Page 2.

HE motto.] The motto began with Nam his, and was altered to Non hic in the folio of 1640. This could scarcely have been done by any person but Jonson, and is one circumstance among many that has convinced me that the editors of that almost worthless edition had a copy of this particular play with a few corrections by the author. There are also a few stray emendations scattered in other parts.

P. 3. Esme, lord Aubigny,] was younger brother of Lodovick Stuart, second duke of Lenox, and first and last duke of Richmond of his creation. He died in 1624, and was succeeded in the dukedom of Lenox by this Esme, who had been created earl of March in 1619, and was grandfather of the duke of Richmond who figures in the memoirs of De Grammont, and who married la belle Stuart. Esme, lord Aubigny, was perhaps the best friend Jonson ever possessed, and gave him the shelter of his roof during five years. See vol. ix. p. 389. He died 30th July, 1624. It was in his house that Jonson wrote the translation of the Ars Poetica and the commentary mentioned at p. 5.

P. 3. Suffered no less violence from our people.] It was not only from the people that the play suffered violence. Jonson told Drummond "Northampton was his mortal enemy 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 popery and treason by him." See vol. ix. p. 393.

P. 6. Defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation.] Mr. Dyce, whose opinion is entitled to great weight, refers to this note of Gifford's and says: "For my own part I think

I am

that the happy genius was neither Fletcher nor Beaumont; strongly inclined to believe that it was Chapman, a man who stood high in the regard of Jonson, and who possessed a fund of classical learning which fully qualified him for the task." My own opinion is worth comparatively little, but I feel tolerably confident that Beaumont was the friend referred to, and his youth is one of the circumstances which lead me to this conclusion. Sejanus was on the stocks at the same time as the Satiromastix, and the writers of the latter evidently considered that Jonson was bound to one particular person by the closest ties of literary alliance. If the limits of a note sufficed, it would be easy to show that this individual, to whom they give the not very complimentary name of Asinius Bubo, was highly born, a stripling, and a law student; and I know of no poet save Beaumont who in 1602 would answer this description. The words "loathed usurpation" seem to imply that the giver of the assistance had made some unpleasant remarks on the subject, which is quite in accordance with what Jonson said to Drummond about "Francis Beaumont loving too much himself and his own verses.' That they were firm friends afterwards is no proof that there may not have been a temporary misunderstanding between them. Beaumont is generally stated to have been born in 1586, but Mr. Dyce has no doubt that his birth ought to be fixed at an earlier date; and as we know that he was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1600, and to the University of Oxford in February, 1596-7, I think it certain that he must have been born as early as 1584, which would make him nineteen when Sejanus was produced. I see that Gifford's own latest opinion was to the same effect: “If Beaumont's age would admit of it [he was in his nineteenth year], I should more willingly lean to him." See note, vol. i. p. lxviii. In more recent times Southey accepted the same sort of assistance from Coleridge, and stripped himself of the borrowed plumage for a similar reason.

P. 8, note. Grenaway's Tacitus.] Jonson told Drummond that this portion of Tacitus was "ignorantly done in Englishe." See vol. ix. p. 410.

P. 9. The play as the author left it.] These references are all swept away in the 1616 folio, to the printing of which Jonson gave such great attention, and in the 1640 folio, published within three years of the author's death. In Marston's preface to Sophonisba, 1606, these references had been sneered at. "To transcribe authors, quote authorities, and translate Latine prose Orations into English blank verse, hath, in this subject, been the least ayme of my studies." Mr. Halliwell says that the assertion that this allusion applies to Jonson is "justly questioned by Gifford." I cannot find the passage,

P. 10. For the succession (and note).] Whalley was wrong about these words. They are not in the folio 1616, but appear for the first time in the folio 1640, which Whalley had before him. There are several other small variations, and all in favour of the 1640 version, which confirms my idea that Jonson had at some time given his attention to the revision of this particular play.

P. 13. We want their fine arts.] Both folios have "want the fine arts."

P. 15. Beg the forfeit lives to get their livings.] It is "the livings" in both folios.

P. 15. And, true as turquoise in the dear lord's ring,

Look well or ill with him.] So Donne in the Anatomie

of the World, 1. 342:

"As a compassionate turcoyse which doth tell,

By looking pale, the wearer is not well."

Both folios spell turquoise "turkise."

P. 17.

read:

Is lord of you,

Of me, of all our fortunes and our lives.] Both folios

"Of me, of all, our fortunes and our lives,"

which is certainly correct.

P. 17. Tyrants arts.] I take this opportunity of mentioning that Jonson invariably spelt this word without a t. Here, for instance, it is "Tyranne's arts." When Giles Fletcher in Christ's Victorie in Heaven (st. 88) spells the word in the Jonsonian way, Mr. Grosart treats it as a misprint.

Methinks he bears

P. 19. Himself each day, more nobly than other.] This second line strikes my ear as wanting a syllable. I suspect that Jonson, who was saturated over the ears in Latin, treated nobly as the Latin nobile.

P. 21. Year'd but to thirty.] This is a word of Jonson's own. At least, Richardson found no other example. It sounds awkward at first, but is really wanted in the language.

P. 22. Now observe the stoops, the bendings, and the falls.] On the stage of 1870-74 who has not met with "Grecian bends" and Roman falls." See vol. iv. p. 130.

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P. 23. And one, that you may make yours, by the grant.] Whoever it was that inserted the word that knew little of Jonson's language.

It was his constant practice to use "yours" as a dissyllable, and the addition of another foot in that place throws the emphasis on the wrong word. See the Alchemist, vol. iv. p. 174:

"Sir, I can take no knowledge

That they are your's but by public means."

P. 23. He is now the court god.] The amender here has been still less happy. Jonson wrote, "He is the now court god," which expresses more than the other, and should not have been altered. In the next line "cringes " should be "cringe.'

That great gormond fat Apicius ;

P. 24. And was the noted pathic of the time.] I know of no reason for changing gourmond, which Jonson wrote, into gormond. The meaning of pathic will be gathered from the following quotation from Michael Drayton :

P. 24.

"He looks like one, for the preposterous sin,

Put by the wicked and rebellious Jews

To be a pathic in their male-kind stews.

Hath his image

Rear'd equal with Tiberius, born in Ensigns.] The meaning of this would have been clearer if Jonson had been permitted to write "borne in Ensigns."

P. 27. For those that are, their beauties fear no colours.] This phrase is used by Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and others of their time, and even so late as by Swift in the Tale of a Tub: "He was a person that feared no colours, but mortally hated all.” P. 31. To have your private parasite redeem

What he, in public, subtilely will lose.] The folio reads: "What he, in public subtilty, will lose."

There is a good deal to be said in favour of the modern reading; but the original should not have been departed from without a

note.

P. 32. Flattery is midwife unto prince's rage.] This is no improvement on what Jonson wrote:

"Flattery is midwife unto princes' rage."

This is a word per

P. 39. The most apt and abled instrument.] haps peculiar to Jonson. Richardson, the most discriminating of our lexicographers, imitated his idol, Horne Tooke, in looking up to Jonson as one of our greatest authorities, and quotes him on every occasion. He gets from him his only example of "abled," as also of "dilate" at p. 33, ante.

P. 42. And reckon it an act without your sex.] The same peculiar expression is employed in Cynthia's Revels, vol. ii. p. 229: “O now I apprehend you, your phrase was without me before."

P. 47. Their mother slacks no means to put them on.] Dryden uses to slack in this same sense of to neglect:

P. 49.

"These are your fatal seats, and this your Troy,
Time calls you now, the precious hour employ.
Slack not the good presage, while Heaven inspires
Our minds to dare, and gives the ready fires."

Some one, or twain, or more,

En. v.

Of the main fautors,] i. e. abettors or supporters. Chapman uses the word for protectors or patrons; and he and Garth both have it in the feminine form of fautress.

P. 50.

If heart'ning Jove

Had from his hundred statues bid us strike,
And at the stroke click'd all his marble thumbs.

But who shall first be struck?] Here, as everywhere else, Jonson wrote strook for struck. Gifford occasionally spared it, and this was a case in which it certainly ought to have been preserved. See vol. ii. p. 284, 1. 6; and post.

P. 54. And their mother known

Of too, too unreproved a chastity.] This word should be printed too-too, as Jonson always took care to do when he made use of it. See vol. v. pp. 85, 350, and vol. vi. p. 156. Mr. Halliwell has proved beyond all dispute that the form too-too is "nothing more than a slight strengthening of the word too." Hamlet's use of it has made the world think that it means a great deal more than this, although Shakspeare in another place employs it in the same way that Jonson does. "I would drive her then from the ward of her purity, her reputation, her marriage vow, and a thousand other her defences, which now are too-too strongly embattled against me." Merry Wives, A. 2, S. 2. In addition to the examples quoted by Mr. Halliwell, I shall add two that have come casually to my notice. One is in a letter to James VI. from no less a person than queen Elizabeth : Accept my hourly care for your broken country to to much infected with the maladie of strangers humors." The other is from the address prefixed to Selden's Theanthropos, which was not written till after the Restoration: "This abolishing of decency and solemnisations hath quite consumed the substance of religion; and the sad effects thereof have of late years been too too apparent among us. Instead of endeavouring to order, they did ordure the House of God. Temples

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