injury ; so solemn a vice it is with them to use the autho-
rity of their ignorance to the crying down of poetry or the
professors. But my gratitude must not leave to correct
their error ; since I am none of those that can suflfer the
benefits conferred upon my youth to perish with my age.
It is a frail memory that remembers but present things ;
and had the favour of the times so conspired with my
disposition, as it could have brought forth other or better,
you had had the same proportion and number of the fixiits,
the %st. Now I pray you to accept this : such wherein
neither the confession of my manners shall make you
blush, nor of my studies repent you to have been the
instructor ; and for the profession of my thankfiilness, I
am sure it will, with good men, find either praise or excuse.
" Your true lover,
" Ben Jonson."
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BEN JONSON. 53
yrhe friend who had so kindly sent him to Westminster
School procured for him an exhibition at St. John's
College, Cambridge, whither Jonson went in his sixteenth
year. We do not know its value, but it was inadequate to
his support even in an age of fewer wants and simpler
habits than the preseny when billiards and Newmarket
were as yet no part of lEe University course.
CHc returned to his home after a stay of some months,
though Fuller limits its duration to a few weeks?)
Numerous apocryphal stories, some of them injurious to
Jonson's character, have been handed down on the subject
of this interval spent at home between his leaving the
University and volunteering in the army in Flanders,
^e appears for some time to have toiled at an humble
and laborious trade, and at last to have given it up
in disgust, because, as he tells us, " he could not endure
the occupation of a bricklayer." ? We next find the
scholar«artisan in arms, and daring heroic deeds) He
went through one campaign in the Low Countries,
and performed an exploit better fitted for description in
the pages of Livy than in those of a literary biography.
In the sight of both armies, he engaged in single combat
with one of the enemy, slew him, stripped off his arms,
and carried them away in triumph. This, at the age of
eighteen, was a warlike achievement of no mean kind, and
is enough to show, that whatever other faults his slan-
derers have attributed to him, he did not, at any rate^
lack chivalrous courage.
A poet militant is not without precedent. iEiJfchylus
fought at Salamis, Horace ran away at Philippi, Jonson's
immediate successor, Davenant, was knighted for his
valour at the siege of Gloucester, and a later laureat,
CoUey Cibber, bore arms in the Revolution of 1688. If
"silent leges inter arma'^ be true, the same remark will
apply to letters. Though more congenial to his nature
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54 BEN JONSON.
than the toils of the hod and trowel, the profession he had
adopted left Jonson no leisure for the enjoyment of the
" calm air of delightful studies." Like Coleridge, in our
own day, he soon laid aside the sword for the pen. Both
felt that with this weaker instrument their mission was to
be worked out.
"n Jonson crossed the Channel for his home, bringing with
him little money, and a not much larger stock of Dutch
than that with which Goldsmith contemplated teaching
English at Amsterdam, and leaving behind him among his
comrades in arms, a reputation for valour. He always
looked back upon his military career with satisfaction, and
boasted " that while he was in the profession, he did not
shame it by his actions." Vlt has been said that he now
returned to Cambridge, but there is no evidence what-
ever of the fact. After having thrown aside the bricks
and mortar in disgust, and then abandoned the army,
he appears to at once have turned his attention to the
sta^y/
The English drama, at that time, if not in its infancy,
had not advanced many steps beyond the Thespian con-
dition. Only a few good plays of Shakespeare and others
had succeeded the moralities, interludes, and translations
which had as yet been presented at Court, in the Inns of
Law, and iii the Globe Theatre, Southwark, Jonson, like
Shakespeare, embraced the profession of an actor, and
with as little or less success. That he totally failed, as has
been asserted, seems highly improbable, for we agree with
Mr. Qifford ** that with the advantages of youth, person,
voice, and somewhat more of literature then fell to the
share of every obscure actor in a strolling- company,
Jonson could scarcely fail to get a service among the
mimics ;" and we have the testimony of the Duchess of
Newcastle, whose husband was the Maecenas of his day :
" I have never heard any man read well, but my husband ;
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BEN JONSON. 55
and I have beard him say that he never heard any roan
read well but Ben Jonson." Whatever our poet's his-
trionic success may have been, his inventive faculties soon
began to show themselves, for he was employed as an
anonymous assistant to other dramatists, to help them in
writing and altering plays.
/ His career, whether theatrical or literary, was soon
interrupted by an unfortunate event. * Our poet now
stained himself with the blood, not of a public enemy,
but of a brother actor.* This man was Gabriel Spencer ;
but he has been absurdly stated to have been Marlow,
who was killed two years before by another hand, and in a
disreputable quarrel. A dispute arose, and a challenge
was received by Jonson, which he was not loath to accept/
They met : Spencer using a sword ten inches longer thaiir
Jonson's, nevertheless fell by his hand./Jt was a painful and
melancholy triumph for the victor. He had been severely
wounded, and was cast into prison on a charge of murder,
and, as he himself tells us, " brought near to the gallows."
How long the incarceration lasted, we cannot exactly
ascertain. It was very little more or less than a year;
but this must have seemed a long passage in his life, to a
man immured in a dungeon (and we know what prisons
then wer^.with the blood of a fellow-creature on his
conscience, and in constant expectation of public trial, and
perhaps summary punishment. He has told us nothing of
this gloomy period, but it is connected with an incident
not unimportant. We have reason to suspect that in his
solitude and suffering he received no spiritual aid or
consolation from the teachers of his own Church. But
* Mr. Payne Collier, in his " Life of Shakespeare," gives the following
extract from a letter of Henslowe's to AUeyne, dated Sept. 26th, 1598 : —
" Since you were with me, I hav^lost one of my company, which hurteth
me greatly ; that is Gabriel, for he is slain in Hoxton Fields by the hand
of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer."
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56 BEN JONSON.
that restless activity which compasses sea and land to
make one proselyte, did not hesitate to avail itself of
so favourable an opportunity, and he was visited by a
Popish priest.
In times when we have witnessed so many perversions,
especially among the class of the young and the highly
educated to which our poet belonged, we can feel little
surprise at his embracing a creed, whose professors had at
least been guiltless of grossly neglecting him. That a
youth of nineteen, who had most probably only a genial
knowledge of the points of difference between the rival
Churches, should fall a victim to the sophistries of a
skilled disputant, need not be matter of marvel : and
especially when we call to mind that he was of a
morbid and gloomy temperament, and lying in chains
neglected and forgotten, and also remember that in those
days such perversions were as common as they have
been during our Tractarian movement. Jonson's own
account of the matter is " that he took the priest's word
for it."
Another such change of creed must be chronicled in the
Lives of the Poets-Laureate : but one which, however
palliated or defended, is, to speak of it in the gentlest
terms, far less excusable than this. Dryden was converted,
not in youth, but in mature age; not imversed in the
controversy, but so skilled in it, that he wrote on both
sides ; not as a prisoner, when a Protestant Queen was on
the throne, but free and unfettered, and to win the favour
and patronage of a Papist King. And Dryden never made
the atonement, which Jonson did for quitting the faith of
his childhood. For he some years after gave the question
a serious consideration, and returned from the bosom of that
Church, by whose professors his father had been plundered
and persecuted, to that one whose scriptural doctrines that
father had zealously preached. No one that knows the
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BEN JONSON. 57
religious pieces of our poet, can hesitate to pronounce them
to be the outpourings of devotion and penitence. However
confident or haughty his bearing among his fellow-men, in
the presence of his Maker he is contrite, and humbles
himself in the dust. They show, if we can read an
author in his works, as plainly as words can speak, that he
had sincerely repented his early sins and follies, and had
fully realized those simple and sublime truths, which have
been in all ages the stay and comfort of the wise and
the good. We make one extract, which will prove our
assertion, and more than compensate our reader for the
interruption of the narrative.
TO THE HOLY TRINITY.
O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity
Of persons, still one God in Unity,
The faithfol man's beHeved mysteiy,
Help, help to lift
Myself np to Thee, harrowed, torn, and braised
By sin and Satan ; and my flesh misused.
As my heart lies in pieces, aU confused,
O, take my gift.
All-gracious God, the sinner's sacrifice,
A broken heart. Thou wert not wont despise.
But 'bove the fat of rams or buUs to prize
An offering meet
For Thy acceptance : O, behold me right.
And take compassion on my grievous plight !
What odour can be than a heart contrite
To Thee more sweet P
Eternal Father, God, who didst create
This all of nothing, gav'st it form and fate.
And breath'st into it life and light with state
To worship Thee.
Eternal God, the Son, who not denied'st
To take our nature, becam'st man and died'st
To pay our debts upon Thy cross, and cried'st
All's done in Me.
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58 BEN JONSON.
Eternal Spirit, God from both prooeediiig.
Father and Son ; the Comforter in breeding
Pure thoughts in man; with fiery zeal them feeding
For acts of grace.
Increase those acts, O glorious Trinity
Of persons, still one God in Unity,
Till I attain the long'd-for mystery
Of seeing your face.
Beholding one in three, and three in one,
A Trinity to shine in union;
The gladdest light dark man can think upon,
O, grant it me !
Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, you three,
AU co-eternal in your majesty.
Distinct in persons, yet in unity
One God to see.
My Maker, Saviour, and my Sanctifier !
To hear, to meditate, sweeten my desire
With grace, with love, with cherishing entire
0, then how blest !
Among Thy saints elected to abide.
And with Thy angels placed side by side.
But in Thy presence, truly glorified.
Shall I then rest.
In an age when shaflaw and short-sighted men are
seeking to import and popularize the mystic subtleties of
foreign scepticism, it is refreshing to find that we can add
to the names of Milton and Newton, and others of the
Kings of Thought, one whose noble intellect, strengthened
by learning, and matured by time, accepted with a
reasonable faith and a wise humility the mysteries of our
revealed religion.
^i^nson's release from prison was in all probability owing
to the fact of his enemies dropping the prosecution. He
immediately betook himself to his former avocations ; and
now only in his twentieth year, with small means and dark
prospects, was so bold as to enter the holy estate of matri-
mony^^The fair object of his choice was young, and of
the religion which he had adopted. If any faith can be
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BEN JONSON. 59
put in the report of his conversation with Drummond, her
husband described her as somewhat shrewish, but in the
more correct and classical sense in which the word was
then used, an honest woman, of domestic habits, and
courageous in struggling with the poverty and privations
of their early married life. Their first child was a daughter,
who lived only six months, and whose death called forth
from the poet and father these pathetic lines :
" Here lies, to each her parents' ruth,
Mary, the daughter of our youth.
Yet all Heaven's gifts being Heaven's due.
It makes the father less to me.
At six months' end she parted hence.
With safety of her innocence ;
Whose soul, Heaven's Queen, whose name she bears.
In comfort of her mother's tears.
Hath placed amongst her virgin train.
Where, while that severed doth remain.
This grave partakes the fleshly birth
Which cover lightly gentle earth."
(_In the following year his wife bore him a son, to whom
some of the players stood as sponsors, and it is said,
Shakespeare among them. This was a year of pinching
want and incessant toiLj' What his necessities at this
time, were, we may to some extent judge from a
memorandum of Mr. Henslowe, which records "an
advance of five shillings" to him ; and those who know
his works, will remember that he never stooped to
any of the small artifices, by which inferior writers
gained a contemporary applause to be followed swiftly by
an eternal oblivion ; that he looked on a poet's mission as
something high and holy, and has taught that we should
look on poetry as a " sacred invention," and
" View her in her glorious ornaments
Attired in the majesty of art.
Set high in spirit with the precious taste
Of sweet philosophy, and, which is most,
Crown*d with the rich traditions of a soul.
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60 BEN JONSON.
That hates to have her dignity profaned
With any relish of an earthly thought."
At what precise period he produced " Every Man
in his Humour," it is impossible to decide, for there is
an inextricable confusion about the dates of the earlier
events of his life. We have seen that in 1598, his duel
with Gabriel Spencer occurred, and there is an uncontra-
dicted tradition, that his marriage took place after the
imprisonment which he suffered for killing Spencer. Many
of his biographers assert that it was first played in 1596,
when the Author was only in his two and twentieth year ;
that the characters were Italian, and the scene laid near
Florence. Whether this be true or not, (and there is
no authority but tradition,) it was without doubt origin-
ally acted in the form in which it has been handed
down to us, by the Lord Chamberlain's servants in the
year 1598. And, notwithstanding Mr. Gifford's state-
ments to the contrary, it is highly probable that through
Shakespeare's interposition this famous drama was ac-
cepted.
The fame which this comedy won for him brought with
it that envy which ever pursues greatness as its shadow.
He tells us that they began " to provoke him on every
stage with their petulant styles, and as if they wished to
single him out for their adversary." His career now
becomes what that of too many of the genus irritabile
has been — a strife with many of his contemporaries. He
appears not only to have felt his superiority, but to have
somewhat too confidently asserted it. It required even less
than this to provoke a herd of assailants ; and so through
the remainder of his life we find him constantly lampooned,
and occasionally replying to his vituperative enemies.
" He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below."
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BEN JONSON. 61
And would you struggle to be ranked among the great,
you should be patient under the attacks of the small. We
shall find that the master spirits of each age have mostly
lived in friendship, and held sweet counsel together. It is
among the lesser aspirants for fame that petty passions
and little jealousies have broken out. The giants know
their intellectual strength and stature, and reign each in
his own kingdom supreme, but on terms of amity with
foreign powers, while the dwarfs and pigmies, whose terri-
tories in the world of letters are small, whose boundaries
uncertain and undefined, wage with each other an unceas-
ing warfare, and only band together to attack their com-
mon superior, and therefore common foe. So, while all
attempts to prove that any feud existed between the
gentle Shakespeare and the learned Ben Jonson fall to
the ground, there is no doubt whatever that with Dekker,
Marston, Gill and others, our poet carried on endless
hostilities.
It is sad that a profession which might rank so high,
should enjoy so unenviable a notoriety ; but true it is, that
in the republic of letters the Temple of Janus is never
shut. One need not indulge in visionary hopes of the
perfectibility of human nature to believe that, although
this state of things cannot be entirely got rid of, it will
undergo and is undergoing great and rapid change for the
better. Literature has escaped the degrading influences of
patronage. For a book to be now successfiil it is no
longer deemed necessary that it should have attached to it
the name of an aristocrat, or be cumbered with a dedica-
tion teeming with servile if not blasphemous adulation.
An author now at once addresses himself to his audience.
If he can instruct or interest or amuse his fellow-men, he
will not lack reward for his labours without stooping to
fawn and flatter. Under such a system, ihere is between
writers a loftier rivalry, a diviner emulation. It is not an
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62 BEN JONSON.
ignoble jostling of one another in the ante-chamber of a
patrician. There are no pangs of jealousy, because Mae-
cenas smiled on one and passed another by unnoticed.
Write what the public can read to its benefit or its plea-
sure, and by the sweat and labour of your br^in you will
earn your bread as independently as man can amid the
mutual relations, "nice connections and strong depen-
dencies" of the economy in which we live. The best will,
for the most part, be the best rewarded ; and though we
cannot weed hate and envy from the human heart, there is
an instinct in men which prompts them to acquiesce in
what is fair and reasonable ; and there will be less of
railing and bickering when ability and exertion meet with
their proportionate recompense, when success no longer
depends on circumstance and accident, when a letter of
introduction can no more clothe mediocrity in purple and
fine linen, or the want of it leave genius in squalor and
rags. Jonson's literary strifes must be again alluded to,
though the quarrels of authors be neither a flattering or
pleasing aspect of literary history.
He next produced " Every Man out of his Humour,"
which met with a favourable reception. This and all of
his earliest and best productions were part of
" Those melodious bursts which fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still."
And the Virgin Queen's honouring the performance with
her presence called forth from the grateful poet the follow-
ing tribute to her in the epilogue. It was spoken by
Macilente, who kneels and prays :
" Yet humble as the earth do I implore,
O HeaVfen, that she, whose presence hath effected
This change in me, may suffer most late change
In her admired and happy government ;
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BEN JONSON. 63
May still this island be called Fortunate,
And rugged treason tremble at the sound
When fame shall speak it with an emphasis.
Let foreign polity be dull as lead,
And pale Invasion come with half a heart.
When he but looks upon her blessed soil.
The throat of war be stopt within her land.
And turtle-footed peace dance fairy rings
About her court ; when never may there come,
Suspect or danger, but all trust and safety.
Let flattery be dumb, and envy blind
In her dread presence ; Death himself admire her.
And may her virtues make him to forget •
The use of his inevitable hand.
Fly from her. Age ; sleep. Time, before her throne ;
Our strongest wall falls down when she is gone."
The play is dedicated to " the noblest nurseries of
humanity and liberty in the kingdom, the Inns of Court."
It was played at the Globe Theatre, of which Shakespeare
was then manager. He had acted in "Every Man in
his Humour," but took no part in this. Jonson, with
his characteristic confidence, and inability to conceal his
strong self-esteem, added when he published it, this motto
from Horace,
" Non aliena meo pressi pede — ^si propius stes
Te capient magis, et decies repitita pkcebunt."
His slender means do not appear to have been much
bettered by his successful dramatic compositions, for in
Henslowe's Memorandum Book, Mr. Gifford finds forty
shillings advanced to Dekker and Johnson for a play they
were together writing, twenty to Chettle and himself
for another, and twenty on a tragedy upon which he was
solely employed. His next production was " Cynthia's
Revels." This was aimed at some fashionable follies. It is
dedicated to " the special fountain of manners, the Court."
This quaint but beautiful piece of English, however,
contains what we would fain construe as anything rather
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64 BEN JONSON.
i
than a reflection on the memory of the monarch whom in
our last quotation he had so enthusiastically eulogized ;
but the reader may judge for himself. " Such shalt thou
find some here, even in the reign of Cynthia, a Crites and
an Arete. Now under thy Phoebus (James I.) it will be
thy province to make more." It was played by the
children of the Queen's Chapel at first — a private re-
presentation — but afterwards brought before the town, and
it was revived after the Restoration. It was directed against
the fantastic fopperies of the courtiers, and the tiresome
pedantry of the Euphuists. It is strange that while it
did not incense the parties attacked, it stirred up a swarm
of smaO poets and critics, and Marston and Dekker thought
themselves represented under the names of Hedon and
Anaides. Jonson replied to their caballings in " The
Poetaster," where he introduces them plainly enough as
Crispinus and Demetrius. It is dedicated to Mr. Richard
Martin, then Recorder of London, an eloquent *man, and
one of the most convival of the wits who drank at the
same board with Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, and
Jonson. " The Poetaster" was written in fifteen weeks,
which fact invalidates the oft-repeated averment that
our poet was slow in composition. He appended to it a
translation of Horace's, Sat. i., lib. ii., dialogue between
himself and Trebatius, and added one in which Polyposus
and Nasutus are the chief speakers, in which he vindicates
his character against his accusers. ' It concludes with a
fine burst of indignant sarcasm.
" Once ril say,
To strike the ear of time in those proud strains,
As shall beside the conniDg of their ground
Give cause to some of wonder, some despite.
And more despair to imitate their sound.
I that spend half my nights and all my days
Here in a cell to get a dark pale face.
To come forth worth the ivy and the bays.
And in this age can hope no other grace.
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BEN JONSON. 65
K Leave me ! There's something come into my thought
That most and shall be sung high and aloof
Safe from the wolfs black jaw and the dull ass's hoof."
The higher effect of his muse to which Jonson evidently
here alludes was tragedy. Accordingly in 1603, he pro-
duced " Sejanus," of which play we must make some special
mention hereafter. It met with much opposition, was
withdrawn, and afterwards remodelleji. During the next
few years, little is known of his literary labours, but he
seems to have written for the stage in conjunction with
some of his contemporaries, and his worldly affairs wore
a sunnier aspect. Whatever his occasional inability to suit
the tastes of theatrical audiences, he was winning golden
opinions from the most eminent men of the day, and en-
joying their love and friendship. His just reputation for
great learning which frequently induced the spectators and
critics to receive with apathy, if not displeasure, the works
of one who they imagined was more bent on instructing
than entertaining them, gained for him among the judicious
a high esteem.
At the " M^maid Tavern," in Friday Street, a dub had
j)een founded by no less a man than Sir Walter Raleigh,
and here were wont to meet together the master spirits
of the age. Here Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Selden, Cotton, Martin and Donne, indulged convivial