feelings experienced towards him by some of his contemporaries. Thus, Demetrius (Marston) says, “Horace! he is a mere sponge; nothing but humors and observation; he goes up and down sucking from every society, and when he comes home squeezes himself dry again." Another calls him "a sharp, thorny-toothed, satirical rascal;" one that would "sooner lose his best friend than his least jest;" a thing "all dog and scorpion, that carries poison in his teeth, and a sting in his tail." In the arraignment, Decker is called poetaster and plagiary; Marston, play-dresser and plagiary; and they are accused of taxing Jonson falsely of "self-love, arrogance, impudence, railing, filching by translation," &c., for a base and envious purpose. In their sentence we are favored with a view of the "local habitations" of the poets of the day; for they are forbidden to defame our poet "at booksellers' stalls, in taverns, two-penny rooms, tyring-houses, noblemens' buttresses, and puisné's chambers." The enemies of Jonson are summed up as "fools or jerking pedants," "buffoon, barking wits," tickling "base, vulgar ears," with "beggarly and barren trash." In the "Apologetical Dialogue," at the end of the play, all phrases of scorn and contempt are exhausted to cover his opponents with infamy. He speaks of his own works as

"Things that were born when none but the still night
And his dumb candle saw his pinching throes ;"

and he closes with a lofty expression of his own studious habits and devotion to letters:

"I that spend half my nights and all my days
Here in a cell, to get a dark, pale face
To come forth with the ivy or the bays,
And in this age can hope no other grace, -
Leave me! there's something come into my thought

That must and shall be sung high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof."

There is in this play a good representation given of the different feelings with which different classes at that day regarded poetry. Thus, one of the characters calls Homer "a poor blind rhyming rascal, that lived obscurely up and down in booths and tap-houses, and scarce ever made a good meal in his sleep, the *** hungry beggar;" while Jonson, speaking through the lips of another, exclaims,

"Would men but learn to distinguish spirits,
And set true difference 'twixt those jaded wits
That run a broken pace for common hire,
And the high raptures of a happy Muse,
Borne on the wings of her immortal thought,
That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel,
And beats at heaven's gates with her bright hoofs,
They would not then, with such distorted faces

And desperate censures, stab at Poesy;

They would admire bright knowledge, and their minds
Should ne'er descend on so unworthy objects
As gold, or titles."

The character of Virgil, in this play, has been conjectured to refer to Shakspeare, and Horace's (Jonson's) encomium on him is characteristic and true.

"Hor. His learning savors not the school-like gloss,
That most consists in echoing words and terms,
And soonest wins a man an empty name;
Nor any long, or far-fetched circumstance,
Wrapt in the curious general'ties of arts;
But a direct and analytic sum

Of all the worth and first effects of arts.
And for his poesy, 't is so rammed with life,
That it shall gather strength of life, with being,
And shall live hereafter more admired than now."

Lamb, Vol. 11., р. 68.

The Poetaster made Jonson many enemies, as well it might. Decker replied in The Satiromastrix, or the Untrussing of a Humorous Poet. It contains some beautiful poetry, and some capital hits. One of the females in the play says, "That same Jonson has a most ungodly face, by my fan; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet apple, when 't is bruised. It's better than a spoonful of cinnamon-water next my heart, for me to hear him speak; he sounds it so i' th' nose; - and oh, to see his face make faces, when he reads songs and sonnets!" Again, - "Look at his par-boiled face, look,

his face puncht full of eyelet holes, like the cover of a warming-pan." This is characteristic, and gives probably as true a representation of the personal appearance of Jonson, as the "dark, pale face" he has himself celebrated.

In 1603, Jonson produced his weighty tragedy of Sejanus, a noble piece of work, full of learning, ingenuity, and force of mind in wielding bulky materials. It was brought out at the Globe theatre, with the greatest poet the world ever saw acting in one of the inferior characters. It is difficult to conceive that a man who had at this time produced A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like it, Hamlet, and Henry Fourth, should play in one of Ben Jonson's tragedies. Jonson and Shakspeare seem at this period to have been at the height of their friendship. The "wit-contests" at the Mermaid Tavern date from the appearance of Sejanus. Fuller, speaking of these, compares Shakspeare to an English man-of-war, and Jonson to a Spanish great galleon. "Master Jonson was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performance: Shakspeare, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Fuller speaks further of Ben, as a man whose parts "were not so ready to run of themselves as able to answer the spur; so that it may be truly said of him, that he had an elaborate wit, wrought out by his own industry." Those must have been great meetings where Shakspeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Raleigh, Selden, Camden, and Donne, were among the party. Beaumont, in a letter to Ben, gives his testimony to the brilliancy of the conversation, when he exclaims,

"What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one, from whom they came,
Had put his whole wit in a jest."

Jonson seems to have held anger but a short time, and was far from being malignant. On the accession of James, he chose his old opponent Decker to be his associ`ate in designing an entertainment for the reception of the king, -a metrical job given to him by the court and city; and was connected, also, shortly after, with Marston and Chapman, in writing Eastward Hoe, a comedy which came near subjecting all three to the grossest indignities, on account of some satire it contained against the Scotch. They were all imprisoned for a short time, and it was rumored that their ears and noses were to be slit. Jonson's mother, who appears to have been a strong-minded woman, told her son, after he had been liberated, that she intended to have mixed some "strong and lusty poison in his drink," sooner than have him thus disgraced. This little event in his life does not appear to have injured him with King James, who was his patron through life. Between the years 1605 and 1611, he wrote his three comedies, Volpone, Epicæne, and The Alchemist, and also his tragedy of Catiline, together with a number of masques represented at court. These last contain much of his most delicate and fanciful poetry, and many of his most bewitching lyrics. About the year 1616, he succeeded Daniel as poet laureate, and probably wrote his noble poetical tribute to Shakspeare soon afterwards. In the summer of 1618, he set out on his celebrated pedestrian journey to Scotland. After some hospitable delays, he arrived at the house of Drummond of Hawthornden, in April, 1619. He talked rather recklessly to his brother-poet, and probably swaggered considerably on his reputation. The record left by his host of this free and easy conversation is honorable to neither, and has irretrievably damned Drummond. His name, which might have been preserved as an agreeable bewailer of imaginary love miseries, has become associated with treachery and inhospitality.

In 1625, King James died. From this period, Jonson's life assumes its darker aspects. Poverty, sickness, and palsy, came upon him. In 1629, he had sufficiently recovered to produce his play of The New Inn. This was unsuccessful, though it contains some of his best scenes, and the character of Lovel has sweet and noble traits, not common to Jonson's heroes. Lovel's definition of true love in this play is Platonic in its fineness and purity. The following lines, in which he speaks of the power of the passion on himself, have a winning beauty of expression which is exquisite.

"Lov. There is no life on earth, but being in love!
There are no studies, no delights, no business,
No intercourse, or trade of sense, or soul,

But what is love! I was the laziest creature,