JONES, MICHAEL(d. 1649), British soldier. His father was bishop of Killaloe in Ireland. At the outbreak of the English Civil War he was studying law, but he soon took service in the army of the king in Ireland. He was present with Ormonde’s army in many of the expeditions and combats of the devastating Irish War, but upon the conclusion of the “Irish Cessation” (seeOrmonde, James Butler, Duke of) he resolved to leave the king’s service for that of the parliament, in which he soon distinguished himself by his activity and skill. In the Welsh War, and especially at the last great victory at Rowton Heath, Jones’s cavalry was always far superior to that of the Royalists, and in reward for his services he was made governor of Chester when that city fell into the hands of the parliament. Soon afterwards Jones was sent again to the Irish War, in the capacity of commander-in-chief. He began his work by reorganizing the army in the neighbourhood of Dublin, and for some time he carried on a desultory war of posts, necessarily more concerned for his supplies than for a victory. But at Dungan Hill he obtained a complete success over the army of General Preston, and though the war was by no means ended, Jones was able to hold a large tract of country for the parliament. But on the execution of Charles I., the war entered upon a new phase, and garrison after garrison fell to Ormonde’s Royalists. Soon Jones was shut up in Dublin, and then followed a siege which was regarded both in England and Ireland with the most intense interest. On the 2nd of August 1649 the Dublin garrison relieved itself by the brilliant action of Rathmines, in which the royal army was practically destroyed. A fortnight later Cromwell landed with heavy reinforcements from England. Jones, his lieutenant-general, took the field; but on the 19th of December 1649 he died, worn out by the fatigues of the campaign.
JONES, OWEN(1741-1814), Welsh antiquary, was born on the 3rd of September 1741 at Llanvihangel Glyn y Myvyr in Denbighshire. In 1760 he entered the service of a London firm of furriers, to whose business he ultimately succeeded. He had from boyhood studied Welsh literature, and later devoted time and money to its collection. Assisted by Edward William of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and Dr. Owen Pughe, he published, at a cost of more than £1000, the well-knownMyvyrian Archaiology of Wales(1801-1807), a collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the 14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are deposited in the British Museum; the material not utilized in theMyvyrian Archaiologyamounts to 100 volumes, containing 16,000 pages of verse and 15,300 pages of prose. Jones was the founder of the Gwyneddigion Society (1772) in London for the encouragement of Welsh studies and literature; and he began in 1805 a miscellany—theGreal—of which only one volume appeared. An edition of the poems ofDavydd ab Gwilymwas also issued at his expense. He died on the 26th of December 1814 at his business premises in Upper Thames Street, London.
JONES, OWEN(1809-1874), British architect and art decorator, son of Owen Jones, a Welsh antiquary, was born in London. After an apprenticeship of six years in an architect’s office, he travelled for four years in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Spain, making a special study of the Alhambra. On his return to England in 1836 he busied himself in his professional work. His forte was interior decoration, for which his formula was: “Form without colour is like a body without a soul.” He was one of the superintendents of works for the Exhibition of 1851 and was responsible for the general decoration of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Along with Digby Wyatt, Jones collected the casts of works of art with which the palace was filled. He died in London on the 19th of April 1874.
Owen Jones was described in theBuilderfor 1874 as “the most potent apostle of colour that architectural England has had in these days.” His range of activity is to be traced in his works:Plans, Elevations and Details of the Alhambra(1835-1845), in which he was assisted by MM. Goury and Gayangos;Designs for Mosaic and Tesselated Pavements(1842);Polychromatic Ornament of Italy(1845);An Attempt to Define the Principles which regulate the Employment of Colour in Decorative Arts(1852);Handbook to the Alhambra Court(1854);Grammar of Ornament(1856), a very important work;One Thousand and One Initial Letters(1864);Seven Hundred and Two Monograms(1864); andExamples of Chinese Ornament(1867).
Owen Jones was described in theBuilderfor 1874 as “the most potent apostle of colour that architectural England has had in these days.” His range of activity is to be traced in his works:Plans, Elevations and Details of the Alhambra(1835-1845), in which he was assisted by MM. Goury and Gayangos;Designs for Mosaic and Tesselated Pavements(1842);Polychromatic Ornament of Italy(1845);An Attempt to Define the Principles which regulate the Employment of Colour in Decorative Arts(1852);Handbook to the Alhambra Court(1854);Grammar of Ornament(1856), a very important work;One Thousand and One Initial Letters(1864);Seven Hundred and Two Monograms(1864); andExamples of Chinese Ornament(1867).
JONES, RICHARD(1790-1855), English economist, was born at Tunbridge Wells. The son of a solicitor, he was intended for the legal profession, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. Owing to ill-health, he abandoned the idea of the law and took orders soon after leaving Cambridge. For several years he held curacies in Sussex and Kent. In 1833 he was appointed professor of political economy at King’s College, London, resigning this post in 1835 to succeed T. R. Malthus in the chair of political economy and history at the East India College at Haileybury. He took an active part in the commutation of tithes in 1836 and showed great ability as a tithe commissioner, an office which he filled till 1851. He was for some time, also, a charity commissioner. He died at Haileybury, shortly after he had resigned his professorship, on the 26th of January 1855. In 1831 Jones published hisEssay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation, his most important work. In it he showed himself a thorough-going critic of the Ricardian system.
Jones’s method is inductive; his conclusions are founded on a wide observation of contemporary facts, aided by the study of history. The world he professed to study was not an imaginary world, inhabited by abstract “economic men,” but the real world with the different forms which the ownership and cultivation of land, and, in general, the conditions of production and distribution, assume at different times and places. His recognition of such different systems of life in communities occupying different stages in the progress of civilization led to his proposal of what he called a “political economy of nations.” This was a protest against the practice of taking the exceptional state of facts which exists, and is indeed only partially realized, in a small corner of our planet as representing the uniform type of human societies, and ignoring the effects of the early history and special development of each community as influencing its economic phenomena. Jones is remarkable for his freedom from exaggeration and one-sided statement; thus, whilst holding Malthus in, perhaps, undue esteem, he declines to accept the proposition that an increase of the means of subsistence is necessarily followed by an increase of population; and he maintains what is undoubtedly true, that with the growth of population, in all well-governed and prosperous states, the command over food, instead of diminishing, increases.A collected edition of Jones’s works, with a preface by W. Whewell, was published in 1859.
Jones’s method is inductive; his conclusions are founded on a wide observation of contemporary facts, aided by the study of history. The world he professed to study was not an imaginary world, inhabited by abstract “economic men,” but the real world with the different forms which the ownership and cultivation of land, and, in general, the conditions of production and distribution, assume at different times and places. His recognition of such different systems of life in communities occupying different stages in the progress of civilization led to his proposal of what he called a “political economy of nations.” This was a protest against the practice of taking the exceptional state of facts which exists, and is indeed only partially realized, in a small corner of our planet as representing the uniform type of human societies, and ignoring the effects of the early history and special development of each community as influencing its economic phenomena. Jones is remarkable for his freedom from exaggeration and one-sided statement; thus, whilst holding Malthus in, perhaps, undue esteem, he declines to accept the proposition that an increase of the means of subsistence is necessarily followed by an increase of population; and he maintains what is undoubtedly true, that with the growth of population, in all well-governed and prosperous states, the command over food, instead of diminishing, increases.
A collected edition of Jones’s works, with a preface by W. Whewell, was published in 1859.
JONES, THOMAS RUPERT(1819- ), English geologist and palaeontologist, was born in London on the 1st of October 1819. While at a private school at Ilminster, his attention was attracted to geology by the fossils that are so abundant in the Lias quarries. In 1835 he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Taunton, and he completed his apprenticeship in 1842 atNewbury in Berkshire. He was then engaged in practice mainly in London, till in 1849 he was appointed assistant secretary to the Geological Society of London. In 1862 he was made professor of geology at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Having devoted his especial attention to fossil microzoa, he now became the highest authority in England on the Foraminifera and Entomostraca. He edited the 2nd edition of Mantell’sMedals of Creation(1854), the 3rd edition of Mantell’sGeological Excursions round the Isle of Wight(1854), and the 7th edition of Mantell’sWonders of Geology(1857); he also edited the 2nd edition of Dixon’sGeology of Sussex(1878). He was elected F.R.S. in 1872 and was awarded the Lyell medal by the Geological Society in 1890. For many years he was specially interested in the geology of South Africa.
His publications includeA Monograph of the Entomostraca of the Cretaceous Formation of England(Palaeontograph. Soc., 1849);A Monograph of the Tertiary Entomostraca of England(ibid. 1857);A Monograph of the Fossil Estheriae(ibid. 1862);A Monograph of the Foraminifera of the Crag(ibid. 1866, &c., with H. B. Brady); and numerous articles in theAnnals and Magazine of Natural History, theGeological Magazine, theProceedings of the Geologists’ Association, and other journals.
His publications includeA Monograph of the Entomostraca of the Cretaceous Formation of England(Palaeontograph. Soc., 1849);A Monograph of the Tertiary Entomostraca of England(ibid. 1857);A Monograph of the Fossil Estheriae(ibid. 1862);A Monograph of the Foraminifera of the Crag(ibid. 1866, &c., with H. B. Brady); and numerous articles in theAnnals and Magazine of Natural History, theGeological Magazine, theProceedings of the Geologists’ Association, and other journals.
JONES, WILLIAM(1726-1800), English divine, was born at Lowick, in Northamptonshire on the 30th of July 1726. He was descended from an old Welsh family and one of his progenitors was Colonel John Jones, brother-in-law of Cromwell. He was educated at Charterhouse School, and at University College, Oxford. There a kindred taste for music, as well as a similarity in regard to other points of character, led to his close intimacy with George Horne (q.v.), afterwards bishop of Norwich, whom he induced to study Hutchinsonian doctrines. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 1749, Jones held various preferments. In 1777 he obtained the perpetual curacy of Nayland, Suffolk, and on Horne’s appointment to Norwich became his chaplain, afterwards writing his life. His vicarage became the centre of a High Church coterie, and Jones himself was a link between the non-jurors and the Oxford movement. He could write intelligibly on abstruse topics. He died on the 6th of January 1800.
In 1756 Jones published his tractateOn the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, a statement of the doctrine from the Hutchinsonian point of view, with a succinct and able summary of biblical proofs. This was followed in 1762 by anEssay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy, in which he maintained the theories of Hutchinson in opposition to those of Sir Isaac Newton, and in 1781 he dealt with the same subject inPhysiological Disquisitions. Jones was also the originator of theBritish Critic(May 1793). His collected works, with a life by William Stevens, appeared in 1801, in 12 vols., and were condensed into 6 vols. in 1810. A life of Jones, forming pt. 5 of theBiography of English Divines, was published in 1849.
In 1756 Jones published his tractateOn the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, a statement of the doctrine from the Hutchinsonian point of view, with a succinct and able summary of biblical proofs. This was followed in 1762 by anEssay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy, in which he maintained the theories of Hutchinson in opposition to those of Sir Isaac Newton, and in 1781 he dealt with the same subject inPhysiological Disquisitions. Jones was also the originator of theBritish Critic(May 1793). His collected works, with a life by William Stevens, appeared in 1801, in 12 vols., and were condensed into 6 vols. in 1810. A life of Jones, forming pt. 5 of theBiography of English Divines, was published in 1849.
JONES, SIR WILLIAM(1746-1794), British Orientalist and jurist, was born in London on the 28th of September 1746. He distinguished himself at Harrow, and during his last three years there applied himself to the study of Oriental languages, teaching himself the rudiments of Arabic, and reading Hebrew with tolerable ease. In his vacations he improved his acquaintance with French and Italian. In 1764 Jones entered University College, Oxford, where he continued to study Oriental literature, and perfected himself in Persian and Arabic by the aid of a Syrian Mirza, whom he had discovered and brought from London. He added to his knowledge of Hebrew and made considerable progress in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He began the study of Chinese, and made himself master of the radical characters of that language. During five years he partly supported himself by acting as tutor to Lord Althorpe, afterwards the second Earl Spencer, and in 1766 he obtained a fellowship. Though but twenty-two years of age, he was already becoming famous as an Orientalist, and when Christian VII. of Denmark visited England in 1768, bringing with him a life of Nadir Shah in Persian, Jones was requested to translate the MS. into French. The translation appeared in 1770, with an introduction containing a description of Asia and a short history of Persia. This was followed in the same year by aTraité sur la poésie orientale, and by a French metrical translation of the odes of Hafiz. In 1771 he published aDissertation sur la littérature orientale, defending Oxford scholars against the criticisms made by Anquetil Du Perron in the introduction to his translation of theZend-Avesta. In the same year appeared hisGrammar of the Persian Language. In 1772 Jones published a volume ofPoems, Chiefly Translations from Asiatick Languages, together with Two Essays on the Poetry of Eastern Nations and on the Arts commonly called Imitative, and in 1774 a treatise entitledPoeseos Asiaticæ commentatorium libri sex, which definitely confirmed his authority as an Oriental scholar.
Finding that some more financially profitable occupation was necessary, Jones devoted himself with his customary energy to the study of the law, and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1774. He studied not merely the technicalities, but the philosophy, of law, and within two years had acquired so considerable a reputation that he was in 1776 appointed commissioner in bankruptcy. Besides writing anEssay on the Law of Bailments, which enjoyed a high reputation both in England and America, Jones translated, in 1778, the speeches of Isaeus on the Athenian right of inheritance. In 1780 he was a parliamentary candidate for the university of Oxford, but withdrew from the contest before the day of election, as he found he had no chance of success owing to his Liberal opinions, especially on the questions of the American War and of the slave trade.
In 1783 was published his translation of the seven ancient Arabic poems calledMoallakât. In the same year he was appointed judge of the supreme court of judicature at Calcutta, then “Fort William,” and was knighted. Shortly after his arrival in India he founded, in January 1784, the Bengal Asiatic Society, of which he remained president till his death. Convinced as he was of the great importance of consulting the Hindu legal authorities in the original, he at once began the study of Sanskrit, and undertook, in 1788, the colossal task of compiling a digest of Hindu and Mahommedan law. This he did not live to complete, but he published the admirable beginnings of it in hisInstitutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Manu(1794); hisMohammedan Law of Succession to Property of Intestates; and hisMohammedan Law of Inheritance(1792). In 1789 Jones had completed his translation of Kālidāsa’s most famous drama,Sakuntalā. He also translated the collection of fables entitled theHitopadesa, theGītagovinda, and considerable portions of the Vedas, besides editing the text of Kālidāsa’s poemRitusamhara. He was a large contributor also to his society’s volumes ofAsiatic Researches.
His unremitting literary labours, together with his heavy judicial work, told on his health after a ten years’ residence in Bengal; and he died at Calcutta on the 27th of April 1794. An extraordinary linguist, knowing thirteen languages well, and having a moderate acquaintance with twenty-eight others, his range of knowledge was enormous. As a pioneer in Sanskrit learning and as founder of the Asiatic Society he rendered the language and literature of the ancient Hindus accessible to European scholars, and thus became the indirect cause of later achievements in the field of Sanskrit and comparative philology. A monument to his memory was erected by the East India Company in St Paul’s, London, and a statue in Calcutta.
See theMemoir(1804) by Lord Teignmouth, published in the collected edition of Sir W. Jones’s works.
See theMemoir(1804) by Lord Teignmouth, published in the collected edition of Sir W. Jones’s works.
JÖNKÖPING,a town of Sweden, capital of the district (län) of Jönköping, 230 m. S.W. of Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900), 23,143. It occupies a beautiful but somewhat unhealthy position between the southern end of Lake Vetter and two small lakes, Roksjö and Munksjö. Two quarters of the town, Svenska Mad and Tyska Mad, recall the time when the site was a marsh (mad), and buildings were constructed on piles. The residential suburbs among the hills, especially Dunkehallar, are attractive and healthier than the town. The church of St Kristine (c.1650), the court-houses, town-hall, government buildings, and high school, are noteworthy. The town is one of the leading industrial centres in Sweden. The match manufacture, for which it is principally famous, was founded by Johan Edvard Lundström in 1844. The well-known brand ofsäkerhets-tändstickor(safety-matches) was introduced later. There are also textile manufactures, paper-factories (on Munksjö), and mechanical works. There is a large fire-arms factory at Huskvarna, 5 m. E. Water-power is supplied here by a fine series of falls. The hill Taberg, 8 m. S., is a mass of magnetic iron ore, rising 410 ft. above the surrounding country, 2950 ft. long and 1475 ft. broad, but the percentage of iron is low as compared with the rich ores of other parts, and the deposit is little worked. Jönköping is the seat of one of the three courts of appeal in Sweden.
Jönköping received the earliest extant Swedish charter in 1284 from Magnus I. The castle is mentioned in 1263, when Waldemar Birgersson married the Danish princess Sophia. Jönköping was afterwards the scene of many events of moment in Scandinavian history—of parliaments in 1357, 1439, and 1599; of the meeting of the Danish and Swedish plenipotentiaries in 1448; and of the death of Sten Sture, the elder, in 1503. In 1612 Gustavus Adolphus caused the inhabitants to destroy their town lest it should fall into the hands of the Danes; but it was rebuilt soon after, and in 1620 received special privileges from the king. At this period a textile industry was started here, the first of any importance in Sweden. It was from the Dutch and German workmen, introduced at this time, that the quarter Tyska Mad received its name. On the 10th of December 1809 the plenipotentiaries of Sweden and Denmark concluded peace in the town.
JONSON, BEN1(1573-1637), English dramatist, was born, probably in Westminster, in the beginning of the year 1573 (or possibly, if he reckoned by the unadopted modern calendar, 1572; see Castelain, p. 4, note 1). By the poet’s account his grandfather had been a gentleman who “came from” Carlisle, and originally, the grandson thought, from Annandale. His arms, “three spindles or rhombi,” are the family device of the Johnstones of Annandale, a fact which confirms his assertion of Border descent. Ben Jonson further related that he was born a month after the death of his father, who, after suffering in estate and person under Queen Mary, had in the end “turned minister.” Two years after the birth of her son the widow married again; she may be supposed to have loved him in a passionate way peculiar to herself, since on one occasion we find her revealing an almost ferocious determination to save his honour at the cost of both his life and her own. Jonson’s stepfather was a master bricklayer, living in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross, who provided his stepson with the foundations of a good education. After attending a private school in St Martin’s Lane, the boy was sent to Westminster School at the expense, it is said, of William Camden. Jonson’s gratitude for an education to which in truth he owed an almost inestimable debt concentrated itself upon the “most reverend head” of his benefactor, then second and afterwards head master of the famous school, and the firm friend of his pupil in later life.
After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to Cambridge—according to Fuller, to St John’s College. (For reasons in support of the tradition that he was a member of St John’s College, see J. B. Mullinger, theEagle, No. xxv.) He says, however, himself that he studied at neither university, but was put to a trade immediately on leaving school. He soon had enough of the trade, which was no doubt his father’s bricklaying, for Henslowe in writing to Edward Alleyne of his affair with Gabriel Spenser calls him “bergemen [sic] Jonson, bricklayer.” Either before or after his marriage—more probably before, as Sir Francis Vere’s three English regiments were not removed from the Low Countries till 1592—he spent some time in that country soldiering, much to his own subsequent satisfaction when the days of self-conscious retrospect arrived, but to no further purpose beyond that of seeing something of the world.
Ben Jonson married not later than 1592. The registers of St Martin’s Church state that his eldest daughter Maria died in November 1593 when she was, Jonson tells us (epigram 22), only six months old. His eldest son Benjamin died of the plague ten years later (epigram 45). (A younger Benjamin died in 1635.) His wife Jonson characterized to Drummond as “a shrew, but honest”; and for a period (undated) of five years he preferred to live without her, enjoying the hospitality of Lord Aubigny (afterwards duke of Lennox). Long burnings of oil among his books, and long spells of recreation at the tavern, such as Jonson loved, are not the most favoured accompaniments of family life. But Jonson was no stranger to the tenderest of affections: two at least of the several children whom his wife bore to him he commemorated in touching little tributes of verse; nor in speaking of his lost eldest daughter did he forget “her mother’s tears.” By the middle of 1597 we come across further documentary evidence of him at home in London in the shape of an entry in Philip Henslowe’s diary (July 28) of 3s. 6d. “received of Bengemenes Johnsones share.” He was therefore by this time—when Shakespeare, his senior by nearly nine years, was already in prosperous circumstances and good esteem—at least a regular member of the acting profession, with a fixed engagement in the lord admiral’s company, then performing under Henslowe’s management at the Rose. Perhaps he had previously acted at the Curtain (a former house of the lord admiral’s men), and “taken mad Jeronimo’s part” on a play-wagon in the highway. This latter appearance, if it ever took place, would, as was pointed out by Gifford, probably have been in Thomas Kyd’sSpanish Tragedy, since inThe First Part of JeronimoJonson would have had, most inappropriately, to dwell on the “smallness” of his “bulk.” He was at a subsequent date (1601) employed by Henslowe to write upThe Spanish Tragedy, and this fact may have given rise to Wood’s story of his performance as a stroller (see, however, Fleay,The English Drama, ii. 29, 30). Jonson’s additions, which were not the first changes made in the play, are usually supposed to be those printed withThe Spanish Tragedyin the edition of 1602; Charles Lamb’s doubts on the subject, which were shared by Coleridge, seem an instance of that subjective kind of criticism which it is unsafe to follow when the external evidence to the contrary is so strong.
According to Aubrey, whose statement must be taken for what it is worth, “Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor.” His physique was certainly not well adapted to the histrionic conditions of his—perhaps of any—day; but, in any case, it was not long before he found his place in the organism of his company. In 1597, as we know from Henslowe, Jonson undertook to write a play for the lord admiral’s men; and in the following year he was mentioned by Merès in hisPalladis Tamiaas one of “the best for tragedy,” without any reference to a connexion on his part with the other branch of the drama. Whether this was a criticism based on material evidence or an unconscious slip, Ben Jonson in the same year 1598 produced one of the most famous of English comedies,Every Man in his Humour, which was first acted—probably in the earlier part of September—by the lord chamberlain’s company at the Curtain. Shakespeare was one of the actors in Jonson’s comedy, and it is in the character of Old Knowell in this very play that, according to a bold but ingenious guess, he is represented in the half-length portrait of him in the folio of 1623, beneath which were printed Jonson’s lines concerning the picture.Every Man in his Humourwas published in 1601; the critical prologue first appears in the folio of 1616, and there are other divergences (see Castelain, appendix A). After the Restoration the play was revived in 1751 by Garrick (who acted Kitely) with alterations, and long continued to be known on the stage. It was followed in the same year byThe Case is Altered, acted by the children of the queen’s revels, which contains a satirical attack upon the pageant poet, Anthony Munday. This comedy, which was not included in the folio editions, is one of intrigue rather than of character; it contains obvious reminiscences of Shylock and his daughter. The earlier of these two comedies was indisputably successful.
Before the year 1598 was out, however, Jonson found himself in prison and in danger of the gallows. In a duel, fought on the 22nd of September in Hogsden Fields, he had killed an actor of Henslowe’s company named Gabriel Spenser. The quarrel withHenslowe consequent on this event may account for the production ofEvery Man in his Humourby the rival company. In prison Jonson was visited by a Roman Catholic priest, and the result (certainly strange, if Jonson’s parentage is considered) was his conversion to the Church of Rome, to which he adhered for twelve years. Jonson was afterwards a diligent student of divinity; but, though his mind was religious, it is not probable that its natural bias much inclined it to dwell upon creeds and their controversies. He pleaded guilty to the charge brought against him, as the rolls of Middlesex sessions show; but, after a short imprisonment, he was released by benefit of clergy, forfeiting his “goods and chattels,” and being branded on his left thumb. The affair does not seem to have affected his reputation; in 1599 he is found back again at work for Henslowe, receiving together with Dekker, Chettle and “another gentleman,” earnest-money for a tragedy (undiscovered) calledRobert II., King of Scots. In the same year he brought out through the lord chamberlain’s company (possibly already at the Globe, then newly built or building) the elaborate comedy ofEvery Man out of his Humour(quarto 1600; fol. 1616)—a play subsequently presented before Queen Elizabeth. The sunshine of court favour, rarely diffused during her reign in rays otherwise than figuratively golden, was not to bring any material comfort to the most learned of her dramatists, before there was laid upon her the inevitable hand of which his courtly epilogue had besought death to forget the use. Indeed, of hisCynthia’s Revels, performed by the chapel children in 1600 and printed with the first title ofThe Fountain of Self-Lovein 1601, though it was no doubt primarily designed as a compliment to the queen, the most marked result had been to offend two playwrights of note—Dekker, with whom he had formerly worked in company, and who had a healthy if rough grip of his own; and Marston, who was perhaps less dangerous by his strength than by his versatility. According to Jonson, his quarrel with Marston had begun by the latter attacking his morals, and in the course of it they came to blows, and might have come to worse. InCynthia’s Revels, Dekker is generally held to be satirized as Hedon, and Marston as Anaides (Fleay, however, thinks Anaides is Dekker, and Hedon Daniel), while the character of Crites most assuredly has some features of Jonson himself. Learning the intention of the two writers whom he had satirized, or at all events of Dekker, to wreak literary vengeance upon him, he anticipated them inThe Poetaster(1601), again played by the children of the queen’s chapel at the Blackfriars and printed in 1602; Marston and Dekker are here ridiculed respectively as the aristocratic Crispinus and the vulgar Demetrius. The play was completed fifteen weeks after its plot was first conceived. It is not certain to what the proceedings against author and play before the lord chief justice, referred to in the dedication of the edition of 1616, had reference, or when they were instituted. Fleay’s supposition that the “purge,” said in theReturne from Parnassus(Pt. II. act iv. sc. iii.) to have been administered by Shakespeare to Jonson in return for Horace’s “pill to the poets” in this piece, consisted ofTroilus and Cressidais supremely ingenious, but cannot be examined here. As for Dekker, he retaliated onThe Poetasterby theSatiromastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet(1602). Some more last words were indeed attempted on Jonson’s part, but in theApologetic Dialogueadded toThe Poetasterin the edition of 1616, though excluded from that of 1602, he says he intends to turn his attention to tragedy. This intention he apparently carried out immediately, for in 1602 he received £10 from Henslowe for a play, entitledRichard Crookbacke, now lost—unfortunately so, for purposes of comparison in particular, even if it was only, as Fleay conjectures, “an alteration of Marlowe’s play.” According to a statement by Overbury, early in 1603, “Ben Johnson, the poet, now lives upon one Townesend,” supposed to have been the poet and masque-writer Aurelian Townshend, at one time steward to the 1st earl of Salisbury, “and scornes the world.” To his other early patron, Lord Aubigny, Jonson dedicated the first of his two extant tragedies,Sejanus, produced by the king’s servants at the Globe late in 1603, Shakespeare once more taking a part in the performance. Either on its performance or on its appearing in print in 1605, Jonson was called before the privy council by the Earl of Northampton. But it is open to question whether this was the occasion on which, according to Jonson’s statement to Drummond, Northampton “accused him both of popery and treason” (see Castelain, Appendix C). Though, for one reason or another, unsuccessful at first, the endurance of its reputation is attested by its performance, in a German version by an Englishman, John Michael Girish, at the court of the grandson of James I. at Heidelberg.
When the reign of James I. opened in England and an adulatory loyalty seemed intent on showing that it had not exhausted itself at the feet of Gloriana, Jonson’s well-stored brain and ready pen had their share in devising and executing ingenious variations on the theme “Welcome—since we cannot do without thee!” With extraordinary promptitude his genius, which, far from being “ponderous” in its operations, was singularly swift and flexible in adapting itself to the demands made upon it, met the new taste for masques and entertainments—new of course in degree rather than in kind—introduced with the new reign and fostered by both the king and his consort. The pageant which on the 7th of May 1603 bade the king welcome to a capital dissolved in joy was partly of Jonson’s, partly of Dekker’s, devising; and he was able to deepen and diversify the impression by the composition of masques presented to James I. when entertained at houses of the nobility.The Satyr(1603) was produced on one of these occasions, Queen Anne’s sojourn at Althorpe, the seat of Sir Robert Spencer, afterwards Lord Althorpe, who seems to have previously bestowed some patronage upon him.The Penatesfollowed on May-day 1604 at the house of Sir William Cornwallis at Highgate, and the queen herself with her ladies played hisMasque of Blacknessat Whitehall in 1605. He was soon occasionally employed by the court itself—already in 1606 in conjunction with Inigo Jones, as responsible for the “painting and carpentry”—and thus speedily showed himself master in a species of composition for which, more than any other English poet before Milton, he secured an enduring place in the national poetic literature. Personally, no doubt, he derived considerable material benefit from the new fashion—more especially if his statement to Drummond was anything like correct, that out of his plays (which may be presumed to mean his original plays) he had never gained a couple of hundred pounds.
Good humour seems to have come back with good fortune. Joint employment inThe King’s Entertainment(1604) had reconciled him with Dekker; and with Marston also, who in 1604 dedicated to him hisMalcontent, he was again on pleasant terms. When, therefore, in 1604 Marston and Chapman (who, Jonson told Drummond, was loved of him, and whom he had probably honoured as “Virgil” inThe Poetaster, and who has, though on doubtful grounds, been supposed to have collaborated in the originalSejanus) produced the excellent comedy ofEastward Ho, it appears to have contained some contributions by Jonson. At all events, when the authors were arrested on account of one or more passages in the play which were deemed insulting to the Scots, he “voluntarily imprisoned himself” with them. They were soon released, and a banquet at his expense, attended by Camden and Selden, terminated the incident. If Jonson is to be believed, there had been a report that the prisoners were to have their ears and noses cut, and, with reference apparently to this peril, “at the midst of the feast his old mother drank to him, and showed him a paper which she had intended (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 him, she minded first to have drunk of it herself.” Strange to say, in 1605 Jonson and Chapman, though the former, as he averred, had so “attempered” his style as to have “given no cause to any good man of grief,” were again in prison on account of “a play”; but they appear to have been once more speedily set free, in consequence of a very manly and dignified letter addressed by Jonson to the Earl of Salisbury. As to the relations between Chapman and Jonson, illustrated by newly discovered letters, see Bertram Dobell in theAthenaeumNo. 3831 (March 30, 1901), and the comments of Castelain. He thinks that the play in question, in which both Chapman and Jonson took part, wasSir Gyles Goosecappe, and that the last imprisonment of the two poets was shortly after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In the mysterious history of the Gunpowder Plot Jonson certainly had some obscure part. On the 7th of November, very soon after the discovery of the conspiracy, the council appears to have sent for him and to have asked him, as a loyal Roman Catholic, to use his good offices in inducing the priests to do something required by the council—one hardly likes to conjecture it to have been some tampering with the secrets of confession. In any case, the negotiations fell through, because the priests declined to come forth out of their hiding-places to be negotiated with—greatly to the wrath of Ben Jonson, who declares in a letter to Lord Salisbury that “they are all so enweaved in it that it will make 500 gentlemen less of the religion within this week, if they carry their understanding about them.” Jonson himself, however, did not declare his separation from the Church of Rome for five years longer, however much it might have been to his advantage to do so.
His powers as a dramatist were at their height during the earlier half of the reign of James I.; and by the year 1616 he had produced nearly all the plays which are worthy of his genius. They include the tragedy ofCatiline(acted and printed 1611), which achieved only a doubtful success, and the comedies ofVolpone, or the Fox(acted 1605 and printed in 1607 with a dedication “from my house in the Blackfriars”),Epicoene, or the Silent Woman(1609; entered in the Stationers’ Register 1610), theAlchemist(1610; printed in 1610),Bartholomew FairandThe Devil is an Ass(acted respectively in 1614 and 1616). During the same period he produced several masques, usually in connexion with Inigo Jones, with whom, however, he seems to have quarrelled already in this reign, though it is very doubtful whether the architect is really intended to be ridiculed inBartholomew Fairunder the character of Lanthorn Leatherhead. Littlewit, according to Fleay, is Daniel. Among the most attractive of his masques may be mentioned theMasque of Blackness(1606), the Masque of Beauty (1608), and theMasque of Queens(1609), described by Swinburne as “the most splendid of all masques” and as “one of the typically splendid monuments or trophies of English literature.” In 1616 a modest pension of 100 marks a year was conferred upon him; and possibly this sign of royal favour may have encouraged him to the publication of the first volume of the folio collected edition of his works (1616), though there are indications that he had contemplated its production, an exceptional task for a playwright of his times to take in hand, as early as 1612.
He had other patrons more bountiful than the Crown, and for a brief space of time (in 1613) had travelled to France as governor (without apparently much moral authority) to the eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh, then a state prisoner in the Tower, for whose society Jonson may have gained a liking at the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, but for whose personal character he, like so many of his contemporaries, seems to have had but small esteem. By the year 1616 Jonson seems to have made up his mind to cease writing for the stage, where neither his success nor his profits had equalled his merits and expectations. He continued to produce masques and entertainments when called upon; but he was attracted by many other literary pursuits, and had already accomplished enough to furnish plentiful materials for retrospective discourse over pipe or cup. He was already entitled to lord it at the Mermaid, where his quick antagonist in earlier wit-combats (if Fuller’s famous description be authentic) no longer appeared even on a visit from his comfortable retreat at Stratford. That on the other hand Ben carried his wicked town habits into Warwickshire, and there, together with Drayton, made Shakespeare drink so hard with them as to bring upon himself the fatal fever which ended his days, is a scandal with which we may fairly refuse to load Jonson’s memory. That he had a share in the preparing for the press of the first folio of Shakespeare, or in the composition of its preface, is of course a mere conjecture.
It was in the year 1618 that, like Dr Samuel Johnson a century and a half afterwards, Ben resolved to have a real holiday for once, and about midsummer started for his ancestral country, Scotland. He had (very heroically for a man of his habits) determined to make the journey on foot; and he was speedily followed by John Taylor, the water-poet, who still further handicapped himself by the condition that he would accomplish the pilgrimage without a penny in his pocket. Jonson, who put money in his good friend’s purse when he came up with him at Leith, spent more than a year and a half in the hospitable Lowlands, being solemnly elected a burgess of Edinburgh, and on another occasion entertained at a public banquet there. But the best-remembered hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the learned Scottish poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, to which we owe the so-calledConversations. In these famous jottings, the work of no extenuating hand, Jonson lives for us to this day, delivering his censures, terse as they are, in an expansive mood whether of praise or of blame; nor is he at all generously described in the postscript added by his fatigued and at times irritated host as “a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others.” A poetical account of this journey, “with all the adventures,” was burnt with Jonson’s library.
After his return to England Jonson appears to have resumed his former course of life. Among his noble patrons and patronesses were the countess of Rutland (Sidney’s daughter) and her cousin Lady Wroth; and in 1619 his visits to the country seats of the nobility were varied by a sojourn at Oxford with Richard Corbet, the poet, at Christ Church, on which occasion he took up the master’s degree granted to him by the university; whether he actually proceeded to the same degree granted to him at Cambridge seems unknown. He confessed about this time that he was or seemed growing “restive,”i.e.lazy, though it was not long before he returned to the occasional composition of masques. The extremely spiritedGipsies Metamorphosed(1621) was thrice presented before the king, who was so pleased with it as to grant to the poet the reversion of the office of master of the revels, besides proposing to confer upon him the honour of knighthood. This honour Jonson (hardly in deference to the memory of Sir Petronel Flash) declined; but there was no reason why he should not gratefully accept the increase of his pension in the same year (1621) to £200—a temporary increase only, inasmuch as it still stood at 100 marks when afterwards augmented by Charles I.
The close of King James I.’s reign found the foremost of its poets in anything but a prosperous condition. It would be unjust to hold the Sun, the Dog, the Triple Tun, or the Old Devil with its Apollo club-room, where Ben’s supremacy must by this time have become established, responsible for this result; taverns were the clubs of that day, and a man of letters is not considered lost in our own because he haunts a smoking-room in Pall Mall. Disease had weakened the poet’s strength, and the burning of his library, as hisExecration upon Vulcansufficiently shows, must have been no mere transitory trouble to a poor poet and scholar. Moreover he cannot but have felt, from the time of the accession of Charles I. early in 1625 onwards, that the royal patronage would no longer be due in part to anything like intellectual sympathy. He thus thought it best to recur to the surer way of writing for the stage, and in 1625 produced, with no faint heart, but with a very clear anticipation of the comments which would be made upon the reappearance of the “huge, overgrown play-maker,”The Staple of News, a comedy excellent in some respects, but little calculated to become popular. It was not printed till 1631. Jonson, whose habit of body was not more conducive than were his ways of life to a healthy old age, had a paralytic stroke in 1626, and a second in 1628. In the latter year, on the death of Middleton, the appointment of city chronologer, with a salary of 100 nobles a year, was bestowed upon him. He appears to have considered the duties of this office as purely ornamental; but in 1631 his salary was suspended until he should have presented some fruits of his labours in his place, or—as he more succinctly phrased it—“yesterday the barbarous court ofaldermen have withdrawn their chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard, £33, 6s. 8d.” After being in 1628 arrested by mistake on the utterly false charge of having written certain verses in approval of the assassination of Buckingham, he was soon allowed to return to Westminster, where it would appear from a letter of his “son and contiguous neighbour,” James Howell, he was living in 1629, and about this time narrowly escaped another conflagration. In the same year (1629) he once more essayed the stage with the comedy ofThe New Inn, which was actually, and on its own merits not unjustly, damned on the first performance. It was printed in 1631, “as it was never acted but most negligently played”; and Jonson defended himself against his critics in his spiritedOde to Himself. The epilogue toThe New Innhaving dwelt not without dignity upon the neglect which the poet had experienced at the hands of “king and queen,” King Charles immediately sent the unlucky author a gift of £100, and in response to a further appeal increased his standing salary to the same sum, with the addition of an annual tierce of canary—the poet-laureate’s customary royal gift, though this designation of an office, of which Jonson discharged some of what became the ordinary functions, is not mentioned in the warrant dated the 26th of March 1630. In 1634, by the king’s desire, Jonson’s salary as chronologer to the city was again paid. To his later years belong the comedies,The Magnetic Lady(1632) andThe Tale of a Tub(1633), both printed in 1640, and some masques, none of which met with great success. The patronage of liberal-minded men, such as the earl, afterwards duke, of Newcastle—by whom he must have been commissioned to write his last two masquesLove’s Welcome at Welbeck(1633) andLove’s Welcome at Bolsover(1634)—and Viscount Falkland, was not wanting, and his was hardly an instance in which the fickleness of time and taste could have allowed a literary veteran to end his career in neglect. He was the acknowledged chief of the English world of letters, both at the festive meetings where he ruled the roast among the younger authors whose pride it was to be “sealed of the tribe of Ben,” and by the avowal of grave writers, old or young, not one of whom would have ventured to dispute his titular pre-eminence. Nor was he to the last unconscious of the claims upon him which his position brought with it. When, nearly two years after he had lost his surviving son, death came upon the sick old man on the 6th of August 1637, he left behind him an unfinished work of great beauty, the pastoral drama ofThe Sad Shepherd(printed in 1641). For forty years, he said in the prologue, he had feasted the public; at first he could scarce hit its taste, but patience had at last enabled it to identify itself with the working of his pen.
We are so accustomed to think of Ben Jonson presiding, attentive to his own applause, over a circle of younger followers and admirers that we are apt to forget the hard struggle which he had passed through before gaining the crown now universally acknowledged to be his. Howell records, in the year before Ben’s death, that a solemn supper at the poet’s own house, where the host had almost spoiled the relish of the feast by vilifying others and magnifying himself, “T. Ca.” (Thomas Carew) buzzed in the writer’s ear “that, though Ben had barrelled up a great deal of knowledge, yet it seemed he had not read theEthics, which, among other precepts of morality, forbid self-commendation.” Self-reliance is but too frequently coupled with self-consciousness, and for good and for evil self-confidence was no doubt the most prominent feature in the character of Ben Jonson. Hence the combativeness which involved him in so many quarrels in his earlier days, and which jarred so harshly upon the less militant and in some respects more pedantic nature of Drummond. But his quarrels do not appear to have entered deeply into his soul, or indeed usually to have lasted long.2He was too exuberant in his vituperations to be bitter, and too outspoken to be malicious. He loved of all things to be called “honest,” and there is every reason to suppose that he deserved the epithet. The old superstition that Jonson was filled with malignant envy of the greatest of his fellow-dramatists, and lost no opportunity of giving expression to it, hardly needs notice. Those who consider that Shakespeare was beyond criticism may find blasphemy in the saying of Jonson that Shakespeare “wanted art.” Occasional jesting allusions to particular plays of Shakespeare may be found in Jonson, among which should hardly be included the sneer at “mouldy” Pericles in hisOde to Himself. But these amount to nothing collectively, and to very little individually; and against them have to be set, not only the many pleasant traditions concerning the long intimacy between the pair, but also the lines, prefixed to the first Shakespeare folio, as noble as they are judicious, dedicated by the survivor to “the star of poets,” and the adaptation, clearly sympathetic notwithstanding all its buts,de Shakespeare nostrat. in theDiscoveries. But if Gifford had rendered no other service to Jonson’s fame he must be allowed to have once for all vindicated it from the cruellest aspersion which has ever been cast upon it. That in general Ben Jonson was a man of strong likes and dislikes, and was wont to manifest the latter as vehemently as the former, it would be idle to deny. He was at least impartial in his censures, dealing them out freely to Puritan poets like Wither and (supposing him not to have exaggerated his free-spokenness) to princes of his church like Cardinal du Perron. And, if sensitive to attack, he seems to have been impervious to flattery—to judge from the candour with which he condemned the foibles even of so enthusiastic an admirer as Beaumont. The personage that he disliked the most, and openly abused in the roundest terms, was unfortunately one with many heads and a tongue to hiss in each—no other than that “general public” which it was the fundamental mistake of his life to fancy he could “rail into approbation” before he had effectively secured its goodwill. And upon the whole it may be said that the admiration of the few, rather than the favour of the many, has kept green the fame of the most independent among all the masters of an art which, in more senses than one, must please to live.
Jonson’s learning and industry, which were alike exceptional, by no means exhausted themselves in furnishing and elaborating the materials of his dramatic works. His enemies sneered at him as a translator—a title which the preceding generation was inclined to esteem the most honourable in literature. But his classical scholarship shows itself in other directions besides his translations from the Latin poets (theArs poeticain particular), in addition to which he appears to have written a version of Barclay’sArgenis; it was likewise the basis of hisEnglish Grammar, of which nothing but the rough draft remains (the MS. itself having perished in the fire in his library), and in connexion with the subject of which he appears to have pursued other linguistic studies (Howell in 1629 was trying to procure him a Welsh grammar). And its effects are very visible in some of the most pleasing of his non-dramatic poems, which often display that combination of polish and simplicity hardly to be reached—or even to be appreciated—without some measure of classical training.
Exclusively of the few lyrics in Jonson’s dramas (which, with the exception of the stately choruses inCatiline, charm, and perhaps may surprise, by their lightness of touch), his non-dramatic works are comprised in the following collections. The book ofEpigrams(published in the first folio of 1616) contained, in the poet’s own words, the “ripest of his studies.” His notion of an epigram was the ancient, not the restricted modern one—still less that of the critic (R. C., the author ofThe Times’ Whistle) in whose language, according to Jonson, “witty” was “obscene.” On the whole, these epigrams excel more in encomiastic than in satiric touches, while the pathos of one or two epitaphs in the collection is of the truest kind. In the lyrics and epistles contained in theForest(also in the first folio), Jonson shows greater variety in the poetic styles adopted by him; but the subject of love, which Dryden considered conspicuous by its absence in the author’s dramas, is similarly eschewed here. TheUnderwoods(not published collectively till the second and surreptitious folio) are a miscellaneous series, comprising, together with a few religious and a few amatory poems, a large number of epigrams,epitaphs, elegies and “odes,” including both the tributes to Shakespeare and several to royal and other patrons and friends, besides theExecration upon Vulcan, and the characteristic ode addressed by the poet to himself. To these pieces in verse should be added theDiscoveries—Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matters, avowedly a commonplace book of aphorisms noted by the poet in his dally readings—thoughts adopted and adapted in more tranquil and perhaps more sober moods than those which gave rise to the outpourings of theConversations at Hawthornden. As to the critical value of theseConversationsit is far from being only negative; he knew how to admire as well as how to disdain. For these thoughts, though abounding with biographical as well as general interest, Jonson was almost entirely indebted to ancient writers, or (as has been shown by Professor Spingarn and by Percy Simpson) indebted to the humanists of the Renaissance (seeModern Language Review, ii. 3, April 1907).
The extant dramatic works of Ben Jonson fall into three or, if his fragmentary pastoral drama be considered to stand by itself, into four distinct divisions. The tragedies are only two in number—Sejanus his Fall and Catiline his Conspiracy.3Of these the earlier, as is worth noting, was produced at Shakespeare’s theatre, in all probability before the first of Shakespeare’s Roman dramas, and still contains a considerable admixture of rhyme in the dialogue. Though perhaps less carefully elaborated in diction than its successor,Sejanusis at least equally impressive as a highly wrought dramatic treatment of a complex historic theme. The character of Tiberius adds an element of curious psychological interest on which speculation has never quite exhausted itself and which, in Jonson’s day at least, was wanting to the figures ofCatilineand his associates. But in both plays the action is powerfully conducted, and the care bestowed by the dramatist upon the great variety of characters introduced cannot, as in some of his comedies, be said to distract the interest of the reader. Both these tragedies are noble works, though the relative popularity of the subject (for conspiracies are in the long run more interesting than camarillas) has perhaps secured the preference to Catiline. Yet this play and its predecessor were alike too manifestly intended by their author to court the goodwill of what he calls the “extraordinary” reader. It is difficult to imagine that (with the aid of judicious shortenings) either could altogether miss its effect on the stage; but, while Shakespeare causes us to forget, Jonson seems to wish us to remember, his authorities. The half is often greater than the whole; and Jonson, like all dramatists and, it might be added, all novelists in similar cases, has had to pay the penalty incurred by too obvious a desire to underline the learning of the author.
Perversity—or would-be originality—alone could declare Jonson’s tragedy preferable to his comedy. Even if the revolution which he created in the comic branch of the drama had been mistaken in its principles or unsatisfactory in its results, it would be clear that the strength of his dramatic genius lay in the power of depicting a great variety of characters, and that in comedy alone he succeeded in finding a wide field for the exercise of this power. There may have been no very original or very profound discovery in the idea which he illustrated inEvery Man in his Humour, and, as it were, technically elaborated inEvery Man out of his Humour—that in many men one quality is observable which so possesses them as to draw the whole of their individualities one way, and that this phenomenon “may be truly said to be a humour.” The idea of the master quality or tendency was, as has been well observed, a very considerable one for dramatist or novelist. Nor did Jonson (happily) attempt to work out this idea with any excessive scientific consistency as a comic dramatist. But, by refusing to apply the term “humour” (q.v.) to a mere peculiarity or affectation of manners, and restricting its use to actual or implied differences or distinctions of character, he broadened the whole basis of English comedy after his fashion, as Molière at a later date, keeping in closer touch with the common experience of human life, with a lighter hand broadened the basis of French and of modern Western comedy at large. It does not of course follow that Jonson’s disciples, the Bromes and the Cartwrights, always adequately reproduced the master’s conception of “humorous” comedy. Jonson’s wide and various reading helped him to diversify the application of his theory, while perhaps at times it led him into too remote illustrations of it. Still, Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca, Macilente and Fungoso, Volpone and Mosca, and a goodly number of other characters impress themselves permanently upon the memory of those whose attention they have as a matter of course commanded. It is a very futile criticism to condemn Jonson’s characters as a mere series of types of general ideas; on the other hand, it is a very sound criticism to object, with Barry Cornwall, to the “multitude of characters who throw no light upon the story, and lend no interest to it, occupying space that had better have been bestowed upon the principal agents of the plot.”
In the construction of plots, as in most other respects, Jonson’s at once conscientious and vigorous mind led him in the direction of originality; he depended to a far less degree than the greater part of his contemporaries (Shakespeare with the rest) upon borrowed plots. But either his inventive character was occasionally at fault in this respect, or his devotion to his characters often diverted his attention from a brisk conduct of his plot. Barry Cornwall has directed attention to the essential likeness in the plot of two of Jonson’s best comedies,VolponeandThe Alchemist; and another critic, W. Bodham Donne, has dwelt on the difficulty which, inThe Poetasterand elsewhere, Ben Jonson seems to experience in sustaining the promise of his actions.The Poetasteris, however, a playsui generis, in which the real business can hardly be said to begin till the last act.
Dryden, when criticizing Ben Jonson’s comedies, thought fit, while allowing the old master humour and incontestable “pleasantness,” to deny him wit and those ornaments thereof which Quintilian reckons up under the termsurbana,salsa,facetaand so forth. Such wit as Dryden has in view is the mere outward fashion or style of the day, the euphuism or “sheerwit” orchicwhich is the creed of Fastidious Brisks and of their astute purveyors at any given moment. In this Ben Jonson was no doubt defective; but it would be an error to suppose him, as a comic dramatist, to have maintained towards the world around him the attitude of a philosopher, careless of mere transient externalisms. It is said that the scene of hisEvery Man in his Humourwas originally laid near Florence; and hisVolpone, which is perhaps the darkest social picture ever drawn by him, plays at Venice. Neither locality was ill-chosen, but the real atmosphere of his comedies is that of the native surroundings amidst which they were produced; and Ben Jonson’s times live for us in his men and women, his country gulls and town gulls, his alchemists and exorcists, his “skeldring” captains and whining Puritans, and the whole ragamuffin rout of hisBartholomew Fair, the comedypar excellenceof Elizabethan low life. After he had described the pastimes, fashionable and unfashionable, of his age, its feeble superstitions and its flaunting naughtinesses, its vapouring affectations and its lying effronteries, with an odour as of “divine tabacco” pervading the whole, little might seem to be left to describe for his “sons” and successors. Enough, however, remained; only that his followers speedily again threw manners and “humours” into an undistinguishable medley.
The gift which both in his art and in his life Jonson lacked was that of exercising the influence or creating the effects which he wished to exercise or create without the appearance of consciousness. Concealment never crept over his efforts, and he scorned insinuation. Instead of this, influenced no doubt by the example of the free relations between author and public permitted by Attic comedy, he resorted again and again, fromEvery Man out of his HumourtoThe Magnetic Lady, to inductions and commentatory intermezzos and appendices, which, though occasionally effective by the excellence of their execution, areto be regretted as introducing into his dramas an exotic and often vexatious element. A man of letters to the very core, he never quite understood that there is and ought to be a wide difference of methods between the world of letters and the world of the theatre.
The richness and versatility of Jonson’s genius will never be fully appreciated by those who fail to acquaint themselves with what is preserved to us of his “masques” and cognate entertainments. He was conscious enough of his success in this direction—“next himself,” he said, “only Fletcher and Chapman could write a masque.” He introduced, or at least established, the ingenious innovation of the anti-masque, which Schlegel has described, as a species of “parody added by the poet to his device, and usually prefixed to the serious entry,” and which accordingly supplies a grotesque antidote to the often extravagantly imaginative main conception. Jonson’s learning, creative power and humorous ingenuity—combined, it should not be forgotten, with a genuine lyrical gift—all found abundant opportunities for displaying themselves in these productions. Though a growth of foreign origin, the masque was by him thoroughly domesticated in the high places of English literature. He lived long enough to see the species produce its poetic masterpiece in Comus.
The Sad Shepherd, of which Jonson left behind him three acts and a prologue, is distinguished among English pastoral dramas by its freshness of tone; it breathes something of the spirit of the greenwood, and is not unnatural even in its supernatural element. While this piece, with its charming love-scenes between Robin Hood and Maid Marion, remains a fragment, another pastoral by Jonson, theMay Lord(which F. G. Fleay and J. A. Symonds sought to identify withThe Sad Shepherd; see, however, W. W. Greg in introduction to the Louvain reprint), has been lost, and a third, of which Loch Lomond was intended to be the scene, probably remained unwritten.
Though Ben Jonson never altogether recognized the truth of the maxim that the dramatic art has properly speaking no didactic purpose, his long and laborious life was not wasted upon a barren endeavour. In tragedy he added two works of uncommon merit to our dramatic literature. In comedy his aim was higher, his effort more sustained, and his success more solid than were those of any of his fellows. In the subsidiary and hybrid species of the masque, he helped to open a new and attractive though undoubtedly devious path in the field of dramatic literature. His intellectual endowments surpassed those of most of the great English dramatists in richness and breadth; and in energy of application he probably left them all behind. Inferior to more than one of his fellow-dramatists in the power of imaginative sympathy, he was first among the Elizabethans in the power of observation; and there is point in Barrett Wendell’s paradox, that as a dramatist he was not really a poet but a painter. Yet it is less by these gifts, or even by his unexcelled capacity for hard work, than by the true ring of manliness that he will always remain distinguished among his peers.
Jonson was buried on the north side of the nave in Westminster Abbey, and the inscription, “O Rare Ben Jonson,” was cut in the slab over his grave. In the beginning of the 18th century a portrait bust was put up to his memory in the Poets’ Corner by Harley, earl of Oxford. Of Honthorst’s portrait of Jonson at Knole Park there is a copy in the National Portrait Gallery; another was engraved by W. Marshall for the 1640 edition of his Poems.