BEN JONSON.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND APPRENTICESHIP,

BENJAMIN JONSON was born in 1573. In the course of conversation with Drummond, at Hawthornden, he gave some particulars of his parentage. His grandfather came from Carlisle, and, he thought, from Annandale to it; he served King Henry VIII., and was a gentleman. His father lost all his estate under Queen Mary, having been cast in prison and forfeited; at last turned minister: so he was a minister's son. He himself was posthumous born, a month after his father's decease.'

The spelling of family names varied almost indefinitely in the sixteenth century. It is therefore no argument against Jonson's Annandale descent that he did not write himself Johnston. When he called his grandfather a gentleman,' this meant, in the customary parlance of the time, that he had the right to bear coatarmour. From Drummond we learn that the poet's coat was of 'three spindles or rhombi.' This indication has led me upon a somewhat circuitous route to the

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