune by taking her person

9 This piece of information is very interesting, for the Epistle or Preface is remarkable in itself, and would not shame any writer even of that age. Here is a brief extract: "In these foure bookes of the storie thou shalt see all the miseries of a torne and declining State: the Empire usurped the Princes murdered: the people wavering: the souldiers tumultuous: nothing un

The King said Sir P. Sidney was no poet. Neither did he see ever any verses in England to the Scullor's.1

It were good that the half of the preachers of England were plain ignorants, for that either in their sermons they flatter, or strive to shew their own eloquence?

HIS OPINIONE OF VERSES.

XV.

That he wrott all his first in prose, for so his Master, Cambden, had learned him. That verses stood by sense without either colours or accent; which yett other tymes he denied.3

A great many epigrams were ill, because they expressed in the end what sould have been understood by what was said. That of S. Joh. Davies, 'Some loved running verses,' plus mihi complacet.

He imitated the description of a night from Bonifonius his Vigilium Veneris.♦
He scorned such verses as could be transponed.

OF HIS WORkes.

"Wher is the man that never yett did hear

Of faire Penelope, Ulisses Queene?

Of faire Penelope, Ulisses Queene,

Wher is the man that never yett did hear?”

XVI.

That the half of his Comedies were not in print.

He hath a pastorall intitled The May Lord." His own name is Alkin, Ethra the Countesse of Bedfoord's, Mogibell Overberry, the old Countesse of Suffolk ane inchan

lawfull to him that hath power, and nothing so unsafe as to be securely innocent." This "last part of Tacitus" was translated by Sir Henry Savile, and was regarded by Jonson in a very different light from the translation of the Annals by Richard Greenwey (see post, p. 491 ), and the Epigram to Savile, No. xcv. p. 245). In those days of intense religious feeling, when in particular the Old Testament was looked to for the daily rule of life, readers might have been shocked to find the Jews described by the great historian from a pagan point of view. A better reason may have been that this Book V. is a mere fragment.

1 This is one of the earliest specimens of that "wut" for which, according to Sydney Smith, the countrymen of King James are now distinguished. Had he delivered these opinions seriously, they might have been easily refuted from his own writings. One sonnet of his composition is devoted to the loss which the muses sustained in the death of Sidney; and another "Decifring the Perfyte Poete" might almost be taken as a picture of Jonson himself, and the very opposite therefore of "the Scullor."

2 Bishop Latimer's sermons would have been discourses after Jonson's own heart.

I see no contradiction here. During the long conversations between the two poets verses of every sort and kind must have come under discussion, and it is easy to understand that while Jonson would, of course, prefer meaning to sound, he would still not admit that good sense alone constituted poetry.

4 See ante, p. 472.

These are the opening lines of Sir John Davies' "Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dauncing, judicially prooving the true observation of tune measure, in the Authenticall and laudable use of Dauncing. London, 1596." Jonson has another fling at this couplet, see post, p. 489.

How much it is to be regretted that Jonson did not mention (or Drummond omit to record) the names of the Comedies written before 1619, and not then in print. Bartholomew Fair and The Devil is an Ass are the only ones known to us, as against at least seven that had been published.

7 This is the only record left of what, judging by the powers displayed in The Sad Shepherd, must have been a delightful poem, Gifford calls Drummond's harmless criticism at the end a libel which his treacherous friend, whose prudence was almost equal to his malignity, kept to himself, at least while the poet lived!" (See vol. ii. p. 487.) For the sake of this last hit Gifford had reluctantly to give up the notion that Drummond was the person aimed at in the Prologue to The Sad Shepherd.

"But here's an heresy of late let fall,

That mirth by no means fits a Pastoral:

Such say so who can make none, he presumes:
Else there's no scene more properly assumes
The sock."