the illustrious writer and his disciples. Jonson was always poor, often embarrassed; but his proper intellectual ascendency over many minds was never doubted. Something of this ascendency may be attributed to his social habits.

In the year 1599, when Henslow, according to his records, was lending Benjamin Jonson twenty shillings, and thirty shillings, and other small sums, in earnest of this play and that-sometimes advanced to himself alone, oftener for works in which he was joined with others-he was speaking in his own person to the audiences of the time with a pride which prosperity could not increase or adversity subdue. In 'Every Man out of his Humour,' first acted in 1599, he thus delivers himself in the character of " Asper, the Presenter:"

"If any here chance to behold himself,

Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong;

For if he shame to have his follies known,
First he should shame to act 'em my strict hand
Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe
Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls
As lick up every idle vanity."

The spirit which dictated these lines was not likely to remain free from literary quarrels. Jonson was attacked in turn, or fancied he was attacked. In 1601 he produced The Poetaster;' and in his Apologetical Dialogue which was only once spoken upon the stage,' he thus defends his motives for this supposed attack upon some of his dramatic brethren :

"Sure I am, three years

They did provoke me with their petulant styles

On every stage and I at last, unwilling,

But weary, I confess, of so much trouble,

Thought I would try if shame could win upon 'em ;

And therefore chose Augustus Cæsar's times,

When wit and arts were at their height in Rome,

To show that Virgil, Horace, and the rest

Of those great master-spirits, did not want
Detractors then, or practisers against them:
And by this line, although no parallel,

I hop'd at last they would sit down and blush ;
But nothing I could find more contrary.
And though the impudence of flies be great,
Yet this hath so provok'd the angry wasps,
Or, as you said, of the next nest, the hornets,
That they fly buzzing, mad, about my nostrils,
And, like so many screaming grasshoppers
Held by the wings, fill every ear with noise."

wasps" and

If Dekker and Marston were the " hornets" attacked under the names of Crispinus and Demetrius, he has bestowed the most lavish praise upon another of his contemporaries under the name of Virgil. We believe with Gifford that the following lines were meant for the most illustrious of Jonson's contemporaries; and that "all this is as undoubtedly true of Shakspere as if it were pointedly written to describe him :"

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His learning savours not the school-like gloss
That most consists in echoing words and terms,
And soonest wins a man an empty name;
Nor any long or far-fetch'd circumstance
Wrapp'd in the curious generalties of arts;
But a direct and analytic sum

Of all the worth and first effects of arts.
And for his poesy, 't is so ramm'd with life,
That it shall gather strength of life with being,

And live hereafter more admir'd than now."

In The Poetaster' Jonson is characterised as Horace; and his enemy, Demetrius, says, "Horace is a mere sponge-nothing but humours and observations. He goes up and down sucking upon every society, and when he comes home squeezes himself dry again." This reminds one of Aubrey:-" Ben Jonson and he (Shakspere) did gather humours of men daily wherever they came." They used their observations, however, very differently; the one was the Raphael, the other the Teniers, of the drama. When we look at the noble spirit with which Jonson bore poverty, it is perhaps to be lamented that he was so impatient of censure. If the love of fame be

"The last infirmity of noble minds,"

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the horror of ridicule or contempt is too often its companion. The feelings are mixed in the fine lines with which Jonson concludes the Apologetical Dialogue:

"I, that spend half my nights, and all my days,
Here in a cell to get a dark, pale face,

To come forth with the ivy or the bays,

And in this age can hope no other grace

Leave me! There's something come into my thoughts

That must and shall be sung high and aloof,

Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof."

The actors come in for some share of Jonson's ridicule; and he seems to

point more especially at some at the Fortune Theatre. But enough of these quarrels.

Every one has heard of the wit-combats between Shakspere and Ben Jonson, described by Fuller:-" Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-ofwar: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." When Fuller says "I behold," he meant with his "mind's eye;" for he was only eight years of age when Shakspere died-a circumstance which appears to have been forgotten by some who have written of these matters. But we have a noble record left of the wit-combats in the celebrated epistle of Beaumont to Jonson :

"Methinks the little wit I had is lost

Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best gamesters: what things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,

As if that every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown

Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past-wit that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly

"Till that were cancell'd: and when that was gone

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise."

Gifford has thus described the club at the Mermaid:-" About this time [1603] Jonson probably began to acquire that turn for conviviality for which he was afterwards noted. Sir Walter Raleigh, previously to his unfortunate engagement with the wretched Cobham and others, had instituted a meeting of beaux esprits at the Mermaid, a celebrated tavern in Friday Street. Of this club, which combined more talent and genius than ever met together before or since, our author was a member; and here for many years he regularly repaired with

Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, and many others, whose names, even at this distant period, call up a mingled feeling of reverence and respect." Jonson has been accused of excess in wine; and certainly temperance was not the virtue of his age. Drummond, who puts down his conversations in a spirit of detraction, says, " Drink was the element in which he lived." Aubrey tells us " he would many times exceed in drink; Canary was his beloved liquor." And so he tells us himself in his graceful poem Inviting a Friend to Supper:'

"But that which most doth take my muse and me

Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,

Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine."

But the rich Canary was to be used, and not abused:

"Of this we will sup free, but moderately;

Nor shall our cups make any guilty men:
But at our parting we will be as when
We innocently met. No simple word,
That shall be utter'd at our mirthful board,
Shall make us sad next morning, or affright
The liberty that we'll enjoy to-night."

This is not the principle of intemperance, at any rate; nor were the associates of Jonson at the Mermaid such as mere sensual gratification would have allied in that band of friendship. They were not such companions as the unhappy Robert Greene, whose genius was eaten up by his profligacy, describes himself to have lived amongst :-" His company were lightly the lewdest persons in the land, apt for pilfery, perjury, forgery, or any villany. Of these he knew the cast to cog at cards, cozen at dice; by these he learned the legerdemains of nips, foysts, conycatchers, crossbyters, lifts, high lawyers, and all the rabble of that unclean generation of vipers; and pithily could he point out their whole courses of craft: so cunning was he in all crafts, as nothing rested in him almost but craftiness." This is an unhappy picture; and in that age, when the rewards of unprofessional scholars were few and uncertain, it is scarcely to be wondered that their morals sometimes yielded to their necessities. Jonson and Shakspere passed through the slough of the theatre without a stain. Their club meetings were not the feasts of the senses alone. The following verses by Jonson were inscribed over the door of the Apollo Room in the Devil Tavern :—

"Welcome all who lead or follow

To the oracle of Apollo :

Here he speaks out of his pottle,
Or the tripos, his tower bottle;
All his answers are divine,
Truth itself doth flow in wine.

Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers,
Cries old Sim, the king of skinkers;

He the half of life abuses

That sits watering with the Muses.
Those dull girls no good can mean us;
Wine-it is the milk of Venus,
And the poet's horse accounted:
Ply it, and you all are mounted.

'Tis the true Phoebian liquor,

Cheers the brains, makes wit the quicker;

Pays all debts, cures all diseases,

And at once three senses pleases.
Welcome all who lead or follow

To the oracle of Apollo !"

In the Apollo Room Jonson sat, the founder of the club, perhaps its dictator. One of his contemporary dramatists, Marmion, describes him in his presidential chair:

:

"The boon Delphic god

Drinks sack, and keeps his Bacchanalia,
And has his incense, and his altars smoking,
And speaks in sparkling prophecies."

(written in the purest They were gone when 1787; but the verses

But the boon Delphic god" had his Leges Conviviales, Latinity) engraved in black marble over the chimney. Messrs. Child, the bankers, purchased the old tavern in over the door, and the bust of Jonson, still remained there. These laws have been translated into very indifferent verse, to quote which would give an imperfect idea of their elegance and spirit. They were not laws for common booncompanions; but for the "Eruditi, urbani, hilares, honesti." The tavern has perished: it has long been absorbed by the all-devouring appetite of commerce. But its memory will be ever fresh, whilst the laws of its club record that there were elegance without expense, wit without malice, high converse without meddling with sacred things, argumentation without violence. If these were mingled with music and poetry, and sometimes accomplished women were present, and the dance succeeded to the supper, we must not too readily conclude that there was licence, allurements for the careless, which the wise ought not to have presided over. We must not judge of the manners of another age by those of our own. Jonson was too severe a moralist to have laid himself open to the charge of being a public example of immorality.

Such, then, was the social life of the illustrious men of letters and the more tasteful of the aristocracy of the reign of James I. But where did the great painters of manners " pick up humours daily?" Where did they find the classes assembled that were to be held up to ridicule and reproof? We open Jonson's first great comedy, 'Every Man in his Humour,' and there in the list of characters we find "Captain Bobadill, a Paul's man." Adventurers like Bobadill were daily frequenters of Paul's. The middle aisle of the old cathedral was the resort of all the idle and profligate in London. The coxcomb here displayed his finery, and the cutpurse picked his pocket. Serving-men here came to find masters, and tradesmen to attract purchasers by their notices on the pillars. Bishop Earle, in his 'Microcosmographie' (1628), has given a most amusing description of this habitual profanation of a sacred place:-"It is the land's epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain. It is more than this--the whole world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning. It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and, were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees-a strange humming or buzz, mixed of walking, tongues and feet. It is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great