Notes on Ben Jonson.

[pg 261]Notes on Ben Jonson.It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement of morals, as, alas!vice versa, is to be seen in the very frequent allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and Italian women of rank: and bad as they may, too many of them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth's or James's courtiers. Those who have read Shakespeare only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction, is that of the exquisite purity of his imagination.The observation I have prefixed to theVolponeis the key to the faint interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with the exception of the fragment of theSad Shepherd; because in that piece only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathise. On the[pg 262]other hand,Measure for Measureis the only play of Shakespeare's in which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all Shakespeare's female characters, pleases me the least; andMeasure for Measureis, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is painful to me.Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful acknowledgment to themanesof Ben Jonson, that the more I study his writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles that of an ancient classic, in theminutiæof his rhythm, metre, choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakespearian age, with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;—the other is to copy what is, and as it is,—at best a tolerable but most frequently a blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;—and yet such is modern comedy.[pg 263]Whalley's Preface.“But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life.”But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben'spersonæare too often not characters, but derangements;—the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,—exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.“But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.”This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a dramatic poet.Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile, is the dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the[pg 264]writings of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym, andid genus omne, do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.—I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humour at all.“Whalley's‘Life Of Jonson.’”“It is to the honour of Jonson's judgment, thatthe greatest poet of our nationhad the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire into modern verse.”VidelicetPope!—“He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles.”I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him—“This is a joke!”—and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.[pg 265]“Every Man Out Of His Humour.”Epilogue.—“The throat of war be stopt within her land,Andturtle-footedpeace dance fairie ringsAbout her court.”“Turtle-footed”is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but withéclat—a claw![pg 266]“Poetaster.”Introduction.—“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.”There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in theParadise Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.Act i. sc. 1.—“Ovid.While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds bewhorish.”The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple transposition:—“While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.”Act. iv. sc. 3—“Crisp.O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous.O—conscious.”It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as[pg 267]strenuous,conscious, &c., and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not prevent the naturalisation ofaccommodation,remuneration, &c.; or Swift the gross abuse even of the wordidea.[pg 268]“Fall Of Sejanus.”Act i.—“Arruntius.The name Tiberius,I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath foregoneThe dignity and power.Silius.Sure, while he lives.Arr.And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail,To the brave issue of Germanicus;And they are three: too many (ha?) for himTo have a plot upon?Sil.I do not knowThe heart of his designs; but, sure, their faceLooks farther than the present.Arr.By the gods,If I could guess he had but such a thought,My sword should cleave him down,”&c.The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a fair exception.Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:—“Adultery! it is the lightest illI will commit. A race of wicked actsShall flow out of my anger, and o'erspreadThe world's wide face, which no posterityShall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent,”&c.The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakespeare over his contemporaries;—and[pg 269]yet what contemporaries!—giant minds indeed! Think of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare's works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies, and the writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune.This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.[pg 270]“Volpone.”This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is, from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and sentiment, the strongest proof how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings.Zelucois an instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person in whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.[pg 271]“Apicæne.”This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:—“He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a ShroveTuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest werequiet.”“The old copies readquit,—i.e., discharged from working, and gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley's note.It should be“quit”no doubt, but not meaning“discharged from working,”&c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.Act ii. sc. 1.—“Morose.Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than by thistrunk, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears the discord of sounds?”What does“trunk”mean here, and in the first scene of the first act? Is it a large ear-trumpet?—or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of a bell?[pg 272]Whalley's note at the end:—“Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnaturalcaricatura.”If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of drama and dramatic personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:—“For he knew, poet never credit gain'dBy writingtruths, but things, like truths, well feign'd.”By“truths”he means“facts.”Caricatures are not less so because they are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The safest and the truest defence of old Ben would be to call theEpicœnethe best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in other of Jonson'sdramatis personæ, lies in this;—that the accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it; but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakespeare's comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens themselves[pg 273]instead of men,—wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.Nota bene.—All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether differentgeniusof the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,—though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw.[pg 274]“The Alchemist.”Act i. sc. 2. Face's speech:—“Will take his oath o' the GreekXenophon,If need be, in his pocket.”Another reading is“Testament.”Probably, the meaning is—that intending to give false evidence, he carried a GreekXenophonto pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury—as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:—“I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:Down is too hard.”Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century![pg 275]“Catiline's Conspiracy.”A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that theCatilinehas been rated so low. Take it andSejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of theVicar of Wakefieldfrom Goldsmith'sHistory of England, as that ofLear,Othello, &c., from theSejanusorCatiline.Act i. sc. 4.—“Cat.Sirrah, what ail you?(He spies one of his boys not answer.)Pag.Nothing.Best.Somewhat modest.Cat.Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot,”&c.This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words“throat opens,”should be removed back so as to follow the words“on this part of the house,”in the speech of Catiline soon after the[pg 276]entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:—...“He is but a new fellow,Aninmatehere in Rome, as Catiline calls him.”A“lodger”would have been a happier imitation of theinquilinusof Sallust.Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:—“Can these or such be any aids to us,”&c.What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his![pg 277]“Bartholomew Fair.”Induction. Scrivener's speech:—“If there be never aservant-monsterin the Fair, who can help ithe says, nor a nest of antiques?”The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men's minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.Act ii. sc. 3.—“Just.I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babeof booty, boy, acut purse.”Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting“booty”for“beauty”in Falstaff's speech,Henry IV.part i. act i. sc. 2.“Let not us, &c.?”[pg 278]It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan, and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.Ib.sc. 5.—“Quarl.She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here inSmithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.”Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte:—“Houses plundered—then burnt;—sons conscribed—wives and daughters ravished,”&c., &c.—“But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot!”Ib.sc. 6.—“Cok.Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps.”This reminds me of Shakespeare's“Aroint thee, witch!”I find in several books of that age the wordsaloigneandeloigne—that is,—“keep your distance!”or“off with you!”Perhaps“aroint”was a corruption of“aloigne”by the vulgar. The common etymology fromrongerto gnaw seems unsatisfactory.Act iii. sc. 4.—“Quarl.How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship?overparted, overparted?”An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll!Ib.sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:—“He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.”A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth'sElection Dinner,—who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.[pg 279]Act v. sc. 5.—“Pup.Di.It is not profane.Lan.It is not profane, he says.Boy.It is profane.Pup.It is not profane.Boy.It is profane.Pup.It is not profane.Lan.Well said, confute him with Not, still.”An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes:—“Χορός.ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ',ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶνχανδάνη δι' ἡμέρας,βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ.Διόνυσος.τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.Χορός.οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως.Διόνυσος.οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ' οὐδέποτε.”[pg 280]“The Devil Is An Ass.”Act i. sc. 1.—“Pug.Why any: Fraud,Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,Or old Iniquity,I'll call him hither.”“The words in italics should probably be given to the master-devil, Satan.”—Whalley's note.That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.Ib.sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy.Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:—“Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.”I doubt not that“money”was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:—“Money! Sir, money's a,”&c.[pg 281]“The Staple Of News.”Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:—“No, he would ha' done,That lay not in his power: he had the useOf your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.”Read (1815)—...“he had the use ofYour bodies,”&c.Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the“of”from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is—“O' your bodies,”&c.—the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasised“your.”In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on“your”which the sense requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on“your,”thetmesisof the sign of its cases“of,”“to,”&c., would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments.—1818.[pg 282]Ib.sc. 4.—“P. jun.I love all men of virtue,frommyPrincess.”“Frommy,”fromme—pious, dutiful, &c.Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy, sen., and Porter.I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben hadLearin his mind in this mock mad scene.[pg 283]“The New Inn.”Act i. sc. 1. Host's speech:—“A heavy purse, and then two turtles,makes.”“Makes,”frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.Ib.sc. 3. Host's speech:—...“And for a leapOf the vaulting horse, toplaythe vaultinghouse.”Instead of reading with Whalley“ply”for“play,”I would suggest“horse”for“house.”The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional,“horse and house,”is below Jonson. Thejeu-de-motsjust below—...“Read a lectureUponAquinasat St. Thomas àWaterings”—had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.Ib.sc. 6. Lovel's speech:—“Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,That open-handed sit upon the clouds,And press the liberality of heavenDown to the laps of thankful men!”Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is εῖδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,—a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of[pg 284]this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,—most abominable stuff indeed!Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:—“So knowledge first begets benevolence,Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.”Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.[pg 285]

Notes on Ben Jonson.It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement of morals, as, alas!vice versa, is to be seen in the very frequent allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and Italian women of rank: and bad as they may, too many of them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth's or James's courtiers. Those who have read Shakespeare only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction, is that of the exquisite purity of his imagination.The observation I have prefixed to theVolponeis the key to the faint interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with the exception of the fragment of theSad Shepherd; because in that piece only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathise. On the[pg 262]other hand,Measure for Measureis the only play of Shakespeare's in which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all Shakespeare's female characters, pleases me the least; andMeasure for Measureis, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is painful to me.Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful acknowledgment to themanesof Ben Jonson, that the more I study his writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles that of an ancient classic, in theminutiæof his rhythm, metre, choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakespearian age, with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;—the other is to copy what is, and as it is,—at best a tolerable but most frequently a blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;—and yet such is modern comedy.[pg 263]Whalley's Preface.“But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life.”But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben'spersonæare too often not characters, but derangements;—the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,—exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.“But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.”This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a dramatic poet.Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile, is the dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the[pg 264]writings of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym, andid genus omne, do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.—I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humour at all.“Whalley's‘Life Of Jonson.’”“It is to the honour of Jonson's judgment, thatthe greatest poet of our nationhad the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire into modern verse.”VidelicetPope!—“He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles.”I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him—“This is a joke!”—and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.[pg 265]“Every Man Out Of His Humour.”Epilogue.—“The throat of war be stopt within her land,Andturtle-footedpeace dance fairie ringsAbout her court.”“Turtle-footed”is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but withéclat—a claw![pg 266]“Poetaster.”Introduction.—“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.”There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in theParadise Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.Act i. sc. 1.—“Ovid.While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds bewhorish.”The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple transposition:—“While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.”Act. iv. sc. 3—“Crisp.O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous.O—conscious.”It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as[pg 267]strenuous,conscious, &c., and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not prevent the naturalisation ofaccommodation,remuneration, &c.; or Swift the gross abuse even of the wordidea.[pg 268]“Fall Of Sejanus.”Act i.—“Arruntius.The name Tiberius,I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath foregoneThe dignity and power.Silius.Sure, while he lives.Arr.And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail,To the brave issue of Germanicus;And they are three: too many (ha?) for himTo have a plot upon?Sil.I do not knowThe heart of his designs; but, sure, their faceLooks farther than the present.Arr.By the gods,If I could guess he had but such a thought,My sword should cleave him down,”&c.The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a fair exception.Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:—“Adultery! it is the lightest illI will commit. A race of wicked actsShall flow out of my anger, and o'erspreadThe world's wide face, which no posterityShall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent,”&c.The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakespeare over his contemporaries;—and[pg 269]yet what contemporaries!—giant minds indeed! Think of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare's works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies, and the writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune.This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.[pg 270]“Volpone.”This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is, from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and sentiment, the strongest proof how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings.Zelucois an instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person in whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.[pg 271]“Apicæne.”This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:—“He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a ShroveTuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest werequiet.”“The old copies readquit,—i.e., discharged from working, and gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley's note.It should be“quit”no doubt, but not meaning“discharged from working,”&c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.Act ii. sc. 1.—“Morose.Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than by thistrunk, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears the discord of sounds?”What does“trunk”mean here, and in the first scene of the first act? Is it a large ear-trumpet?—or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of a bell?[pg 272]Whalley's note at the end:—“Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnaturalcaricatura.”If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of drama and dramatic personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:—“For he knew, poet never credit gain'dBy writingtruths, but things, like truths, well feign'd.”By“truths”he means“facts.”Caricatures are not less so because they are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The safest and the truest defence of old Ben would be to call theEpicœnethe best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in other of Jonson'sdramatis personæ, lies in this;—that the accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it; but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakespeare's comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens themselves[pg 273]instead of men,—wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.Nota bene.—All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether differentgeniusof the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,—though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw.[pg 274]“The Alchemist.”Act i. sc. 2. Face's speech:—“Will take his oath o' the GreekXenophon,If need be, in his pocket.”Another reading is“Testament.”Probably, the meaning is—that intending to give false evidence, he carried a GreekXenophonto pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury—as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:—“I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:Down is too hard.”Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century![pg 275]“Catiline's Conspiracy.”A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that theCatilinehas been rated so low. Take it andSejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of theVicar of Wakefieldfrom Goldsmith'sHistory of England, as that ofLear,Othello, &c., from theSejanusorCatiline.Act i. sc. 4.—“Cat.Sirrah, what ail you?(He spies one of his boys not answer.)Pag.Nothing.Best.Somewhat modest.Cat.Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot,”&c.This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words“throat opens,”should be removed back so as to follow the words“on this part of the house,”in the speech of Catiline soon after the[pg 276]entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:—...“He is but a new fellow,Aninmatehere in Rome, as Catiline calls him.”A“lodger”would have been a happier imitation of theinquilinusof Sallust.Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:—“Can these or such be any aids to us,”&c.What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his![pg 277]“Bartholomew Fair.”Induction. Scrivener's speech:—“If there be never aservant-monsterin the Fair, who can help ithe says, nor a nest of antiques?”The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men's minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.Act ii. sc. 3.—“Just.I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babeof booty, boy, acut purse.”Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting“booty”for“beauty”in Falstaff's speech,Henry IV.part i. act i. sc. 2.“Let not us, &c.?”[pg 278]It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan, and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.Ib.sc. 5.—“Quarl.She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here inSmithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.”Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte:—“Houses plundered—then burnt;—sons conscribed—wives and daughters ravished,”&c., &c.—“But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot!”Ib.sc. 6.—“Cok.Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps.”This reminds me of Shakespeare's“Aroint thee, witch!”I find in several books of that age the wordsaloigneandeloigne—that is,—“keep your distance!”or“off with you!”Perhaps“aroint”was a corruption of“aloigne”by the vulgar. The common etymology fromrongerto gnaw seems unsatisfactory.Act iii. sc. 4.—“Quarl.How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship?overparted, overparted?”An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll!Ib.sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:—“He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.”A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth'sElection Dinner,—who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.[pg 279]Act v. sc. 5.—“Pup.Di.It is not profane.Lan.It is not profane, he says.Boy.It is profane.Pup.It is not profane.Boy.It is profane.Pup.It is not profane.Lan.Well said, confute him with Not, still.”An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes:—“Χορός.ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ',ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶνχανδάνη δι' ἡμέρας,βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ.Διόνυσος.τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.Χορός.οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως.Διόνυσος.οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ' οὐδέποτε.”[pg 280]“The Devil Is An Ass.”Act i. sc. 1.—“Pug.Why any: Fraud,Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,Or old Iniquity,I'll call him hither.”“The words in italics should probably be given to the master-devil, Satan.”—Whalley's note.That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.Ib.sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy.Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:—“Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.”I doubt not that“money”was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:—“Money! Sir, money's a,”&c.[pg 281]“The Staple Of News.”Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:—“No, he would ha' done,That lay not in his power: he had the useOf your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.”Read (1815)—...“he had the use ofYour bodies,”&c.Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the“of”from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is—“O' your bodies,”&c.—the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasised“your.”In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on“your”which the sense requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on“your,”thetmesisof the sign of its cases“of,”“to,”&c., would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments.—1818.[pg 282]Ib.sc. 4.—“P. jun.I love all men of virtue,frommyPrincess.”“Frommy,”fromme—pious, dutiful, &c.Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy, sen., and Porter.I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben hadLearin his mind in this mock mad scene.[pg 283]“The New Inn.”Act i. sc. 1. Host's speech:—“A heavy purse, and then two turtles,makes.”“Makes,”frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.Ib.sc. 3. Host's speech:—...“And for a leapOf the vaulting horse, toplaythe vaultinghouse.”Instead of reading with Whalley“ply”for“play,”I would suggest“horse”for“house.”The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional,“horse and house,”is below Jonson. Thejeu-de-motsjust below—...“Read a lectureUponAquinasat St. Thomas àWaterings”—had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.Ib.sc. 6. Lovel's speech:—“Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,That open-handed sit upon the clouds,And press the liberality of heavenDown to the laps of thankful men!”Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is εῖδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,—a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of[pg 284]this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,—most abominable stuff indeed!Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:—“So knowledge first begets benevolence,Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.”Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.

It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement of morals, as, alas!vice versa, is to be seen in the very frequent allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and Italian women of rank: and bad as they may, too many of them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth's or James's courtiers. Those who have read Shakespeare only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction, is that of the exquisite purity of his imagination.

The observation I have prefixed to theVolponeis the key to the faint interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with the exception of the fragment of theSad Shepherd; because in that piece only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathise. On the[pg 262]other hand,Measure for Measureis the only play of Shakespeare's in which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all Shakespeare's female characters, pleases me the least; andMeasure for Measureis, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is painful to me.

Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful acknowledgment to themanesof Ben Jonson, that the more I study his writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles that of an ancient classic, in theminutiæof his rhythm, metre, choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakespearian age, with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;—the other is to copy what is, and as it is,—at best a tolerable but most frequently a blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;—and yet such is modern comedy.

Whalley's Preface.“But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life.”But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben'spersonæare too often not characters, but derangements;—the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,—exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.“But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.”This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a dramatic poet.Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile, is the dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the[pg 264]writings of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym, andid genus omne, do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.—I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humour at all.

“But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life.”

But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben'spersonæare too often not characters, but derangements;—the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,—exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.

“But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.”

This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a dramatic poet.Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile, is the dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the[pg 264]writings of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym, andid genus omne, do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.—I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humour at all.

“Whalley's‘Life Of Jonson.’”“It is to the honour of Jonson's judgment, thatthe greatest poet of our nationhad the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire into modern verse.”VidelicetPope!—“He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles.”I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him—“This is a joke!”—and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.

“It is to the honour of Jonson's judgment, thatthe greatest poet of our nationhad the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire into modern verse.”

VidelicetPope!—

“He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles.”

I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him—“This is a joke!”—and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.

“Every Man Out Of His Humour.”Epilogue.—“The throat of war be stopt within her land,Andturtle-footedpeace dance fairie ringsAbout her court.”“Turtle-footed”is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but withéclat—a claw!

Epilogue.—

“The throat of war be stopt within her land,Andturtle-footedpeace dance fairie ringsAbout her court.”

“The throat of war be stopt within her land,

Andturtle-footedpeace dance fairie rings

About her court.”

“Turtle-footed”is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but withéclat—a claw!

“Poetaster.”Introduction.—“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.”There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in theParadise Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.Act i. sc. 1.—“Ovid.While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds bewhorish.”The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple transposition:—“While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.”Act. iv. sc. 3—“Crisp.O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous.O—conscious.”It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as[pg 267]strenuous,conscious, &c., and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not prevent the naturalisation ofaccommodation,remuneration, &c.; or Swift the gross abuse even of the wordidea.

Introduction.—

“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.”

“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,

Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.”

There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in theParadise Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.

Act i. sc. 1.—

“Ovid.While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds bewhorish.”

“Ovid.While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be

whorish.”

The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple transposition:—

“While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.”

Act. iv. sc. 3—

“Crisp.O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous.O—conscious.”

“Crisp.O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous.

O—conscious.”

It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as[pg 267]strenuous,conscious, &c., and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not prevent the naturalisation ofaccommodation,remuneration, &c.; or Swift the gross abuse even of the wordidea.

“Fall Of Sejanus.”Act i.—“Arruntius.The name Tiberius,I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath foregoneThe dignity and power.Silius.Sure, while he lives.Arr.And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail,To the brave issue of Germanicus;And they are three: too many (ha?) for himTo have a plot upon?Sil.I do not knowThe heart of his designs; but, sure, their faceLooks farther than the present.Arr.By the gods,If I could guess he had but such a thought,My sword should cleave him down,”&c.The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a fair exception.Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:—“Adultery! it is the lightest illI will commit. A race of wicked actsShall flow out of my anger, and o'erspreadThe world's wide face, which no posterityShall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent,”&c.The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakespeare over his contemporaries;—and[pg 269]yet what contemporaries!—giant minds indeed! Think of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare's works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies, and the writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune.This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.

Act i.—

“Arruntius.The name Tiberius,I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath foregoneThe dignity and power.

“Arruntius.The name Tiberius,

I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath foregone

The dignity and power.

Silius.Sure, while he lives.

Arr.And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail,To the brave issue of Germanicus;And they are three: too many (ha?) for himTo have a plot upon?

Arr.And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail,

To the brave issue of Germanicus;

And they are three: too many (ha?) for him

To have a plot upon?

Sil.I do not knowThe heart of his designs; but, sure, their faceLooks farther than the present.

Sil.I do not know

The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face

Looks farther than the present.

Arr.By the gods,If I could guess he had but such a thought,My sword should cleave him down,”&c.

Arr.By the gods,

If I could guess he had but such a thought,

My sword should cleave him down,”&c.

The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a fair exception.

Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:—

“Adultery! it is the lightest illI will commit. A race of wicked actsShall flow out of my anger, and o'erspreadThe world's wide face, which no posterityShall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent,”&c.

“Adultery! it is the lightest ill

I will commit. A race of wicked acts

Shall flow out of my anger, and o'erspread

The world's wide face, which no posterity

Shall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent,”&c.

The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakespeare over his contemporaries;—and[pg 269]yet what contemporaries!—giant minds indeed! Think of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare's works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies, and the writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.

Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune.

This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.

“Volpone.”This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is, from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and sentiment, the strongest proof how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings.Zelucois an instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person in whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.

This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is, from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and sentiment, the strongest proof how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings.Zelucois an instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person in whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.

“Apicæne.”This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:—“He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a ShroveTuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest werequiet.”“The old copies readquit,—i.e., discharged from working, and gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley's note.It should be“quit”no doubt, but not meaning“discharged from working,”&c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.Act ii. sc. 1.—“Morose.Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than by thistrunk, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears the discord of sounds?”What does“trunk”mean here, and in the first scene of the first act? Is it a large ear-trumpet?—or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of a bell?[pg 272]Whalley's note at the end:—“Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnaturalcaricatura.”If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of drama and dramatic personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:—“For he knew, poet never credit gain'dBy writingtruths, but things, like truths, well feign'd.”By“truths”he means“facts.”Caricatures are not less so because they are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The safest and the truest defence of old Ben would be to call theEpicœnethe best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in other of Jonson'sdramatis personæ, lies in this;—that the accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it; but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakespeare's comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens themselves[pg 273]instead of men,—wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.Nota bene.—All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether differentgeniusof the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,—though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw.

This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.

Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:—

“He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a ShroveTuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest werequiet.”

“He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a Shrove

Tuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest werequiet.”

“The old copies readquit,—i.e., discharged from working, and gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley's note.

It should be“quit”no doubt, but not meaning“discharged from working,”&c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.

Act ii. sc. 1.—

“Morose.Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than by thistrunk, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears the discord of sounds?”

What does“trunk”mean here, and in the first scene of the first act? Is it a large ear-trumpet?—or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of a bell?

Whalley's note at the end:—

“Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnaturalcaricatura.”

If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of drama and dramatic personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:—

“For he knew, poet never credit gain'dBy writingtruths, but things, like truths, well feign'd.”

“For he knew, poet never credit gain'd

By writingtruths, but things, like truths, well feign'd.”

By“truths”he means“facts.”Caricatures are not less so because they are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The safest and the truest defence of old Ben would be to call theEpicœnethe best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in other of Jonson'sdramatis personæ, lies in this;—that the accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it; but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakespeare's comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens themselves[pg 273]instead of men,—wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.

Nota bene.—All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether differentgeniusof the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,—though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw.

“The Alchemist.”Act i. sc. 2. Face's speech:—“Will take his oath o' the GreekXenophon,If need be, in his pocket.”Another reading is“Testament.”Probably, the meaning is—that intending to give false evidence, he carried a GreekXenophonto pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury—as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:—“I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:Down is too hard.”Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century!

Act i. sc. 2. Face's speech:—

“Will take his oath o' the GreekXenophon,If need be, in his pocket.”

“Will take his oath o' the GreekXenophon,

If need be, in his pocket.”

Another reading is“Testament.”

Probably, the meaning is—that intending to give false evidence, he carried a GreekXenophonto pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury—as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.

Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:—

“I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:Down is too hard.”

“I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:

Down is too hard.”

Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century!

“Catiline's Conspiracy.”A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that theCatilinehas been rated so low. Take it andSejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of theVicar of Wakefieldfrom Goldsmith'sHistory of England, as that ofLear,Othello, &c., from theSejanusorCatiline.Act i. sc. 4.—“Cat.Sirrah, what ail you?(He spies one of his boys not answer.)Pag.Nothing.Best.Somewhat modest.Cat.Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot,”&c.This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words“throat opens,”should be removed back so as to follow the words“on this part of the house,”in the speech of Catiline soon after the[pg 276]entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:—...“He is but a new fellow,Aninmatehere in Rome, as Catiline calls him.”A“lodger”would have been a happier imitation of theinquilinusof Sallust.Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:—“Can these or such be any aids to us,”&c.What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his!

A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that theCatilinehas been rated so low. Take it andSejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of theVicar of Wakefieldfrom Goldsmith'sHistory of England, as that ofLear,Othello, &c., from theSejanusorCatiline.

Act i. sc. 4.—

“Cat.Sirrah, what ail you?

(He spies one of his boys not answer.)

Pag.Nothing.

Best.Somewhat modest.

Cat.Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot,”&c.

This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words“throat opens,”should be removed back so as to follow the words“on this part of the house,”in the speech of Catiline soon after the[pg 276]entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.

Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:—

...“He is but a new fellow,Aninmatehere in Rome, as Catiline calls him.”

...“He is but a new fellow,

Aninmatehere in Rome, as Catiline calls him.”

A“lodger”would have been a happier imitation of theinquilinusof Sallust.

Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:—

“Can these or such be any aids to us,”&c.

What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his!

“Bartholomew Fair.”Induction. Scrivener's speech:—“If there be never aservant-monsterin the Fair, who can help ithe says, nor a nest of antiques?”The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men's minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.Act ii. sc. 3.—“Just.I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babeof booty, boy, acut purse.”Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting“booty”for“beauty”in Falstaff's speech,Henry IV.part i. act i. sc. 2.“Let not us, &c.?”[pg 278]It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan, and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.Ib.sc. 5.—“Quarl.She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here inSmithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.”Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte:—“Houses plundered—then burnt;—sons conscribed—wives and daughters ravished,”&c., &c.—“But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot!”Ib.sc. 6.—“Cok.Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps.”This reminds me of Shakespeare's“Aroint thee, witch!”I find in several books of that age the wordsaloigneandeloigne—that is,—“keep your distance!”or“off with you!”Perhaps“aroint”was a corruption of“aloigne”by the vulgar. The common etymology fromrongerto gnaw seems unsatisfactory.Act iii. sc. 4.—“Quarl.How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship?overparted, overparted?”An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll!Ib.sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:—“He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.”A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth'sElection Dinner,—who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.[pg 279]Act v. sc. 5.—“Pup.Di.It is not profane.Lan.It is not profane, he says.Boy.It is profane.Pup.It is not profane.Boy.It is profane.Pup.It is not profane.Lan.Well said, confute him with Not, still.”An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes:—“Χορός.ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ',ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶνχανδάνη δι' ἡμέρας,βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ.Διόνυσος.τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.Χορός.οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως.Διόνυσος.οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ' οὐδέποτε.”

Induction. Scrivener's speech:—

“If there be never aservant-monsterin the Fair, who can help ithe says, nor a nest of antiques?”

“If there be never aservant-monsterin the Fair, who can help it

he says, nor a nest of antiques?”

The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men's minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.

Act ii. sc. 3.—

“Just.I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babeof booty, boy, acut purse.”

“Just.I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babeof booty, boy, a

cut purse.”

Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting“booty”for“beauty”in Falstaff's speech,Henry IV.part i. act i. sc. 2.“Let not us, &c.?”

It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan, and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.

Ib.sc. 5.—

“Quarl.She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here inSmithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.”

“Quarl.She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in

Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.”

Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte:—“Houses plundered—then burnt;—sons conscribed—wives and daughters ravished,”&c., &c.—“But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot!”

Ib.sc. 6.—

“Cok.Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps.”

This reminds me of Shakespeare's“Aroint thee, witch!”I find in several books of that age the wordsaloigneandeloigne—that is,—“keep your distance!”or“off with you!”Perhaps“aroint”was a corruption of“aloigne”by the vulgar. The common etymology fromrongerto gnaw seems unsatisfactory.

Act iii. sc. 4.—

“Quarl.How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship?overparted, overparted?”

“Quarl.How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship?

overparted, overparted?”

An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll!

Ib.sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:—

“He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.”

A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth'sElection Dinner,—who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.

Act v. sc. 5.—

“Pup.Di.It is not profane.

Lan.It is not profane, he says.

Boy.It is profane.

Pup.It is not profane.

Boy.It is profane.

Pup.It is not profane.

Lan.Well said, confute him with Not, still.”

An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes:—

“Χορός.ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ',ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶνχανδάνη δι' ἡμέρας,βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ.

“Χορός.

ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ',

ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶν

χανδάνη δι' ἡμέρας,

βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ.

Διόνυσος.τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.

Διόνυσος.

τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.

Χορός.οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως.

Χορός.

οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως.

Διόνυσος.οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ' οὐδέποτε.”

Διόνυσος.

οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ' οὐδέποτε.”

“The Devil Is An Ass.”Act i. sc. 1.—“Pug.Why any: Fraud,Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,Or old Iniquity,I'll call him hither.”“The words in italics should probably be given to the master-devil, Satan.”—Whalley's note.That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.Ib.sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy.Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:—“Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.”I doubt not that“money”was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:—“Money! Sir, money's a,”&c.

Act i. sc. 1.—

“Pug.Why any: Fraud,Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,Or old Iniquity,I'll call him hither.”

“Pug.Why any: Fraud,

Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,

Or old Iniquity,I'll call him hither.”

“The words in italics should probably be given to the master-devil, Satan.”—Whalley's note.

That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.

Ib.sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy.

Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.

Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:—

“Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.”

I doubt not that“money”was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:—

“Money! Sir, money's a,”&c.

“The Staple Of News.”Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:—“No, he would ha' done,That lay not in his power: he had the useOf your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.”Read (1815)—...“he had the use ofYour bodies,”&c.Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the“of”from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is—“O' your bodies,”&c.—the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasised“your.”In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on“your”which the sense requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on“your,”thetmesisof the sign of its cases“of,”“to,”&c., would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments.—1818.[pg 282]Ib.sc. 4.—“P. jun.I love all men of virtue,frommyPrincess.”“Frommy,”fromme—pious, dutiful, &c.Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy, sen., and Porter.I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben hadLearin his mind in this mock mad scene.

Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:—

“No, he would ha' done,That lay not in his power: he had the useOf your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.”

“No, he would ha' done,

That lay not in his power: he had the use

Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.”

Read (1815)—

...“he had the use ofYour bodies,”&c.

...“he had the use of

Your bodies,”&c.

Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the“of”from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is—

“O' your bodies,”&c.—

the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasised“your.”In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on“your”which the sense requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on“your,”thetmesisof the sign of its cases“of,”“to,”&c., would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments.—1818.

Ib.sc. 4.—

“P. jun.I love all men of virtue,frommyPrincess.”

“Frommy,”fromme—pious, dutiful, &c.

Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy, sen., and Porter.

I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben hadLearin his mind in this mock mad scene.

“The New Inn.”Act i. sc. 1. Host's speech:—“A heavy purse, and then two turtles,makes.”“Makes,”frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.Ib.sc. 3. Host's speech:—...“And for a leapOf the vaulting horse, toplaythe vaultinghouse.”Instead of reading with Whalley“ply”for“play,”I would suggest“horse”for“house.”The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional,“horse and house,”is below Jonson. Thejeu-de-motsjust below—...“Read a lectureUponAquinasat St. Thomas àWaterings”—had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.Ib.sc. 6. Lovel's speech:—“Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,That open-handed sit upon the clouds,And press the liberality of heavenDown to the laps of thankful men!”Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is εῖδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,—a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of[pg 284]this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,—most abominable stuff indeed!Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:—“So knowledge first begets benevolence,Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.”Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.

Act i. sc. 1. Host's speech:—

“A heavy purse, and then two turtles,makes.”

“Makes,”frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.

Ib.sc. 3. Host's speech:—

...“And for a leapOf the vaulting horse, toplaythe vaultinghouse.”

...“And for a leap

Of the vaulting horse, toplaythe vaultinghouse.”

Instead of reading with Whalley“ply”for“play,”I would suggest“horse”for“house.”The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional,“horse and house,”is below Jonson. Thejeu-de-motsjust below—

...“Read a lectureUponAquinasat St. Thomas àWaterings”—

...“Read a lecture

UponAquinasat St. Thomas àWaterings”—

had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.

Ib.sc. 6. Lovel's speech:—

“Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,That open-handed sit upon the clouds,And press the liberality of heavenDown to the laps of thankful men!”

“Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,

That open-handed sit upon the clouds,

And press the liberality of heaven

Down to the laps of thankful men!”

Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is εῖδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,—a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.

Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of[pg 284]this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,—most abominable stuff indeed!

Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:—

“So knowledge first begets benevolence,Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.”

“So knowledge first begets benevolence,

Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.”

Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.

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