wright, he followed the wars, like many another of his kind. He trailed a pike in Flanders, and was rightly proud of the adventure. "In his service in the Low Countries," he told Drummond, "he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia from him." This was a feat after Jonson's own heart; the danger and the glory of it belonged to him alone. Though he had a just contempt for Captain Hungry, who went a-soldiering to fill his belly" Come, be not angry, you are hungry; eat: Do what you come for, captain, there's your meat "-he held "true soldiers "in high esteem, and celebrated them, with himself, in modest verse : "Strength of my country, whilst I bring to view Such as are miscall'd captains, and wrong you; And your high names: I do desire that thence Be nor put on you, nor you take offence. I swear by your true friend, my Muse, I love Your great profession; which I once married a wife, "a shrew but honest," and took part in the bustling adventure of his age. The town of Jonson's time and of Shakespeare's was packed by sailors, wits, and scholars, all agog to try their fortunes, and Jonson followed the other poets to the stage. He became a strolling player, for the road to fame then lay, very often, through the booth, and met with little or no success. He was not born to be an actor. His rough visage-it was said to resemble "a rotten russet apple when it was bruised ❞— might have given a hint of his poetic genius; it had no power of attraction in the theatre. Moreover, his figure was ungainly, as his voice was harsh, and he found a craft better suited to his talent in doing up old plays, or writing new plays for Henslowe. His experience did not differ from the experience of the others. Now he receives a respectable sum for work that he has finished; now he is borrowing what money he can from the penurious Henslowe. Before long he is in trouble over a play, entitled "The Isle of Dogs," which Nashe had left unfinished, and which Jonson and another completed without the knowledge or approval of the author. No sooner was the work performed than it was denounced as "a lewd play which was played in one of the play-houses on the Bank Side, containing very seditious and slanderous matter." Jonson was presently released, but he had seen the inside of a jail, and not for the last time. His love of a quarrel kept pace with his genius. The year 1598 was marked for Jonson by two vastly dissimilar events. The Lord Chamberlain's men performed 'Every Man in his Humour,' the masterpiece of Jonson's comic art, with Shakespeare heading the list of actors; and Jonson fought a duel with Gabriel Spencer, a player in Henslowe's company, and left him dead in Hoxton fields. Jonson himself looked back upon this fray with a certain pride. He boasted that his sword was ten inches shorter than Spencer's, and to be sure he had no cause of shame. Charged with felony, he pleaded guilty, was saved from the gallows by pleading benefit of clergy, and carried the Tyburn T branded upon his thumb unto the end of his life. One thing only he resented in this business. Two spies were set to watch him in jail and haply to surprise his thoughts. "Two damned villains," he called them, and he was cunning enough to answer their demands with nothing but I and No. So he came forth unbetrayed, and solaced his anger with an epigram on spies : "Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff, law. In 1604 the susceptibilities of the Scots were wounded by a play in which Jonson had a hand, and after his wont he came well out of the danger. He told the story to Drummond with a force and amplitude which that ingenious poet has happily preserved. "He was delated," said he at Hawthornden, "by Sir James Murray to the king for writing something against the Scots in a play 'Eastward Hoe,' and voluntarily imprisoned himself with Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. The report was that they should then have had their ears out and noses. After their delivery he banqueted all his friends. There was Camden, Selden, and others; at the midst of the feast his old mother drunk to him, and showed him a paper which she had (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prison among his drink, which was full of lusty strong poison, and that she was no churl, she told, she minded first to have drunk of it herself." The episode is wholly characteristic of Jonson, the gallant son of a gallant mother. How else should he celebrate his enlargement save by feasting? And how should he or his mother, who minded not death, willingly endure mutilation? For the most of dramatists the production of a play is a test of artistry. For Jonson it was, besides a test, commonly a ground for quarrel. Every Man out of his Humour' set alight the enmity of Marston, the independence of his spirit which, fiercely countered by Ben Jonson, amused the town for many a day. To the fire lit by Every Man out of his Humour ' the 'Poetaster added abundant abundant fuel, and though Jonson got the better of the dispute, he prepared a violent reception for the plays which he might produce in the future. By his own will he lived in an atmosphere of controversy, and saw his works not judged on their merits, but assailed by foes and defended by friends as though they were expressions of malice or partiality. If he suffered in a worldly sense from his indiscretions, no other way of life was possible to him. He did but indulge his temperament, and paid the price of the indulgence willingly enough. "He would rather lose his friend than his jest," said the timid Drummond. "He would not flatter made him everywhere welcome. In 1602 Maningham tells us that "Ben Jonson the poet now lives upon one Townsend, and scorns the world." Presently he accepts the hospitality of D'Aubigny, who always remained his friend. In some great houses a respect for poetry and poets was traditional, and Ben Jonson was made much of at Belvoir as at Woburn. But it was among the poets and writers that he found his warmest, most faithful friends. Such men as Camden, Selden, and Cotton were of his intimates, and the fact that he was a good hater proved and implied that he was a good lover also. At the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street he presided over such an assembly of poets as had never been got together. The authority of Fuller is not unimpeachable. He wrote after the men of the great age were dead and gone. Yet he was a repository of tradition, and he who will believe in Fuller's accuracy may easily accept as If his boisterous tempera- the words of truth his famous ment won him enemies, it won contrast of Shakespeare with him also the closest friends. Jonson. Many were the wit At his approach the barriers combats,' says Fuller, “beof society, strong in his day, tween Shakespeare and Ben were broken down. He lived Jonson, which two I behold on terms of easy familiarity like a Spanish great galleon with the great. His famous and an English man-of-war. 'Masques,' the masterpieces of Master Jonson, like the former, their kind, made him welcome was built far higher in learnat Court, whence not even his ing, solid but slow in his perconstant brawlings with Inigo formances. Shakespeare, with Jones availed for many years the English man-of-war, lesser to exclude him. His wit and in bulk, but lighter in sailing, flatter though he saw death." Such was his own comment upon himself, and he was nearer to the truth than the Scot. could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." It is a noble comparison, and for those that have eyes to see it bears upon it the fair imprint of truth. The poets were eloquent in praise of the Mermaid, the Old Devil, the Dog, and the other taverns where it was Jonson's pleasure to lay down the laws of poetry and of drink. Himself, we are told, was sometimes inclined to silence, as though it was the monarch's duty and privilege to be sparing of his words as he was unsparing of his tyranny. As for the other poets, they talked and praised even as they obeyed. When they were in the country, they sighed for the joyous pleasures of the town. Ah, Ben!" sings Herrick : "Say how or when The Dog, the Triple Tun; And Beaumont, remote also from town and at work, sadly dreams of "the full Mermaid wine," and recalls the words that there he had heard : "Words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life." VOL. COXVIII.-NO. MCCCXXI. That Jonson took the responsibilities of his throne at the Tavern with some gravity is clear enough. He drew up such a code of conviviality as has never been seen elsewhere. What laws he gave of poetry we know not. We know very well what laws he, as the arbiter bibendi, gave of drinking. He would not permit his guests to hold themselves as they liked or to drink at haphazard. He imposed upon his subjects that good behaviour without which the Mermaid, or any other tavern, might become a bear-garden. Here are some of the Leges Conviviales which he had engraven in the Apollo of the Old Devil Tavern in Temple Bar : "Nemo asymbolus, nisi umbra, huc venito. Idiota, insulsus, tristis, turpis abesto. Eruditi, urbani, hilares, honesti adsciscuntor." That for a beginning, and thereafter he insists upon all that shall promote goodfellowship. The raillery shall be without malice; no bad poems shall be recited; nobody shall demand extempore verses of another; there shall be no arguments nor quarrels; and he who betrays what is done or said within the sacred walls of the Apollo shall never thenceforth be admitted into the company of the Nor were women expoets. cluded: nec lectæ fœminæ repudiantor. Thus was the Apollo set for the feast, and there was 2 D2 old Simon Wadloe, bustling English poetry itself. His about to serve his customers, natural advantage was judgand quick to obey the master's ment to order and govern injunction obsonator et coquus convivarum gula periti sunto. A gallant fellow was old Sim, who had a natural love of winedrinkers : "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." fancy rather than excess of fancy, his productions being slow and upon deliberation, yet then abounding with great wit and fancy, and will live accordingly; and surely as he did exceedingly exalt the English language in eloquence, propriety, and masculine expressions, so he was the best judge of and fittest to prescribe rules to poetry and poets of any man who had lived with or before him or since." Truly his position was unique, and literary doctrine but upon personal authority. The sons of Ben" followed their own several paths in prose or verse; they were united only in devotion. And the force of Jonson's influence was shown, as Messrs Herford and Simpson point out, "in the almost total absence during his later years of pronounced and declared reaction from his ways." Thus he was doubly fortunate. He had been the leader of his contemporaries in his earlier life. He did not know the displeasure of being scouted, as one who lagged too long upon the stage, by the rising generation. Faithful as Jonson had been to Canary, he lost not his influence when increasing years forced upon him an unwelcome sobriety. As his contemporaries went one after another it was based not on a into their graves, the succeeding generation rallied about its master. The Tribe of Ben" remained loyal and assiduous, and if Jonson fell upon poverty and ill-health, he was still a king in the realm of letters. Among his later subjects were the best men of the time. Clarendon and Falkland, Digby and Cavendish, Cotton and Carew, Randolph and Howell, were content to sit at his feet. It mattered not that the wits of the theatre clamoured against his plays his sons were active in his support, and gladly treasured every word that he spoke. The great Mr Hyde himself did not stint his praise. "Ben Jonson's name," he wrote, "can never be forgotten, having by his very good learning and the severity of his of his nature and manners, very much reformed the stage, and, indeed, the 66 He remained to the end something of a tyrant. If he did not insist that the whole tribe of Ben should follow exactly in his footsteps, he did insist that they should be faithful to humane letters, |