TO THE MEMORY OF MASTER BENJAMIN JONSON. To press into the throng, where wits thus strive To make thy laurels fading tombs survive, Argues thy worth, their love, my bold desire, Somewhat to sing, though but to fill the quire: But (truth to speak) what muse can silent be, Or little say, that hath for subject, thee? Whose poems such, that as the sphere of fire, They warm insensibly, and force inspire, Knowledge, and wit infuse, mute tongues unloose, And ways, not tracked to write and speak disclose. But when thou put'st thy tragic buskin on, Or comic sock of mirthful action, Actors, as if inspired from thy hand, Speak beyond what they think less, understand; And thirsty hearers, wonder-stricken, say, Thy words make that a truth, was meant a play. Folly, and brain-sick humours of the time, Distempered passion, and audacious crime, Thy pen so on the stage doth personate, That ere men scarce begin to know, they hate The vice presented, and there lessons learn Virtue from vicious habits to discern. Oft have I seen thee in a sprightly strain, To lash a vice, and yet no one complain; Thou threw'st the ink of malice from thy pen, Whose aim was evil manners, not ill men. Let then frail parts repose, where solemn care Of pious friends their Pyramids prepare; Sir Thomas Hawkins, Knt., was the grandson of Thomas Hawkins, Esq.-of a family resident at the manor of Nash, in the parish of Boughton under the Bleau, in Kent, from the time of Edward III.-who attained the age of IOI years, and died on the 15th March, 1588, and lies buried in the north chancel of the church of Boughton, under a tomb of marble, which bears honourable testimony to his services to King Henry VIII., and speaks of him as a 'man of great strength and lofty stature. The friend of Jonson was the eldest of seven sons of Sir Thomas Hawkins of Nash, and married Elizabeth, daughter of George Smith of How great a maim it suffers, wanting thee; What ends soever other quills invite, These drops, as tribute thrown into that spring, To whose most rich and fruitful head we Owe The purest streams of language which can flow. Ashby Folvile, in Leicestershire, by whom he had two sons, John and Thomas, both of whom he survived, and dying without issue in 1640, was succeeded in a considerable patrimony by Richard, his brother and heir, the lineal descendant of whom, Thomas Hawkins, Esq., was living at Nash in 1790. Sir Thomas translated Caussin's Holy Court, several times reprinted in folio: the Histories of Sejanus and Philippa, from the French of P. Mathieu; and certain Odes of Horace, the 4th edition of which is before me, dated 1638. In a poem before the latter he is celebrated by H. Holland for his skill in music.-GILCHRIST. For 'tis but truth; thou taught'st the ruder age, To speak by grammar; and reform'dst the stage; Thy comic sock induced such purged sense, A Lucrece might have heard without offence. Amongst those soaring wits that did dilate With the full Greek or Latin to compare. For what tongue ever durst, but ours, translate Great Tully's eloquence, or Homer's state? Both which in their unblemished lustre shine, From Chapman's pen, and from thy Catiline. All I would ask for thee, in recompense Of thy successful toil and time's expense Is only this poor boon; that those who can, Perhaps, read French, or talk Italian; Or do the lofty Spaniard affect, (To shew their skill in foreign dialect) Prove not themselves so' unnaturally wise They therefore should their mother-tongue despise ; (As if her poets both for style and wit, Not equalled, or not passed their best that writ) Until by studying JONSON they have known The heighth, and strength, and plenty of their own. Thus in what low earth, or neglected room Soe'er thou sleep'st, thy BOOK shall be thy tomb. Thou wilt go down a happy corse, be strewed With thine own flowers, and feel thyself renewed, Whilst thy immortal, never-withering bays Shall yearly flourish in thy reader's praise: And when more spreading titles are forgot, Or, spite of all their lead and sear-cloth, rot; Might style me wit, and privilege my fame, But I've no such ambition, nor dare sue For the least legacy of wit, as due. I come not t' offend duty, and transgress Affection, nor with bold presumption press, 'Midst those close mourners, whose nigh kin in verse, Hath made the near attendance of thy hearse. I come in duty, not in pride, to shew And darkness made the world's unwelcome guest, We grovelling captives of the night yet may With fire and candle beget light, not day; cure. When thy enraged Muse did chide o' the stage, 'Twas to reform, not to abuse the age. But thou'rt requited ill, to have thy herse, Stained by profaner parricides in verse, 1 Henry King, eldest son of Dr. John King, of Chichester, in which place he died 1st OctoBishop of London, was born at Wornal in Buck- ber, 1669, and was buried in the Cathedral. The inghamshire, in January, 1592. He was edu- writings of Bishop King are for the most part cated first at Thame, afterwards at Westminster, | devotional, but in his Poems, Elegies, Paraand lastly at Christ Church, Oxford, where he doxes, and Sonnets," 8vo, 1657, there is a neatwas entered in 1608. He was successively chap-ness, an elegance, and even a tenderness, which lain to James I., Archdeacon of Colchester, re-entitle them to more attention than they have sidentiary of St. Paul's, Chaplain in Ordinary to lately obtained.-Gilchrist. Charles I., Dean of Rochester, and lastly Bishop Who make mortality a guilt, and scold, 'Twas thought a crime not to be excellent: For me, I'll in such reverence hold thy fame, I'll but by invocation use thy name, AN ELEGY UPON BENJAMIN JONSON. Though once high Statius o'er dead Lucan's hearse, Would seem to fear his own hexameters, And thought a greater honour than that fear, He could not bring to Lucan's sepulchre; name, Can be amiss: if high, it fits thy fame; see, That English poetry is dead with thee; 1 Henry Coventry, son of the lord keeper, was educated at All Souls' College, Oxford, of which he was a fellow, and where, on the 31st August, 1636, the degree of M.A. was conferred upon him by the king in person; he took a degree in law the 26th June, 1638. He suffered much for the royal cause in the rebellion, but upon the restoration of the king he was made groom of the bedchamber to Charles II., sent upon embassies to Breda and Sweden, and on the 3rd July, 1672, was sworn one of the principal Secretaries of State. In 1680 he resigned his high office, and died at his house, near Charing Cross, on the 5th December, 1686, aged 68 years. He was buried in St. Martin's Church. GIL CHRIST. 2 Thomas May, the son of Thomas May, Esq., who purchased the manor of Mayfield Or shew what judgment, art, and wit did join To make them up, but only (in the way That Famianus honoured Virgil) say, The Muse herself was linked so near to thee, Whoe'er saw one, must needs the other see; | And if in thy expressions aught seemed scant, Not thou, but Poetry itself, did want. THOMAS MAY." AN ELEGY ON BEN JONSON. I dare not, learned Shade, bedew thy herse In prose, would be no injury in rhyme. Yet I, that but pretend to learning, owe Although it be less wit, is greater love: Should first be what he praises; and his pen Thy active brains should feed, which we can't have, Unless we could redeem thee from the Place, in Sussex (formerly an archiepiscopal palace, and afterwards the seat of the Greshams), and who was knighted at Greenwich in 1603, and died in 1616,-was born in 1595, educated at Sidney College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and was admitted of Gray's Inn the 6th August, 1615. In 1617 he joined with his mother, Joan May, and his cousin, Richard May, of Eslington, in alienating the estate of Mayfield to John Baker, Esq., whose descendants have ever since enjoyed it. May's attachment to Charles I., and his subsequent apostacy, his dramatic writings and translations, and his history of the parliament, are sufficiently known. He died-already deaddrunk-the 13th November, 1650.-GILCHRIST. [See ante, p. 294, and note, p. 295 of this volume.-F. C.] Some judgment, where we cannot make, t' apply Our reading: some, perhaps, may call this wit, And think, we do not steal, but only fit Thee to thyself; of all thy marble wears, Nothing is truly ours, except the tears, O could we weep like thee! we might convey New breath, and raise men from their beds of clay Unto a life of fame; he is not dead, Wrapt in thy writings, as their winding sheet! For, when the tribute unto nature due, Was paid, they did receive new life from tress' ears, Beyond faint sighs, false oaths, and forced tears; His heat was still so modest, it might warm, Should study lines as lofty as his plays. Far higher in his story doth appear; Dudley Digges, son of Sir Dudley Digges, Master of the Rolls, was born at Chilham in Kent, 1612. He became a commoner in University College, Oxford, in 1629, took his B.A. degree in 1631, the year following was made probationer-fellow of All Souls', as founder's kin, and in 1635 was licensed M.A. He was a man of strong parts and considerable attainments, and was firmly attached to the service of the king. He died at an early age, of a malignant fever called the Camp disease, and was To find a virgin quarry, whence no hand E'er wrought a tomb on vulgar dust to stand, And thence bring for this work materials fit: Great JONSON needs no architect of wit; Who forced from art, received from nature more Than doth survive him, or e'er lived before. And, poets, with what veil soe'er you hide Your aim, 'twill not be thought your grief, but pride, Which, that your cypress never growth might want, Did it near his eternal laurel plant. Heaven at the death of princes, by the birth Of some new star, seems to instruct the earth, How it resents our human fate. Then why Didst thou, wit's most triumphant monarch, die Without thy comet? Did the sky despair A common mourner, when a prince's fall That thou thyself might'st thy own dirges hear, Made the sad stage close mourner for a year; The stage, which (as by an instinct divine, But you whose comic labours on the stage, Against the envy of a froward age William Habington, the son of Thomas Habington, of Hendlip, in Worcestershire, by Mary Parker, sister to the Lord Mounteagle, to whom the mysterious letter was sent by which the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, was born at his father's seat on the 5th November, 1605. He was educated in the religion of his father at Paris and St. Omer's. He married Lucy, daughter of Lord Powis, the Castara of his muse, and died on the 30th November, 1654. The poems of Habington, though aspiring to none of the higher classes of poetry, are toler Hold combat! how will now your vessels sail, The seas so broken and the winds so frail, Such rocks, such shallows threat'ning everywhere, And JONSON dead, whose art your course might steer? Look up! where Seneca and Sophocles, Quick Plautus and sharp Aristophanes, Enlighten yon bright orb! doth not your eye, Among them, one far larger fire, descry, He shines your Star, who was your Pilot UPON BEN JONSON, THE MOST EXCELLENT OF COMIC POETS. Mirror of poets! mirror of our age! Which her whole face beholding on thy stage, Pleased and displeased with her own faults endures, A remedy, like those whom music cures. Is represented to the wondering eyes, But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad ably musical in their numbers, and indicate a purity of morals and gentleness of manners in their author: they must have been at one period popular, since they passed through three impressions between 1635 and 1640. Indeed, his merits have been rewarded with unusual liberality, his comedy found a place in Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays; his Life of Edward IV. was admitted into Bishop Kennet's Compleat History of England, and the volume of poems before spoken of has been lately reprinted-GILCHRIST. |