the mistress of them all. loyalty to the Muses he regarded as a cardinal sin. He had," admits Hyde himself, "for many years the extraordinary kindness for Mr Hyde, till he found that he betook himself to business, which he believed ought never to be preferred before his company." It was less the slight to himself than the slight to his craft that made him colder to the aspiring ambitious youth. And how should they not find joy in his company? His curiosity was tireless and inexhaustible. The passage of the years did not damp the ardour of his research. He must always be discovering or learning something fresh. Not long before his death he was urging Howell to find him a copy of Davies' Welsh Grammar, which Howell found for him, and concerning which he wrote him a letter, according to his wont.1 Dis- He was once in Paris as tutor to Sir Walter Ralegh's son, and it was on foot that he made his famous journey to Edinburgh and Hawthornden, where he engaged in an unequal combat with William Drummond. He was, perhaps, not the best bear-leader that could be found for a young man of spirit, and Ralegh's son was not slow to take advantage of his tutor's weakness. One piece of ribaldry, enacted by his pupil upon him, Jonson reported to Drummond, eager to hear all that he could of the great world of London. "This youth," confessed Jonson, "being knavishly inclined,2 caused him to be drunken "no difficult feat-" and dead drunk, so that he knew not where he was, thereafter laid him on a car, which he made to be drawn by pioneers through the streets, at every corner showing his Governor stretched Ben Jonson was for his age out, and telling them that was a travelled man. His voyages a more lively image of the were made not only in thought. crucifix than any they had: at Here is the letter which Howell wrote: "Father Ben, you desir'd me late to procure you Dr Davies's Welsh Grammar, to add to these many you have; I have lighted upon one at last, and I am glad I have it in so seasonable a time that it may serve for a New-Year's-gift, in which quality I send it to you. And because 'twas not you, but your Muse, that desir'd it of me, for your letter runs on feet, I thought it a good correspondence with you to accompany it with what follows." And so there follows a copy of verses. 2 Aubrey tells an anecdote of young Ralegh-"a handsome lusty stout fellow, very bold, and apt to affront," he calls him-which makes the story of Paris easily credible. The Raleghs, father and son, were once in company together, and the son, sitting next his father, was very "demure" until half through dinner. Then said he: "I this morning not having the fear of God before my eyes but by the instigation of the devil, went.' . . . Sir Walter being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sate next to him, and said: 'Box about: 'twill come my father anon." which sport young Ralegh's mother delighted much, saying his father young was so inclined, though the father abhorred it." The father was in the right of it, and the wonder is that Jonson and his pupil were not punished for their blasphemy. However, despite his ignorance of French and the follies of his pupil, Jonson did not wholly lose his time in Paris. He listened to a debate between a Protestant and Catholic, and vouched over his signature for the accuracy of the report. But he returned to London without regret, and parted from his pupil, as Walton says, "I think not in cold blood." His encounter with Drummond has become legendary, and though it was a slight episode in Jonson's career, it was for Drummond a great event, the memory of which he treasured until the end of his life, and a brief record of which he preserved for all time. Now Drummond was, after his fashion, an artist, and it is to his notes that we owe much of our knowledge of Jonson's opinions. That they were unequally matched is certain. Jonson, no doubt, assumed an air of patronage from the beginning, and allowed Drummond to interrupt his monologue just as little as he chose. It was not easy for Drummond to stand up to his visitor with confidence after he had heard that visitor's condemnation of his poetry. "His censure of my verses,' writes Drummond simply," was that they were all good, especially my epitaph of the Prince, save that they smelt too much of the schools, and were not after the fancy of the time; for a child, says he, may write after the fashion of the Greeks and Latin verses in running." To be likened to a child who wrote in running was not the criticism which Drummond hoped to hear, and he returned tit for tat in a censure of his own. "He is a great lover and praiser of himself," thus wrote Drummond of Jonson, "a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him (especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth), and dissembler of all parts which reign in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth," with more to the same purpose. From all this it is evident that the encounter was not wholly to Drummond's taste and fancy, that Jonson, when he tramped away from Hawthornden, left his host wearied with his loud disputation, and puzzled by the effrontery of one who held in scorn the world of poets and courtiers in which he lived. Yet Drummond returned good for evil, and left us an account of Jonson's conversation which is of the greatest value, and which has no counterpart in the history of its time. 66 There is one point at which Selden's reference, in the preDrummond and Jonson met face to his Titles of Honour,' in sympathy. They were the to "the well-furnisht library children of their libraries. They of my friend, that singular were what books had made poet M. Ben Jonson, whose them. Drummond, with a speciall worth in literature, generous forethought, be- accurate judgment, and perqueathed his printed books to formance, known only to that the University of Edinburgh. few which are truly able to Jonson admits that some- know him, hath had from me, times he had devoured his ever since I began to learn, books-that is, sold them all an increasing admiration." A for necessity," and of those noble tribute, and as nobly which he had regathered some deserved as any that was ever perished in the flames, the rest paid by one scholar to another. were scattered to the ends of the earth. Yet Messrs Herford and Simpson have been able to compile a goodly list of books which were once in the library of Ben Jonson. To compare the libraries of Jonson and Drummond were a vain task. Drummond possessed such treasures as some quartos of Shakespeare and the poems of Donne in manuscript. Jonson had not, so far as we know, the works of these two friends, but his copies of Chaucer and Spenser have been traced, as well as his 'Arte of English Poetrie' by Puttenham, his Florio's Montaigne,' and Mabbe's 'Celestina.' From his rich collection of classical authors, Quintilian and Philostratus, of which he made admirable use, as we know, are absent. But even such glimpse as the industry of collectors has given us of his library, scattered and depleted as it has been, helps us to understand the depth of his scholarship, and to justify a Although no work of Shakespeare has been traced back to the library of Ben Jonson, though in a moment of vanity and wine he told Drummond that Shakespeare wanted art," the greatest of all our poets found no more loyal champion than Ben Jonson, who celebrated him both in prose and verse, and paid him the highest tribute ever paid him by a contemporary. There is no passage in Jonson's 'Discoveries' better remembered to-day than that which he wrote 'De Shakespeare nostrati.' It is true that Jonson presumed to criticise his friend. When the players "mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing he never blotted out a line," Jonson's answer was, "Would he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. Jonson easily rebutted the charge of malevolence. 'He lov'd the man," said he, "and do honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any." 66 And then there follows a piece of criticism, which none but the idolater will resent. "He was honest and of an open and free nature," wrote Jonson ; "had an excellent Phantasy; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped. Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too." Perhaps Jonson's own wit would have been the freer had he not ruled it, sometimes too strictly. As in prose, so in verse. the lines which preface the First Folio, lines written to the memory of my beloved Mr William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," Jonson stints his criticism; he does not stint his praise. He will not compare him with those of England, whom he outdid, "but call forth thund'ring Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles." Thus he exhorts his native land to pride : 66 In "Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time!" Never has the sweet swan of Avon been more loudly acclaimed, and it proves how little of envy was in the good Jonson's heart that he could thus applaud a friend and rival. With the passing years misfortunes overtook the valiant poet. In 1623 Vulcan played niggard to poets, and his pedantry was engaged on the right side. Charles I. was not one to bear easily with a man of rough and rugged temperament such as Ben Jonson. Moreover, as Clarendon, quoted by Messrs Herford and Simpson, says, he "paused too long in giving." Jonson lost his pension, and was in request no longer as a maker of masques. Inigo Jones at last got the better of his great colleague, and insisted, to the satisfaction of the court, that the mere embellisher, the poet's creature, was of greater import than the poet himself. And so in poverty Jonson crept back to the stage, and suffered a rebuff at the hands of those who found him old and out of fashion. But he rose above all the misfortunes incident to age and sickness, and his chamber in Westminster was still the resort of scholars and poets. It was, indeed, in these last sad years that he exerted his greatest influence upon the Tribe of Ben. Truly, no misfortune could break his indomitable spirit, and he died, as he lived, a zealous scholar and a brave man. |