and that whole passage is a compliment very properly brought in, and very handsomely applied to her. She was fo well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff, in The Two Parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love. This is faid to be the occafion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windfor. How well she was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. Upon this occаfion it may not be improper to observe, that this part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle:" some of that family being then remaining, the Queen was pleased to command him to alter it; upon which he made use of Falstaff. The present offence was indeed avoided; but I do not know whether the author may not have been somewhat to blame in his second choice, since it is certain that Sir John Falstaff, who was a knight of the garter, and a lieutenant-general, was a name of diftinguished merit in the wars in France in Henry the Fifth's and Henry the Sixth's times. What grace soever the Queen conferred upon him, it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of

She commanded him to continue it for one play more,] This anecdote was first given to the publick by Dennis, in the Epistle Dedicatory to his comedy entitled The Comical Gallant, 4to. 1702, altered from The Merry Wives of Windfor. MALONE.

his wit made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Effex. It was to that noble lord that he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. There is one instance so fingular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that if I had not been affured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thoufand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profuse generofity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian fingers.

What particular habitude or friendships he contracted with private men, I have not been able to learn, more than that every one, who had a true taste of merit, and could diftinguish men, had generally a just value and esteem for him. His exceeding candour and good-nature must certainly have inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him, as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him.

8

His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a

from the Earl of Southampton,] Of this amiable nobleman such memoirs as I have been able to collect, may be found in the tenth volume, [i. e. of Mr. Malone's edition] prefixed to the poem of Venus and Adonis. MALONE.

9

he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis.] To this nobleman also he dedicated his Rape of Lucrece, printed in 4to. in 1594. MALONE.

remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature; Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and fupercilioufly over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no fervice to their company; when Shakspeare luckily caft his eye upon it, and found fomething so well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonfon and his writings to the publick.

I

- to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the publick.] In Mr. Rowe's first edition, after these words was inserted the following passage :

"After this, they were profefssed friends; though I do not know whether the other ever made him an equal return of gentleness and fincerity. Ben was naturally proud and infolent, and in the days of his reputation did so far take upon him the fupremacy in wit, that he could not but look with an evil eye upon any one that feemed to ftand in competition with him. And if at times he has affected to commend him, it has always been with some referve; infinuating his uncorrectness, a careless manner of writing, and want of judgment. The praise of feldom altering or blotting out what he writ, which was given him by the players, who were the first publishers of his works after his death, was what Jonson could not bear: he thought it impoffible, perhaps, for another man to strike out the greatest thoughts in the finest expreffion, and to reach those excellencies of poetry with the ease of a first imagination, which himself with infinite labour and study could but hardly attain to."

I have preserved this passage because I believe it strictly true, except that in the last line, instead of but hardly, I would read

-never.

Dryden, we are told by Pope, concurred with Mr. Rowe in thinking Jonson's posthumous verses on our author sparing and invidious. See also Mr. Steevens's note on those verses.

Before Shakspeare's death Ben'senvious disposition is mentioned by one of his own friends; it must therefore have been even then potorious, though the writer denies the truth of the charge:

Jonson was certainly a very good scholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakspeare; though at

"To my well accomplish'd friend, Mr. Ben. Jonfon.

"Thou art found in body; but fome say, thy foule
Envy doth ulcer; yet corrupted hearts

"Such censurers must have."

Scourge of Folly, by J. Davies, printed about 1611. The following lines by one of Jonson's admirers will fufficiently support Mr. Rowe in what he has said relative to the flowness of that writer in his compositions :

"Scorn then their censures who gave out, thy wit
"As long upon a comedy did fit
"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 Mermaid first;
"That the king's yearly butt wrote, and his wine
"Hath more right than thou to thy Catiline."

The writer does not deny the charge, but vindicates his friend by saying that, however flow,

"He that writes well, writes quick-."

Verfes on B. Jonson, by Jasper Mayne.

So also, another of his Panegyrifts:

"Admit his muse was flow, 'tis judgment's fate
"To move like greatest princes, still in state."

In The Return from Parnaffus, 1606, Jonson is said to be " so slow an enditer, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying." The same piece furnishes us with the earliest intimation of the quarrel between him and Shakspeare : "Why here's our fellow Shakspeare put them [the university poets] all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. O, that Ben Jonfon is a peftilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakspeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Fuller, who was a diligent inquirer, and lived near enough the time to be well informed, confirms this account, afferting in his Worthies, 1662, that " many were the wit-combats" between Jonson and our poet.

It is a fingular circumstance that old Ben should for near two centuries have stalked on the stilts of an artificial reputation; and that even at this day, of the very few who read his works, scarcely one in ten yet ventures to confefs how little entertainment they afford. Such was the impression made on the publick by the extravagant praises of those who knew more of books than the same time I believe it must be allowed, that what nature gave the latter, was more than a balance

of the drama, that Dryden in his Effay on Dramatick Poesie, written about 1667, does not venture to go further in his elogium on Shakspeare, than by saying, " he was at least Jonson's equal, if not his fuperior;" and in the preface to his Mock Aftrologer, 1671, he hardly dares to affert, what, in my opinion, cannot be denied, that "all Jonson's pieces, except three or four, are but crambe bis cocta; the same humours a little varied, and written worse."

Ben, however, did not trust to the praise of others. One of his admirers honestly confesses,

he

1

" Of whom I write this, has prevented me,
" And boldly faid so much in his own praise,
"No other pen need any trophy raise."

In vain, however, did he endeavour to bully the town into approbation by telling his auditors, "By G- 'tis good, and if you like't, you may;" and by pouring out against those who preferred our poet to him, a torrent of illiberal abuse; which, as Mr. Walpole justly observes, some of his contemporaries were willing to think wit, because they were afraid of it; for, notwithstanding all his arrogant boafts, notwithstanding all the clamour of his partizans both in his own life-time and for fixty years after his death, the truth is, that his pieces, when first performed, were so far from being applauded by the people, that they were scarcely endured; and many of them were actually damned.

- the fine plush and velvets of the age "Did oft for fixpence damn thee from the stage, "fays one of his eulogifts in Jonfonius Virbius, 4to. 1638. Jonfon himself owns that Sejanus was damned. " It is a poem," says he, in his Dedication to Lord Aubigny, "that, if I well remember, in your lordship's fight fuffered no less violence from our people here, than the subject of it did from the rage of the people of Rome." His friend E. B. (probably Edmund Bolton) speaking of the fame performance, says,

"But when I view'd the people's beastly rage,
"Bent to confound thy grave and learned toil,
"That cost thee so much sweat and so much oil,

"My indignation I could hardly affuage."

Again, in his Dedication of Catiline to the Earl of Pembroke, the author says, "Posterity may pay your benefit the honour and