Mr. G. I'll buy thee of him-stop his mouth Think'st thou 'twill do? [with gold

Mrs. G. Oh me! heavens grant it would! Yet now my senses are set more in tune; He writ, as I remember, in his letter, That he, in riding up and down, had spent, Ere he could find me, thirty pound.-Send that; Stand not on thirty with him.

Mr.G.Forty, Prue-say thou the word,'tis done. We venture lives for wealth, but must do more To keep our wives.-Thirty or forty, Prue?

Mrs. G. Thirty, good sweet!

Than one of the Counters does. Men pay more dear
There for their wit than anywhere. A Counter !
Why, 'tis an university.-Who not sees?
As scholars there, so here men take degrees,
And follow the same studies, all alike.
Scholars learn first logic and rhetoric,

So does a prisoner; with fine honied speech,
At his first coming in, he doth persuade, beseech
He may be lodged-

To lie in a clean chamber.

But when he has no money, then does he try,
By subtle logic and quaint sophistry,

To make the keepers trust him.

Sir Adam. Say they do.

Sir Alex. Then he's a graduate.
Sir Dav. Say they trust him not.

Sir Alex. Then is he held a freshman and a sot, And never shall commence, but being still barr'd, Be expulsed from the master's side to the TwoOr else i'the Holebeg placed. [penny ward,

Sir Ad. When then, I pray, proceeds a prisoner? Sir Alex. When, money being the theme, He can dispute with his hard creditors' hearts, And get out clear, he's then a master of arts. Sir Davy, send your son to Wood-street college; A gentleman can nowhere get more knowledge. Sir Dav. These gallants study hard.

Sir Alex. True, to get money.

Sir Dav. Lies by the heels, i'faith! thanksthanks I ha' sent

For a couple of bears shall paw him.

DEVOTION TO LOVE.

FROM THE PLAY OF "BLURT, MASTER-CONSTABLE.”

O, HAPPY persecution, I embrace thee
With an unfetter'd soul; so sweet a thing
It is to sigh upon the rack of love,
Where each calamity is groaning witness
Of the poor martyr's faith. I never heard
Of any true affection but 'twas nipt
With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats
The leaves of the spring's sweetest book, the rose.
Love, bred on earth, is often nursed in hell;
By rote it reads woe ere it learn to spell.

When I call back my vows to Violetta,
May I then slip into an òbscure grave,
Whose mould, unpress'd with stony monument
Dwelling in open air, may drink the tears
Of the inconstant clouds to rot me soon!

He that truly loves,
Burns out the day in idle fantasies;
And when the lamb, bleating, doth bid good night
Unto the closing day, then tears begin
To keep quick time unto the owl, whose voice
Shrieks like the bell-man in the lover's ear.
Love's eye the jewel of sleep, oh, seldom wears!
The early lark is waken'd from her bed,
Being only by love's pains disquieted;

But, singing in the morning's ear, she weeps,
Being deep in love, at lovers' broken sleeps:
But say, a golden slumber chance to tie,
With silken strings, the cover of love's eye,
Then dreams, magician-like, mocking present
Pleasures, whose fading, leaves more discontent.

INDIGNATION AT THE SALE OF A WIFE'S HONOUR.

FROM THE PHOENIX.

Or all deeds yet this strikes the deepest wound
Into my apprehension,

Reverend and honourable matrimony,
Mother of lawful sweets, unshamed mornings,
Both pleasant and legitimately fruitful, without thee
All the whole world were soiled bastardy;
Thou art the only and the greatest form
That put'st a difference betwixt our desires
And the disorder'd appetites of beasts.

But, if chaste and honest,
There is another devil that haunts marriage,
(None fondly loves but knows it), jealousy,
That wedlock's yellow sickness,

That whispering separation every minute,
And thus the curse takes his effect or progress.
The most of men, in their first sudden furies,
Rail at the narrow bounds of marriage,
And call't a prison; then it is most just
That the disease of the prison, jealousy,
Should thus affect 'em-but, oh! here I'm fix'd
To make sale of a wife! monstrous and foul !
An act abhorr'd in nature, cold in soul!

LAW.

FROM THE PHOENIX,

THOU angel sent amongst us, sober Law,
Made with meek eyes, persuading action;
No loud immodest tongue-voiced like a virgin,
And as chaste from sale,

Save only to be heard, but not to rail-
How has abuse deform'd thee to all eyes!
Yet why so rashly for one villain's fault
Do I arraign whole man? Admired Law!
Thy upper parts must needs be wholly pure
And incorruptible-th'are grave and wise;
'Tis but the dross beneath them, and the clouds
That get between thy glory and their praise,
That make the visible and foul eclipse;
For those that are near to thee are upright,
As noble in their conscience as their birth;
Know that damnation is in every bribe,

And rarely put it from them-rate the presenters,
And scourge 'em with five years' imprisonment
For offering but to tempt 'em :

This is true justice, exercised and used;
Woe to the giver, when the bribe's refused.
'Tis not their will to have law worse than war,
Where still the poorest die first,

To send a man without a sheet to his grave,
Or bury him in his papers;

'Tis not their mind it should be, nor to have
A suit hang longer than a man in chains,
Let him be ne'er so fasten'd.

As bird in cage debarr'd the use of wings,
Her captived life as nature's chiefest wrong,
In doleful ditty sadly sits and sings,
And mourns her thralled liberty so long,
Till breath be spent in many a sithful song:
So here captived I many days did spend
In sorrow's plaint, till death my days did end.

Where as a prisoner though I did remain ;
Yet did my brother grant this liberty,
To quell the common speech, which did complain
On my distress, and on his tyranny,
That in his parks and forests joining by,
When I did please I to and fro might go,
Which in the end was cause of all my woe.

TO POSTERITY.

FROM ENGLAND'S PARNASSUS. 1600.

DAUGHTER of Time, sincere Posterity,
Always new-born, yet no man knows thy birth,
The arbitress of pure sincerity,

Yet changeable (like Proteus) on the earth,
Sometime in plenty, sometime join'd with dearth :
Always to come, yet always present here,
Whom all run after, none come after near.

Unpartial judge of all, save present state,
Truth's idioma of the things are past,
But still pursuing present things with hate,
And more injurious at the first than last,
Preserving others, while thine own do waste :
True treasurer of all antiquity,

Whom all desire, yet never one could see.

Doth leave his honey-limed delicious bowers, More richly wrought than prince's stately towers,

Waving his silken wings amid the air,

And to the verdant gardens makes repair.

First falls he on a branch of sugar'd thyme,
Then from the marygold he sucks the sweet,
And then the mint, and then the rose doth
climb,

Then on the budding rosemary doth light,
Till with sweet treasure having charged his feet,
Late in the evening home he turns again,
Thus profit is the guerdon of his pain.

So in the May-tide of his summer age
Valour enmoved the mind of vent'rous Drake
To lay his life with winds and waves in gage,
And bold and hard adventures t' undertake,

DRAKE. 1596.

Look how the industrious bee in fragrant May, When Flora gilds the earth with golden flowers, Inveloped in her sweet perfumed array,

Loathing the life that cowardice doth stain, Preferring death, if death might honour gain.

TILL Mr. Gilchrist and Mr. Gifford stood forward in defence of this poet's memory, it had become an established article of literary faith that his personal character was a compound of spleen, surliness, and ingratitude. The proofs of this have been weighed and found wanting. It is true that he had lofty notions of himself, was proud even to arrogance in his defiance of censure, and in the warmth of his own praises of himself was scarcely surpassed by his most zealous admirers; but many fine traits of honour and affection are likewise observable in the portrait of character, and the charges of malice and jealousy his that have been heaped on his name for an hundred years, turn out to be without foundation. In the quarrel with Marston and Dekker his culpability is by no means evident. He did not receive benefits from Shakspeare, and did not

sneer at him in the passages that have been taken to prove his ingratitude; and instead of envying that great poet, he gave him his noblest praise; nor did he trample on his contemporaries, but liberally commended them*. With regard to Inigo Jones, with whom he quarrelled, it appears to have been Jonson's intention to have consigned his satires on that eminent man to oblivion; but their enmity, as his editor has shown, began upon the part of the architect, who, when the poet was poor and bed-ridden, meanly resented the fancied affront of Jonson's name being put before his own to a masque, which they had jointly prepared, and used his influence to do

* The names of Shakspeare, Drayton, Donne, Chapman. Fletcher, Beaumont, May, and Browne, which almost exhaust the poetical catalogue of the time, are the separate and distinct subjects of his praise. His unkindness to Daniel seems to be the only exception.

him an injury at court. As to Jonson's envying Shakspeare, men, otherwise candid and laborious in the search of truth, seem to have had the curse of the Philistines imposed on their understandings and charities the moment they approached the subject. The fame of Shakspeare himself became an heir-loom of traditionary calumnies against the memory of Jonson; the fancied relics of his envy were regarded as so many pious donations at the shrine of the greater poet, whose admirers thought they could not dig too deeply for trophies of his glory among the ruins of his imaginary rival's reputation. If such inquirers as Reed and Malone went wrong upon this subject, it is too severe to blame the herd of literary labourers for plodding in their footsteps; but it must excite regret as well as wonder that a man of pre-eminent living geniust should have been one of those

quos de tramite recto

Impia sacrilega flexit contagio turbæ,

and should have gravely drawn down Jonson to a parallel with Shadwell, for their common traits of low society, vulgar dialect, and intemperance. Jonson's low society comprehended such men as Selden, Camden, and Cary. Shadwell (if we may trust to Rochester's account of him) was probably rather profligate than vulgar; while either of Jonson's vulgarity or indecency in his recorded conversations there is not a trace.

But

they both wore great-coats-Jonson drank canary, and Shadwell swallowed opium. “There is a river in Macedon, and there is, moreover, a river at Monmouth."

The grandfather of Ben Jonson was originally of Annandale, in Scotland, from whence he removed to Carlisle, and was subsequently in the service of Henry VIII. The poet's father, who | lost his estate under the persecution of Queen Mary, and was afterwards a preacher, died a month before Benjamin's birth, and his widow married a master bricklayer of the name of Fowler. Benjamin, through the kindness of a friend, was educated at Westminster, and obtained an exhibition to Cambridge; but it proved insufficient for his support. He therefore returned from the university to his father-inlaw's house and humble occupation; but disliking the latter, as may be well conceived, he repaired as a volunteer to the army in Flanders, and in the campaign which he served there distinguished himself, though yet a stripling, by killing an enemy in single combat, in the presence of both armies. From thence he came back to

* [Their enmity began in the very early part of their connexion; for in the complete copy of Drummond's Notes there are several allusions to this hostility. Inigo had the best retaliation in life-but Jonson has it now, and for ever.]

England, and betook himself to the stage for support; at first, probably, as an actor, though undoubtedly very early as a writer. At this period he was engaged in a second single combat which threatened to terminate more disastrously than the former; for having been challenged by some player to fight a duel with the sword, he killed his adversary indeed, but was severely wounded in the encounter, and thrown into prison for murder. There the assiduities of a catholic priest made him a convert to popery, and the miseries of a gaol were increased to him by the visitation of spies; sent, no doubt in consequence of his change to a faith of which the bare name was at that time nearly synonymous with the suspicion of treason. He was liberated however, after a short imprisonment, without a trial. At the distance of twelve years, he was restored to the bosom of his mother church. Soon after his release, he thought proper to marry, although his circumstances were far from promising, and he was only in his twentieth year. In his two-and-twentieth year he rose to considerable popularity, by the comedy of Every Man in his Humour, which, two years after, became a still higher favourite with the public, when the scene and names were shifted from Italy to England, in order to suit the manners of the piece, which had all along been native. It is at this renovated appearance of his play (1598) that his fancied obligations to Shakspeare for drawing him out of obscurity have been dated; but it is at this time that he is pointed out by Meres as one of the most distinguished writers of the age.

The fame of his Every Man out of his Humour drew Queen Elizabeth to its representation, whose early encouragement of his genius is commemorated by Lord Falkland. It was a fame, however, which, according to his own account, had already exposed him to envy-Marston and Dekker did him this homage. He lashed them in his Cynthia's Revels, and anticipated their revenge in the Poetaster. Jonson's superiority in the contest can scarcely be questioned; but the Poetaster drew down other enemies on its author than those with whom he was at war. His satire alluded to the follies of soldiers, and the faults of lawyers. The former were easily pacified, but the lawyers adhered to him with their wonted tenacity; and it became necessary for the poet to clear himself before the lord chief justice. In our own days, the fretfulness of resenting professional derision has been deemed unbecoming even the magnanimity of tailors.

Another proof of the slavish subjection of the stage in those times is to be found soon after the accession of King James, when the authors of Eastward Hoe were committed to prison for some satirical reflections on the Scotch nation, which that comedy contained. Only Marston and Chapman, who had framed the offensive passages,