fonal prejudices, we may safely truft his integrity and judgment. Jonfon's office as poet laureat injoined him to provide the Christmas diverfion of a mafque; and we have accordingly a series of these, and other entertainments of a like kind, moft of which were prefented at court, from 1615 to 1625. In this last year was exhibited his comedy called The Staple of News; and from thence to the year 1629, the writing of mafques was the chief employment of his pen, excepting poffibly fome fhorter pieces, to which there is no date. In that year his comedy intitled The New Inn, or the Light Heart, was attempted to be acted; but a ftrong oppofition was formed against it, and fome of the players were negligent and careless in their parts. Jonfon refented with indignation the ill treatment which his play received, and wrote an ode to himself, as a diffuafive to leave the stage. The New Inn, with the ode annexed, was printed in 1631, and a very severe reply was foon after written by Owen Feltham, in verse, and in the fame measure with Jonfon's ode. He was at that time ill, and lived in an obfcure neceffitous condition, and there is a printed ftory which tells us, that the king, who heard of it, fent him a benevolence of ten pounds, and that Jonfon when he received the money, returned the following anfwer: "His "majefty hath fent mne ten pounds, because I am old "and poor, and live in an alley; go, and tell him, "that his foul lives in an alley." The bluntness of Jonfon's temper might easily afford occafion for fuch a ftory to be made; and there is an expreffion not unlike it, occurring in his works; but the fact is otherwife. It is true, that he was poor and ill; but the king relieved him with a bounty of one hundred pounds, which he hath exprefsly acknowledged, by an epigram written in that very year, and on that particular occafion. Jonfon Jonfon continued for fome time in this low ftate; and in 1631 he folicited the lord treasurer for relief, in a fhort poem addreffed to him, which he called an Epiftle Mendicant, and in which he complains that he had laboured under fickness and want for five years. Superfluous wealth hath been feldom a part of the mufe's dowry; and but few of her train have been able to boast the fplendor and the gifts of fortune. But the frequency of diftrefs hath been their mutual relief; and with this thought Cowley alleviates his misfortunes, when he fo feelingly complains, that fuch "Were all th' infpired tuneful men, "Such all his great forefathers were, from Homer "down to Ben." The want of fuccefs attending the preceding play, did not difcourage him from taking the field again. There are two comedies fubfequent, in point of time, to the New Inn, but both are without a date. Of thefe, the Tale of a Tub was probably his last performance, and is undoubtedly one of thofe later compofitions which Dryden hath called his dotages; but yet they are the dotages of Jonfon. The Magnetick Lady fucceeded the New Inn, though the time of its being first acted is uncertain. The malevolence of criticism, which had marked him for its prey in his younger years, could not be perfuaded to reverence his age, but purfued him with unwearied fteps, nor left him as long as he could hold a pen; and if we adopt the maxim of a celebrated wit, Jonfon must have been certainly a genius, from the confederacy of the dunces against him. Alexander Gill, a Poetafter of the times, attacked him with a brutal fury, on account of this laft play; but Gill was a bad man, as well as a wretched poet; and Jonfon with both thefe advantages, d 2 re revenged himself by a fhort but cutting reply. There are two other pieces which are left unfinished, the Sad Shepherd, a paftoral tragedy, and the Fall of Mortimer. Of this laft, there is only the plan of the drama, and one or two scenes; but the other is carried on almoft to the conclufion of the third act; and it is a doubt whether he left it fo by defign, or whether he was prevented by death. The Mafques and Entertainments go on in the fame fucceffive order as before; and the last of these was perfonated in July 1634. His fmaller poems were most of them occafional; the greatest part are without date, nor is there any thing in the fubject that leads us to determine the precife time of their compofition. Befides the plays which are entirely his own, Jonfon joined with Fletcher and Middleton in writing a comedy called the Widow; and he affifted Dr. Hacket, afterwards bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in translating the Effays of lord Bacon into Latin. After the year 1634, we do not find that he wrote any thing, or at leaft, not any thing defigned for the ftage. He made indeed a tranflation of Horace's Art of Poetry, an English Grammar, and Obfervations on Men and Things, which he hath called Difcoveries. But the Art of Poetry was tranflated by him very early; for he mentions it in the preface to Sejanus, as what he propofed fhortly to publish, illuftrated with notes; but it doth not appear to have been published, till after he was dead and much of what was probably intended for the notes, is inferted in the Discoveries. These are a very excellent piece, the fruits of mature and judicious age; valuable not only for the fentiments and obfervations, but as a pattern of a nervous and concife ftile. His grammar was alfo written by him. when advanced in years, and in the judgment of Mr. Wotton, Jonfon was the first who did any thing confiderable, with regard to the grammar of the English Lan Language; but as that author obferveth, Lilly's Grammar was his pattern; and for want of reflecting upon the grounds of a language, which he underftood as well as any man of his age, he drew it by violence to a dead language, that was of a quite different make, and fo left his book imperfect. In the decline of his life, Jonfon was feized with the palfy, which we fuppofe afflicted him till the time of his death. He died on the fixth of Auguft 1637, in the fixty-third of his age, and three days after he was interred in Westminster-Abbey, at the north weft end near the belfry, under the efcutcheon of Robert de Ros or Roos. Over his grave is a common pavement ftone, given, faith Anthony Wood, by Jack Young of great Milton in Oxfordshire, afterwards knighted by king Charles the Second, and on it are engraven thefe words: ORARE BEN JONSON! in the beginning of the year following, a collection ofElegies,and Poems on his death, was published, under the title of Jonfonius Virbius; or the Memory of Ben. Jonson revived by the friends of the Mufes. In this collection are poems by moft of the men of genius in that age: by the lord Falkland, the lord Buckhurst, fir John Beaumont, firThomasHawkins, Mr. Waller, by Waring, Mayne, and Cartwright, of Oxford, with many others; and among the reft is Owen Feltham, who attacked him so severely in answer to his Ode on the New Inn. This piece was published by Dr.. Duppa, bishop of Chichester, and tutor to Charles the Second, then prince of Wales. What is there fo defirable, as to be loved in life, and lamented after death by wife and good men; or what more honourable to a poet, than to have his memory embalmed by the tears of the mufes? Soon after, a defign was fet on foot to erect a monument and a statue to him, and a confiderable fum of money was collected for that purpose: but the rebellion breaking out, the defign was never executed, and the money was returned. The monument now erected to him in the abbey, was placed there at the expence of that great encourager of learning the fecond earl of Oxford of the Harley family. It is faid that in 1616 Jonfon lived in Black-friars, where there was then a play-house; and from thence he removed to a houfe in Alderfgate-ftreet, at the corner of Jewin-street, where it is reported he died. Mr. Wood acquaints us, Dr. Morley, bishop of Winchester, informed him, that Jonfon had a penfion from the city, from feveral of the nobility and gentry, and particularly from Mr. Sutton, the founder of the Chartreux hofpital in London; and Mr. Wood infinuates, that thefe penfions were paid him, to prevent being made objects of his fatire; as if Jonfon, like another Aretine, was the fcourge of the great, who refused to become tributaries to his mufe. The prelate abovementioned, when master of arts, had been acquainted with Jonfon, and often vifited him in his last illness. And at thofe times, he expreffed great uneafiness and forrow for profaning the fcripture in his plays, He had undoubtedly a fenfe, and was under the influence of religion; and it may be offered in his favour, that his offences against piety and good manners are very few. Were authority or example an excufe for vice, there are more indecencies in a fingle play of the poet's contemporaries, than in all the comedies which he wrote; and even Shakespear, whofe modefty is remarkable, hath his peccant redundancies, not lefs in number than thofe of Jonfon; and fomething must be allowed to the rudeness and indelicacy of the age, when groffer language was permitted, than the chafte ears of more polifhed times will bear. It appears that Jonfon was married, and had feveral children; but none furvived him and we know nothing of his wife, or her defcent. His eldest fon was Benjamin, which was probably the name of Jonfon's father, and his eldest daughter Mary. His twenty fecond |