Chapter 10

“Never think on’t,Till fitter time and place invite you to it.I have read Caranza, and find not in his GrammarOf quarrels that the injured man be boundTo seek for reparation at an hour;But may, and without loss, till he hath settl’dMore serious occasions that import him.For a day or two defer it.Adorio.--You’ll subscribeYour hand to this?Camillo.--And justify’t with my life.Presume upon’t.Adorio.--On then; you shall o’errule me.”

“Never think on’t,

Till fitter time and place invite you to it.

I have read Caranza, and find not in his Grammar

Of quarrels that the injured man be bound

To seek for reparation at an hour;

But may, and without loss, till he hath settl’d

More serious occasions that import him.

For a day or two defer it.

Adorio.--You’ll subscribeYour hand to this?

Adorio.--You’ll subscribe

Your hand to this?

Camillo.--And justify’t with my life.Presume upon’t.

Camillo.--And justify’t with my life.

Presume upon’t.

Adorio.--On then; you shall o’errule me.”

Women were not let off so easily; happily for them, more was expected from them than from men. Without referring to Caranza, their honour consisted not only in chastity, but inconstancy to vows, and resistance to the temptations of wealth; and these attributes were sufficiently rare to make the “Maid of Honour” an exceptional character.[196]Massinger, however, assures us that English women, even in those days, asserted a superiority in intellect and character: it is true, they had no opportunity of travelling, and stayed at home; but they learned from their lovers and brothers the customs of those foreign countries which it was then dangerous to traverse.

Most men of rank or fortune, nevertheless, made the “grand tour” before marrying; or left their young betrothed mistresses in their native counties. In the “Guardian,”Calipsosays:--

“Why, sir, do gallants travel?Answer that question; but at their returnWith wonder to the hearers to discourse ofThe garb and difference in foreign females--As the lusty girl of France, the sober German,The plump Dutch frow, the stately dame of Spain.”

“Why, sir, do gallants travel?

Answer that question; but at their return

With wonder to the hearers to discourse of

The garb and difference in foreign females--

As the lusty girl of France, the sober German,

The plump Dutch frow, the stately dame of Spain.”

It has been asked whether Massinger and Shakspeare ever met?--whether, as Hartley Coleridge inquires, they ever “took a cup of sack together at the Mitre or the Mermaid;” and whether Massinger was ever umpire or bottle-holder in the “wit-combats” described byFuller? But upon this, as well as on many other points, there is no light. We know not whom Massinger loved, nor whom he hated; we would fain believe, with Coleridge, that his life was not passed without some true affection--a link between passion and virtue; we would willingly believe that, like Tasso, he loved one above him in rank--or one below him--rather than that he had never loved at all. But his works repel the surmise. True love is vehement--but it is delicate; and it would have elevated his thoughts, and purified his expressions. Massinger may have done justice to the intellect and companionship of his countrywomen, but he had no reverence for the most beautiful part of their nature; and in this, as in other respects, is far below Shakspeare.

The obscurity which overshadowed all Massinger’s career has rendered any communication, as we have seen, between him and Buckingham, doubtful; but it was far otherwise in respect to Ben Jonson--whose works are so replete with allusions to the Villiers family, and to their attributes, amusements, and bounties, that no biography of George Villiers can be complete without a more copious reference to the works of this dramatist than can be conveyed in the passing notices which have been given of hismasques, in the course of the preceding narrative.[197]Ben Jonson was ten years older than Massinger; and was born in 1574. Whether from his surname, or his Christian name, or from his after-life, it is not easy to say, but one generally looks upon Ben Jonson as a man of low birth. But such was not the fact. His grandfather, a man of some family and fortune, was a gentleman in the service of Henry VIII.; his father was in holy orders, “a grave minister of the Gospel.”[198]

The family had originally settled at Annandale, in Scotland; but Ben Jonson was born in Westminster. He had the misfortune to come into the world a month after his father’s death. It was, perhaps, a less adverse circumstance that his mother, two years afterwards, married again. Her views were not exalted, and she took for her second husband--tired, it might seem, of the genteel poverty of the cloth--a master-bricklayer. Not even has Fuller, not even has Gifford, been able to ascertain in what part of the suburb of Westminster “Ben” was born. Fuller, however, consoles us; he could not tracethe poet in hiscradle, but he could “fetch him,” as he observes, in his “short coats.” About two years old, Ben wasdiscovered--that is to say, the haunts of his infancy were--“a little child in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross.”

This neighbourhood was as poor as that of Westminster Abbey; and the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, which then extended to Whitehall on the south, to Marylebone on the north, to the Savoy on the east, and to Chelsea and Kensington on the west, when first rated to the poor in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, contained only two hundred persons sufficiently wealthy to pay those rates.[199]It afterwards became the greatest cure in England, until several of its parishes were separated from the patron saint, St. Martin’s.

Here, however, Ben Jonson was brought up--getting such education as he might from a school in the church of St Martin’s. It is stated, however, by Gifford, to have been a “private school.” He might possibly have been one of the private pupils on a foundation school. Some unknown benefactor, however, removed the future poet from St Martin’s, and placed him at St. Peter’s College, Westminster, which was founded by Queen Elizabeth, in 1660--“a public school for grammar, rhetorick,--poetry(which the maidenQueen was too wise to despise) and for the Latin and Greek languages.”

This removal was the visible cause of all Ben Jonson’s eminence. Camden, the historian, was then one of the masters of that school, from whose ranks issued Cowley, George Herbert, Dryden, Churchill, Cowper, Southey, and many others less celebrated. Ben Jonson always retained an affectionate remembrance of Camden’s instructions:--

“Camden, most reverend head, to whom I oweAll that in wits I am, and all I know.”

“Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe

All that in wits I am, and all I know.”

He dedicated his best play, “Every Man in his Humour,” to Master Camden, “Clarencieux,” ending his dedication thus:--

“Now, I pray you to accept this; such wherein neither the confession of my manners shall make you blush--nor of my studies repent you to have been the instructor; and for the profession of any thankfulness, I am sure it will, with good men, find either praise or excuse, from your true lover, Ben Jonson.”[200]

From Westminster, Jonson went to Cambridge, probably to St. John’s; but even of this important fact no certainty exists, for the university register is imperfect, and from 1600 to 1602there is an hiatus. It is merely conjectured, from there being several books containing the name of Ben Jonson in the library of St. John’s, that he entered that College. Here, however, he only stayed, according to Fuller, some weeks; funds were wanting for his support--a circumstance which seems to shew that he was not sent up to Trinity College on the foundation, as otherwise he would have had an exhibition at Westminster. His parents were unable to supply means; and the young student, thirsting for distinction, was obliged to return and follow his step-father’s calling. Never was there a situation so pitiable, and the condition of this aspiring scholar was compassionated by other scholars of happier fortunes than himself. Camden generously relieved him; Thomas Sutton, who, having bought the Charter House from Lord Suffolk, nobly devoted it to an hospital and school, “the master-piece of Protestant charity,” as Lord Bacon styled it,--also, according to some accounts, consoled, and compassionated, and assisted Jonson. It has even been said that “Ben” was engaged to attend the eldest son of Sir Walter Ralegh, as a tutor; but of this no certainty exists. All that is absolutely known is, that he was sick of the trowel and the hod, whilst his mind was running on Horace and Virgil; andthat to escape what he deemed degradation, he enlisted, went off to the Low Countries, and served a campaign in that scene of war, which was a sort of school to the young English soldier.

His heart went, to a certain extent, along with this new profession. “Let not those blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling,” says Fuller,--and Jonson seems to have thought so likewise. He returned, however, at nineteen, poor as ever, with the same scholastic tastes; and the master-bricklayer being dead, he repaired to his mother’s house.

He next tried the stage. It has been, in all times, the refuge of the unthrifty. But Jonson’s appearance was unfavourable to that attempt. His very ugliness, one would have thought, might have been an advantage. Mr. Gifford repels with fury the imputation on Jonson, that his hero was frightful; yet the description he gives himself of Ben Jonson is by no means attractive. His complexion, which had been clear and smooth in boyhood, was disfigured by a scorbutic humour, and ultimately by scars, from what the Germans are pleased to call the “Englische Krankheit.” His features are said not to have been irregular or unpleasing, but appear in his portraits to be large and coarse. One eye looked askance; his forehead was, however, noble; his person was broadand corpulent--after forty it became unwieldy; and his gait, he himself owned, “ungracious.” In early youth his worst points were not, probably, prominent; he had a delightful voice and emphasis. “I never,” said the Duchess of Newcastle, "heard any man read well but my husband; and I have heard him say, 'he never heard any man read well but Ben Jonson, and yet he hath heard many in his time.’"[201]

Nevertheless, “Ben” was not a good actor. Critics differ as to the nature and duration of his theatrical employ. And Gifford, who takes every question relative to his hero as a personal matter, is indignant at the statement that he was a strolling player, or ambled by the side of a waggon, and tookmad Jeronymo’spart; but, as most companies were then itinerant, and, as even now, first-rate actors and actresses make provincial tours, there seems little call for the venom and wrath poured out by the indefatigable biographer, who points, with satisfaction, to the bulky figure of Jonson, and asks how he could possibly act “littleJeronymo,” that "inch of Spain"?[202]

Whatever was his position--whether, as Anthony Wood says, “he did recede to a nursery or obscure playhouse, called theGreen Curtain,” inShoreditch; or whether, as Gifford declares, that statement is a mere fable, and that his aims were higher--seemed now of little moment, perhaps, to Jonson himself; for his efforts were interrupted by a duel. His antagonist is supposed to have been a brother-player, who brought to the field a sword ten inches longer than poor Ben’s. They fought, and Ben killed the gentleman with the long sword, but was himself severely wounded in the arm; he was sent to prison, and brought, as he described it, “near to the gallows.”

Poor Ben was now, probably, fain to cry out withAntonioin the “Maid of Honour”:--

“But redeem meFrom this captivity, and I’ll vowNever to draw a sword, or cut my meat hereafterWith a knife that has an edge or point; I’ll starve first.”[203]

“But redeem me

From this captivity, and I’ll vow

Never to draw a sword, or cut my meat hereafter

With a knife that has an edge or point; I’ll starve first.”[203]

This imprisonment had a signal effect on Jonson’s destiny; he fell into melancholy, and was visited in his despondency by a Romanist priest, who applied himself to his consolation first, and to his conversion afterwards. Jonson had been religiously brought up, and it was not from indifference that he renounced the faith of his parents and entered the Romish Church. Such conversions were frequent in the early days of the Reformation. Jonson was no controversialist; wisermen than he fell into the same error, and, like such, atoned for it. The great light of our Church, Jeremy Taylor, became for some time a Romanist, but returned to the Anglican faith; Chillingworth and others wandered also, and also returned. The readiest converts are often those of deep and earnest feelings, which act on excitable minds, only superficially informed on the great doctrines of Scripture.[204]Jonson’s imprisonment was aggravated in its misery by a system of espionage which the necessities of the times induced. The plots against Elizabeth’s life usually originated in the seminaries of the priests. Jonson was warned by his gaoler that he was watched.

He was eventually released, but by what agency does not appear.

He quitted prison, and married a young woman of his new persuasion; and there appears to have been no great reason to repent his choice. His wife was shrewish, but respectable; and the poet’s prosperity commenced with his marriage.

From this time until the period when the Court festivities brought him into frequent collision with Villiers, Jonson’s productions were successive occasions of triumph. Nevertheless, money did not flow into his coffers; and he was continually obliged to pledge, as Massinger did, the labour ofhis brain--two sums of four pounds, and twenty shillings, being advanced to him by Henslowe, the father-in-law of Alleyn, the player, upon the plots of two plays being presented and approved. Still poor Jonson had his enemies and traducers. The scene of “Every Man in his Humour” was originally laid in Thrace; the names were Italian, but wishing still further to ensure its success, Jonson changed them, and brought the scenes to London. Nevertheless, he was still attacked about his Italian story. There seems, then, to have been as great an objection to works of imagination based on foreign plots as in the present day. In “Volpone,” Jonson carefully avoided introducing any material not purely English.

He was still a struggling author, with few friends except players and playwrights, and with many enemies, owing to his vehemence of temper and imprudence of speech. But of his animosity to Shakspeare, and of the poet’s alienation from him, there seems no proof; and indeed Shakspeare is reported to have stood godfather to one of his children--although the improbable anecdote connected with that act is discredited by Gifford.

Jonson’s acquaintance with Shakspeare is stated by Rowe to have begun with “a remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature on the part of the immortal bard.” Jonson, who was then, as Rowe observes,“entirely unknown to the world,” had offered “Every Man in his Humour” for representation; it was carelessly looked over, and returned in a supercilious manner by the person who had read it, with the uncourteous answer “that it would be of no use to the company.” Happily, however, Shakspeare chanced to cast his eyes on the manuscript, and found in the play something that powerfully engaged his attention. Generous, as well as gifted, he recommended both Jonson and his drama to the attention of the actors, and to that of the public also.[205]

The old play, with the Italian names, the scene laid at Florence, had been first brought out at the Rose Theatre; and it was, apparently, the amended drama, which, from the numerous alterations, had become again Jonson’s property, according to the custom of the time, that attracted the notice of Shakspeare.[206]Be that as it may, “Every Man in his Humour” was acted at Blackfriars in 1598, and Shakspeare’s name appears at the head of it as one of the performers. This was about sixteen years before the Bard of Avon sought for repose on the banks of his beloved river, and in his native town.

Henceforth the literary world was divided bythe factions which penetrate even into the studies of the lettered; and a sort of rivalship was set up, in which, it appears, the partisans of the two great dramatists were far more rife than the parties concerned.

The contending critics endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense of the other. Pope observes, “It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable as that, because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, it was said on the one hand that Shakspeare had none at all; and because Shakspeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other that Jonson wanted both; because Shakspeare borrowed nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed everything; because Jonson did not write extempore, he was reproached with being a year about every piece; and because Shakspeare wrote with ease and facility, they cry’d he never once made a blot.”[207]

Yet, without attempting to enter into a controversy long since passed away, and doubtful in origin and extent, it is satisfactory to find Jonson’s vindication from unworthy motives in his famous lines, “To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespere, andwhat he hath left us:” in which he truly calls him the “Soul of the Age.”

Jonson’s “Every Man in his Humour” was honoured, after it had been played several times, by the presence of Queen Elizabeth, who was one of Jonson’s earliest patrons. Nevertheless, in “Cynthia’s Revels,” which was brought out during the following year, the poet satirized the formal and affected manners of the Court.

Whitehall was never gay after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots; the joyousness of Elizabeth’s nature, which she had inherited from her father, was gone.

When mirth went out, pedantry came in. Euphüism was for a time in vogue; the Queen, pensive one hour, fretful the next, looked passively on the change; but to her courtiers--among whom Jonson now began to mix--the satire in “Cynthia’s Revels” was, probably, highly acceptable. Among the most reprehensible usages of the day was that of bringing up children to perform on the public stage, as well as in the Court. In 1609 authority was given to “William Shakespeare, Robert Daborne, Nathaniel Field, and Robert Kirkham,” to provide and instruct a certain number of children to perform in tragedies, comedies, or masques, within the Blackfriars, or in “the realm of England.”Shakspeare, who soon withdrew from the superintendence of this juvenile company, has referred to them in “Hamlet,” thus marking his disapprobation of the system.[208]

“But there is, sir, an aviary of children, little eyases that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapp’d for it. These are now the fashion, and so besottle the common stages (so they call them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and scarce dare come thither.”

These children were, in some respects, well cared for. They were selected from the young choristers in the Royal Chapel, and, by an order, so early as the reign of Edward IV., they were to be sent to Oxford or Cambridge, on the King’s foundation, at the age of eighteen, should their voices be changed, or the number of choristers be over-full. “Many good people,” observes Hartley Coleridge,[209]“who are scandalized at the Latin plays of Westminster, will be surprised that in the pious days of England, in the glorious morning of the Reformation, in ‘great Eliza’s golden time,’ under Kings and Queens that were the nursing fathers and nursing mothers, the public acting of plays should be, not the permitted recreation, but the compulsory employment of children devoted to sing the praisesof God--of plays too, the best of which children may now only read in a ‘family’ edition of some, whose very titles a modern father would scruple to pronounce before a woman or a child.”

These children were first impressed from the cathedrals by Richard III.; and even Queen Elizabeth issued a warrant, under the sign-manual, “authorizing ThomasGyles,”Gyles,”the master of the children of Paul’s, “to bring up any boys in cathedrals or collegiate churches, in order to be instructed for the entertainment of the Court.” The children of the Queen’s Chapel must, therefore, henceforth form a principal feature in the representations of Ben Jonson’s masques, as we picture them to our minds, either in Whitehall--consumed by fire long since--or at Althorpe, or at Burleigh-on-the-Hill, or in the stately Castle of Belvoir. Under those vaulted roofs their young voices warbled the exquisite poetry of Jonson to the music of Lawes, or--be it not recorded without shame, nevertheless--were obliged to utter words of raillery, bitterness, and indelicacy, which were usually, as Heywood in his apology for actors confesses, allotted to the unconscious children to deliver.

Greatly as Ben Jonson hailed the accession of James I., he had soon reason to regret the wise though parsimonious Queen Elizabeth. Inconjunction with Chapman and Marston, he had written a play called "Eastward Hoe." It was well received; but there was a passage in it reflecting on the Scotch. The two authors were arrested; Jonson had not any share in writing the piece, but, being accessory to its production, he honourably and “voluntarily” accompanied his two friends to prison, thus surrendering himself to justice. No very severe punishment was ever contemplated, but a report prevailed that the three delinquents were to have their ears and noses cut. Jonson is said to have been released owing to the intercession of Camden and Selden; and they are declared to have been present when, after his liberation, he gave an entertainment. On that occasion his mother “drank to him, and showed him a paper which she designed, if the sentence had taken effect, to have been mixed with his drink, and it was a strong and hasty poison.” To show “that she was no churl,” Jonson, in relating this story, added, “she designed to have first drank of itherself.herself.”

He escaped from some other personal attack which, in common with Chapman, he made on some individual, with only a second and also temporary imprisonment;[210]and from this time was in such constant requisition by theCourt, that his imprudence went unnoticed. The “Masque of Darkness” was composed by the express command of Anne of Denmark, who appeared in it as a negress, surrounded with the dark beauties of her supposed African Court. The Queen, and the “Daughters of Night,” as the noble dames who acted in that pageant were called, were placed in a concave shell, seated one above another in tiers; from the top of the shell, which represented mother-of-pearl, hung a cheveron of light, which cast a bright beam on these ladies; the shell was moving up and down upon the sea, and in the billows appeared varied forms of sea-monsters, twelve in number, each bearing a torch on his back. The Queen was attired in azure and silver, with a curious head-dress of feathers, fastened with ropes of pearl, which showed well as the loops fell on the blackened throats of the masquers, who also wore ropes of pearl on their arms and wrists. Inigo Jones is conjectured to have written the directions for the costume of this masque.[211]Jonson now received periodical sums, not only from the Court, but from public bodies and private patrons. A year seldom passed without a Royal progress; and we have seen how essential the poet had become to the often impromptu revelries in which James I.continually indulged. Yet Jonson wrote his plays and masques slowly. The “Fox” took him a year to complete. His notion was that “a good poet’s made as well as born.”[212]He worked out his own success, and his labours were incessant. He had a practice of committing to his commonplace book remarkable passages that struck him. Lord Falkland, one of the most accomplished of the cavaliers, expressed his astonishment at the variety and extreme copiousness of Jonson’s knowledge. If a pedantic display of learning be imputed to Jonson, it must be remembered that it was, probably, in compliance with the taste of his royal patron, James, who delighted in exhibiting his classical proficiency; and who, even on his death-bed, as we have seen, answered the learned Prelate near him in Latin. It was during the first years of King James’s reign that Jonson justified these classic allusions in his “Masque and Barriers,” at the nuptials of the Earl of Essex to the faithless bride, also married afterwards to Somerset. “Some,” he says, “may squeamishly cry out, that all endeavours of learning and sharpness in these transitory devises, where it steps beyond their little (or let me not wrong them) no brain at all, is superfluous. I am contented these fastidious stomachs shouldleave my full tables, and enjoy at home their clean empty trenchers, fitted for such airy tastes, where perhaps a few Italian herbs, picked up, and made into a sallad, may find sweeter acceptance than all the sound meat of the world.”

These beautiful masques had the great advantage of being set to music by Henry Lawes, the composer who secured immortality to his name by the music of “Comus,” composed by him. Lawes was beginning his career of fame when Buckingham first entered the Court. The son of a vicar choral in Salisbury Cathedral, he rose to be first a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and afterwards Clerk of the Chapel, and conductor of the private music of Charles I. Henry Lawes sometimes took a part in the masques which he composed; and acted the attendant spirit in “Comus.” His “ayres” and dialogues have disappointed posterity. Yet he appears to have been almost the father of English vocal music; and, as Milton declares--

“Taught our English music how to spaceWord with just note and accent.”

“Taught our English music how to space

Word with just note and accent.”

Music, like all the other delights of peace, languished during the troublous times of the Rebellion, or flourished only on the battle-field. Lawes was obliged to teach singing during thatperiod; but he lived to compose the coronation anthem for Charles II., and to have a place of interment assigned to him in Westminster Abbey. His brother, less happy, though a skilful musician also, and often employed in conjunction with Henry Lawes, took up arms for Charles I., in whose service he also lived, and to whom he was devoted, and fell, fighting for his sovereign, at the siege of Chester.

It was then the custom for certain great families to receive musicians, as well as men of letters, in their houses, and to employ them in their especial line--sometimes in hymeneal festivities, sometimes in composing requiems. Thus the arts and sciences, poetry, music, painting, and scenic decoration, were united, during the life-time of George Villiers, in a degree never before or since known in this country. Massinger, Ben Jonson, Lawes, Inigo Jones, were at the service of the rich and noble, and awaited their bidding. Shakspeare died just after George Villiers had received the first public proof of Royal favour--the honour of knighthood;[213]and the era of masques and revels began. Still, “a craving for mental enjoyment,”[214]as well as that derived from the senses, was diffused.

The religious changes and controversies in the preceding reigns had improved the intellect of the higher orders in England, by making some portion of learning necessary to those either engaged in polemical disputes, or who, conscientious, though unassuming, wished to form their own opinions. There was an earnestness in the awakened minds of that period. “It was a time of much vice, much folly, much trouble--but it was an age of much energy.”[215]When, after the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, the thirst for controversy abated, the desire for cultivation, the love of poetry, and the taste for art remained, took another direction, and tended to the improvement and enlightenment of social life. The higher classes did much to exalt these dawning predilections, until the rebellion came; after that fearful convulsion, the diversions of the great were henceforth debased in character, and their minds in taste.

Mary Countess of Pembroke was one of the earliest and most admired of Ben Jonson’s friends. To her son William, the early adviser of the Duke of Buckingham, Ben Jonson dedicated his “Book of Epigrams.” It is therefore almost certain that, before Jonson had appeared in public,as the composer of masques for the express entertainment of the great favourite at Burleigh, he had met Villiers at Wilton, in the society of their common friend, Lord Pembroke--“a man,” Lord Clarendon writes, “very well-bred, and of excellent parts, and a graceful speaker upon any subject, having a good proportion of learning, and a ready wit to apply and enlarge upon it.” When we add to this that the Earl was no cold, haughty, and pompous host, but facetious, affable, generous, magnificent, as disinterested and independent with the rich and great as he was unaffected and courteous to the humble; when we remember what Wilton even then was--the pride of the nation; when we reflect what and who were the men who were welcomed to its hospitality--men, as Clarendon observes, “of the most pregnant parts and understanding;” when we think of Ben Jonson there--probably received as a guest--whilst Massinger was still only the son of a retainer; when we picture Inigo Jones with his pencil--the sketches which he drew, praised by Vandyck; or hear the voices of the two brothers Henry and William Lawes, singing to soft airs the verses of Ben Jonson--we must believe that George Villiers had in such scenes, before he lost the friendship of Pembroke, many delights greater than the wearisome partiality ofJames, or even a communion with the then unformed mind of Charles.

A Platonic admiration for Christian, Countess of Devonshire, called forth in verses the romantic gallantry of the Earl of Pembroke. One cannot help rejoicing that Lawes set to music what Pembroke wrote:--

"Wrong not, dear Empress of my heart,The merits of true passion,With thinking that he feels no smartWho sues for no compassion.. . . . . . Silence in love betrays more woeThan words, though ne’er so witty.The beggar that is dumb, you know,May challenge double pity."[216]

"Wrong not, dear Empress of my heart,

The merits of true passion,

With thinking that he feels no smart

Who sues for no compassion.

. . . . . . Silence in love betrays more woe

Than words, though ne’er so witty.

The beggar that is dumb, you know,

May challenge double pity."[216]

From the society of Wilton, Villiers went forth imbued with those tastes which never yielded wholly to the grosser diversions in which his Royal patron indulged. Whilst he retained the friendship of Lord Pembroke, Villiers was, in all probability, learning to estimate the conversation and works of Ben Jonson; and henceforth, the efforts of the dramatist must, to a certain degree, be associated with the influence and protection of the favourite.

London, in spite of the repeated proclamations of King James, tending to restrain its extent, and to keep the provincial gentry in their homes, was nowgenerally crowded at certain seasons. A number of small theatres were erected in various parts of the city, in order to supply entertainments to those who would have turned with disgust, since a finer taste had been introduced by the Reformation, from the old moralities. Shakspeare, happily, formed an engagement to produce his pieces at one theatre, but Jonson was obliged to carry his productions to various minor houses, until the success of his masques enabled him to form a higher estimate of the value of his powers. His lighter pieces are marked by grace and sweetness; but these characteristics he “laid aside,” says Mr. Gifford, “whenever he approached the stage, and put on the censor with the sock.”[217]The excellence of the masque in Ben Jonson’s time, the great and gifted actors by whom it was performed, the fancy which was suffered to expand itself in these pieces, the scenic effect to which so vast an expense was devoted, incline us to think, with Gifford, “that all our ‘most splendid shows are at best but beggarly parodies,’ in comparison with those in which the Cliffords and Arundels, the Stanleys, the Russells, the Veres, and the Wroths; ‘danced in the fairy rings, in the gay and gallant circles of those enchanting devices.’”[218]

After the death of Shakspeare, Jonson received, by patent, a pension of a hundred marks a-year from James. It is supposed that the honour of the laureateship chiefly or solely belonged to him. Hitherto the title seems to have been merely honorary, adopted at pleasure by any poet who was appointed to write for the Court. It had been borne by Daniel in the time of Elizabeth. It was on this occasion that Jonson applied to Selden for information concerning the origin of the title of laureate; and that Selden drew up expressly, and introduced into the second part of his “Titles of Honours,” a long chapter on the custom of giving crowns of laurel to poets; at the conclusion of which he says, “Thus have I, by no unseasonable digression, performed a promise to you, my beloved Ben Jonson--your curious learning and judgment may correct where I have erred;” and adds, “where my notes and memory have left me short.” A graceful and enviable compliment from such a man.

The triumphs of Jonson’s genius were interrupted by his journey to Edinburgh in 1618--a journey which he performedon foot. Here he was the guest of Drummond, the poet of Hawthornden--under whose roof he passed the April of 1619. This journey was regarded as the greatest misfortune of Jonson’s life; not onlybecause during his stay in Scotland his wife died, but because Drummond, amongst other injuries, gave the following character of Ben Jonson to the world:--[219]

“For,” he says, “Ben Jonson was a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the parts which reigned in him, a bragger of some good that he wanted, thinketh nothing well done but what either he himself or some of his friends have said or done. He is passionately kind or angry, careless either to gain or keep; vindictive, if he be well answered as himself; interprets best sayings and deeds often to the worst. He was for any religion, as being versed in both.”

The conduct of Drummond, styled by Mr. Gifford, “a cankered hypocrite,”[220]has been justified by others; his very hospitality to Jonson is termed by the infuriated biographer, “decoying him into his house.” Drummond acted, in a very slight degree, in the same capacity to Jonson asthat which Boswell, a century and a half afterwards, undertook in regard to the more fortunate Samuel Johnson, who found inhislistener an admirer, and not a foe. Both these great men had the calamity of having every idle expression set down for the curiosity of an after-age; and “old Ben,” as his contemporaries called him in their jovial meetings at the Mermaid, did not stand the test so well as “Old Samuel.” We cannot, however, regard the visit to Scotland as the great misfortune of Ben Jonson’s life, as the impassioned Gifford pronounces it.[221]

Jonson, however, returned to London, unconscious of all that after his death so agitated the literary world in the eighteenth century on his account. He met, as he wrote to Drummond, with a “most Catholic welcome from King James,” who was then, like Jonson, a not disconsolate widower. The poet was writing a poem for the funeral of Queen Anne, who had just died, but was unburied. He was very keenly engaged in beginning the “Discovery,” which was to contain a description of Scotland; and he signed himself Drummond’s “true friend and lover.” He received, in return, two letters full of kindness and compliment from Drummond, whomGifford himself, incapable of an act of insincerity, styles thereupon, “hypocrite to the last.”

Ben Jonson was now invited by Bishop Corbet to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was created Master of Arts. Thence he passed to Burleigh-on-the-Hill and to Windsor, to see the performance of his "Gypsies Metamorphosed"--and to introduce little compliments in each piece, as thedramatis personnæwere varied or augmented by the accession of fresh actors and actresses. About this time he wrote his poem on the “Ladies of England.” It was lost--a mischance which, in the weakness of one’s nature, one is apt to regret more than the destruction of a vast body of philological notes, the fruit of twenty years’ labour, for which Mr. Gifford calls for especial sympathy.

Jonson was now made “Master of the Revells,” and was nearly being knighted. He passed his time in going from one country seat to another; every Twelfth-day he was ordered to produce, or to repeat a masque. Charles I. was now rising to maturity, and, like his deceased brother, Henry, he loved the poetry of Jonson, and the fancy of Inigo Jones. The match-making propensities of King James were as yet undeveloped, and had neither troubled his repose nor maddened the nation into a dread of his mistakes. Villiers was young, gay, and unmarried; and the world wasat peace. Those were happy and busy days for Jonson--yet, amid all his labours, he found time to collect an excellent library. He was not only a collector, but a lender of his books--an unusual combination; a man must be generous, indeed, to unite the two characters; nay, he gave them also, liberally, to those qualified to value the rare editions which he bought. “I am fully warranted in saying,” Mr. Gifford writes, “that more valuable books given to individuals by Jonson are yet to be met with than by any person of that age. Scores of them have fallen under my own observation, and I have heard of abundance of others.”[222]This is rare praise. Nevertheless, since brilliant success always has its alloy, it was the lot of Jonson to suffer from the ingratitude of his coadjutor, Inigo Jones; and the excuse, perhaps, of Inigo was, that he was tried and tempted by the temper and irony of Jonson. Their quarrel was inconvenient, and must have caused some trouble in the representation of those masques and revels over which Jonson presided.

“Whoever was the aggressor,” says Horace Walpole, “the turbulence and brutality of Jonson was sure to place him most in the wrong.” This is a hard judgment. Let it be remembered that the circumstances of the two men were different.Jonson was poor, diseased, and in that miserable plight when a generous temper is continually checked by pecuniary difficulties. Inigo Jones had realized a handsome fortune, and was then in the full enjoyment of wealth and reputation. Unfortunately he was a poet; some of the masques printed had their joint names as the composers. Jealousies arose, which ought to have soon subsided, had either of these celebrated men known how to curb his wrath. In Jonson’s case, his temper was his worst enemy; but for this defect he had an excuse which might have pleaded for him even with Inigo. In 1625, Jonson composed for King James “Pan’s Anniversary,” the last piece that he presented to that monarch; towards the end of that year he was attacked with palsy, and a threatening of dropsy added to his accumulated trials. Poverty and ill-health are pleas for indulgence. For the first evil, Jonson’s improvidence, his hospitality, his utter want of prudence in his affairs, may justly be blamed. The last was also partially his own fault, for his habits were intemperate--and partly ascribable to an hereditarily diseased constitution. Nature, which had endowed him with that wonderful intellect, that indomitable energy, had modified her gift by the infliction of a cruel malady, which, being in the blood, was aggravated by the weakness of approachingage. The suppers at the Mermaid were now finally abandoned; and the club at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, was no longer enlivened by his wit. His intellect was affected to some extent, but he recovered sufficiently to write the anti-masque of “Jophiel” for the Court; after which, none of his productions were commanded by the King during the space of three years. In his necessities, unable to leave his room, or to move without assistance, the poor invalid turned to the theatre as a source of revenue, and produced “The New Inn.” It was hissed from the stage; and, notwithstanding the dramatist’s plea in his epilogue that he was “sick and sad,” he was persecuted with contemptuous verses, and pursued with remorseless cruelty by the many enemies that his rough manners had excited--among them, Inigo was the most inveterate.

There was, however, one kind heart that pitied him--that of Charles I. The monarch was touched by the lines which the hard critics in the theatre could hear without compassion:--

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