Beheld what his high fancy once embraced, Virtue with colours, speech, and motion graced. The sundry postures of thy copious muse, Who would express, a thousand tongues must use: Whose fate's no less peculiar than thy art; UPON THE POET OF HIS TIME BENJAMIN JONSON, HIS HONOURED FRIEND AND FATHER, And is thy glass run out? is that oil spent, Which light to such tough sinewy labours lent? Well, BEN, I now perceive that all the Nine, Though they their utmost forces should combine, Cannot prevail 'gainst Night's three daughters, but One still will spin, one wind, the other cut. Yet in despight of spindle, clue, and knife, Thou, in thy strenuous lines, hast got a life, Which, like thy bay, shall flourish every age, While sock or buskin move upon the stage. JAMES HOWELL, AN OFFERTÓRY AT THE TOMB OF THE FAMOUS POET BEN JONSON. If souls departed lately hence do know How we perform the duties that we owe Their reliqués, will it not grieve thy spirit To see our dull devotion? thy merit Profaned by disproportioned rites? thy herse Rudely defiled with our unpolished verse? Necessity's our best excuse: 'tis in Our understanding, not our will, we sin; 'Gainst which 'tis now in vain to labour, we Did nothing know, but what was taught by thee. The routed soldiers when their captains fall Forget all order, that men cannot call And therefore whatsoe'er the subject be, This is thy glory, that no pen can raise Each muse should end with thine, who was the best : And but her flights were stronger, and so high, That time's rude hand cannot reach her glory, An ignorance had spread this age, as great As that which made thy learned muse so sweat, And toil to dissipate; until, at length, Purged by thy art, it gained a lasting strength; And now, secured by thy all-powerful writ, Can fear no more a like relapse of wit : Though (to our grief) we ever must despair, That any age can raise thee up an heir. JOHN VERNON.3 è Societ. In. Temp. TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON. The Muses' fairest light in no dark time; The wonder of a learned age; the line Which none can pass; the most proportioned wit To nature, the best judge of what was fit; The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen; The voice most echoed by consenting men; The soul which answered best to all well said By others, and which most requital made; 1 Edmund Waller born in 1605, died of a and was buried in the Temple Church.-GILdropsy, the 1st October, 1687.-GILCHRIST. James Howell, the author of "Familiar Epistles," is so well known that it seems scarcely necessary to say more than that he was born at Abernant, in Carnarvonshire, educated at Jesus College, Oxford, and died in November, 1666 CHRIST. 3 John Vernon was the son and heir of Robert Vernon, of Camberwell, in the county of Surrey, Knt.; he was admitted of the Inner Temple the 15th October, 2nd Charles I. (1626), and was called to the bar the 15th October, 1634.-GIL CHRIST. We must be ravished first; thou must infuse Thyself into us both the theme and muse. Else (though we all conspired to make thy herse Our works), so that 't had been but one great verse, Though the priest had translated for that time The liturgy, and buried thee in rhyme, Not his room, but the poet for thy grave; die And live, so now thou might'st in numbers lie, "Twere frail solemnity: verses on thee And not like thine, would but kind libels be; And we (not speaking thy whole worth) should raise Worse blots, than they that envied thy praise. Indeed, thou need'st us not, since above all Invention, thou wert thine own funeral. Hereafter, when time hath fed on thy tomb, Th' inscription worn out, and the marble dumb, So that 'twould pose a critic to restore Half words, and words expired so long before; When thy maimed statue hath a sentenced face, And looks that are the horror of the place, That will be ruined, or lose nose, or hair. Let others write so thin, that they can't be Authors till rotten, no posterity Can add to thy works; they had their whole growth then When first born, and came aged from thy pen. person under restraint, the dignified and manly terms in which he remonstrated with Cromwell, and which under a meaner usurper would have put his life in jeopardy, extorted from the Protector his liberty. He was born at Loughborough in 1613, educated at Christ's and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge, and died in Gray's Inn, on the 29th April, 1658:-greatly lamented by the royalists.-GILCHRIST. Whilst living thou enjoyedst the fame and sense Of all that time gives, but the reverence. When thou'rt of Homer's years, no man will say Thy poems are less worthy, but more gray: "Tis bastard poetry, and of false blood Which can't, without succession, be good. Things that will always last, do thus agree With things eternal; th' at once perfect be. Scorn then their censures, who gave out, thy wit As long upon a comedy did sit As elephants bring forth; and that thy blots And mendings took more time than Fortune plots: That such thy drought was, and so great thy thirst, That all thy plays were drawn at the maid first; Since of some silken judgments we may say, So that th' unlearned lost their money; and Called down a God t' untie th' unlikely knot: Thine were land-tragedies, no prince was To swim a whole scene out, then o' the stage drowned; Pitched fields, as Red Bull wars, still felt thy doom; Thou laid'st no sieges to the music room; Nor wouldst allow, to thy best Comedies, Mer-Humours that should above the people rise. Yet was thy language and thy style so high, Thy sock to th' ancle, buskin reached to th' thigh; That the king's yearly butt wrote, and his wine Hath more right than thou to thy CATI LINE. Let such men keep a diet, let their wit Such as with less, the state draws treason Though they should the length of con- Sick of their verse, and of their poem die, Confirm their boastings, and shew made in He that writes well, writes quick, since Nothing is slowly done, that's always new. And so thy ALCHEMIST played o'er and o'er, We, like the actors, did repeat; the pit wit: Which was cast in those forms, such rules, such arts, That but to some not half thy acts were parts: 1 [Meaning that each day was as crowded as the first had been, only that the spectators were admitted at a cheaper rate than on the first day. -J. P. COLLIER.] And both so chaste, so 'bove dramatic clean, scene. No foul loose line did prostitute thy wit, Thou wrot'st thy comedies, didst not commit. We did the vice arraigned not tempting hear, And were made judges, not bad parts by th' ear. For thou ev'n sin did in such words array, That some who came bad parts, went out good play. Which, ended not with th' epilogue, the age Still acted, which grew innocent from the stage. 'Tis true thou hadst some sharpness, but Served but with pleasure to reform the fault: more | So much doth satire more correct than law; Didst 'gainst a person of such vices write; We know thy free vein had this innocence, And the just indignation thou wert in Might have seen themselves played like Like Cleon, Mammon might the knight If, as Greek authors, thou hadst turned And hadst not chosen rather to translate Who without Latin helps hadst been as And what can more be hoped, since that Free filling spirit took its flight with thine? And, through distemper, grown not strong Instead of writing, only rave in verse: Which when by thy laws judged, 'twill be confessed, 'Twas not to be inspired, but be possessed. Where shall we find a muse like thine, that can So well present and shew man unto man, Extends not to the gestures but the heart? Manners, that were themes to thy scenes In the same stream, and are their com- These times thus living o'er thy models, we swear A Sybil's finger hath been busy there, Things common thou speak'st proper, which though known For public, stampt by thee grow thence thine own: Thy thoughts so ordered, so expressed, that we Conclude that thou didst not discourse, but see, Language so mastered, that thy numerous Laden with genuine words, do always meet Thy pen seem not so much to write as That life, that Venus of all things, which we Conceive or shew, proportioned decency, Jasper Mayne, whose entertaining comedies siding, was restored to his livings, made Canon have endeared his name to dramatic readers, of Christ Church and Archdeacon of Chichester. was born at Hatherly in Devon, 1604, educated He died the 6th December, 1672. His character at Westminster, and afterwards at Christ Church, has been thus briefly and boldly sketched: In Oxford, where he took the degrees of B.A. 1628, genio sanè fœlicissimo et eruditione propemoand M.A. 1631. Ejected from his vicarages of dum omnigena locupletato, fruebatur; theolo Pyrton and Cassington by the Parliamentary gus accurate doctus et annunciator evangelit visitors, he found an asylum under the roof of disertus: Poeta porro non incelebris et ob sales the Earl of Devonshire, and the storm sub-ac facetias in precio habitus."-Gilchrist. Is not found scattered in thee here and there, But, like the soul, is wholly everywhere. No strange perplexed maze does pass for plot, Thou always dost untie, not cut the knot. Thy labyrinth's doors are opened by one thread That ties, and runs through all that's done or said: No power comes down with learned hat and rod, Wit only, and contrivance is thy god. 'Tis easy to gild gold; there's small skill spent Where even the first rude mass is ornament: Thy muse took harder metals, purged and boiled, Laboured and tried, heated, and beat and toiled, Sifted the dross, filed roughness, then gave dress, Vexing rude subjects into comeliness. Nor dost thou pour out, but dispense thy vein, Skilled when to spare, and when to entertain: Not like our wits, who into one piece do Throw all that they can say, and their friends too; Pumping theinselves, for one term's noise so dry, Thy thunders thus but purge, and we endure Thy lancings better than another's cure; And justly too: for th' age grows more unsound From the fool's balsam, than the wiseman's wound. No rotten talk brokes for a laugh; no page Commenced man by th' instructions of thy stage; No bargaining line there; provoc'tive verse; Nothing but what Lucretia might rehearse; No need to make good countenance ill, and use The plea of strict life for a looser muse. sense, Thyself being to thyself an influence. Stout beauty is thy grace; stern pleasures do Present delights, but mingle horrors too : Thy muse doth thus like Jove's fierce girl appear, With a fair hand, but grasping of a spear. Where are they now that cry, thy lamp did drink More oil than the author wine, while he did think? We do embrace their slander: thou hast writ Not for dispatch but fame; no market wit: 'Twas not thy care, that it might pass and sell, As if they made their wills in poetry. When men transcribe themselves, and not Until the file would not make smooth, but the age: Both sorts of plays are thus like pictures shewn, Thine of the common life, theirs of their own. Thy models yet are not so framed, as we May call them libels, and not imag'ry; No name on any basis: 'tis thy skill To strike the vice, but spare the person still. As he, who when he saw the serpent wreathed About his sleeping son, and as he breathed, Drink in his soul, did so the shot contrive, To kill the beast, but keep the child alive: So dost thou aim thy darts, which, even when They kill the poisons, do but wake the men: |