of the Poets, we have another most characteristic portrait of Jonson, as he appeared in his old age. "The first that broke silence was good old Ben, And he told them plainly he deserved the bays, For his were called works where others' were but plays "Apollo stopped him there, and bade him not go on ; Jonson died on the sixth day of August, 1637, at the age of sixty-three. He survived both his wife and his children. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. A common pavement-stone, laid over his grave, bears the inscription, "O Rare Ben Johnson!" (not Jonson, as it is always printed,)—a phrase which has passed into the current speech of England. 66 Jonson drenched his large and heavy brain freely with stimulants. It was said that every line of his poetry cosɩ aim a cup of sack. "He would," according to Aubrey, "many times exceed in drink; Canary was his beloved liquor; then he would tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly perspired, he would then to study." In the bacchanalian phraseology of that day, he was called a Canary bird. He is said to have weighed twenty stone. Barry Cornwall has the courageous gracelessness to commend Ben's festivities, saying that "the Muses should be fed generously, — that good meats and sound wines nourish and invigorate the brain, and enable the imagination to send forth spirited and sounding strains." In Jonson's case, we imagine wine was necessary to set the huge substance of his brain in motion. Charles the First probably understood the poet's wants, when he added the tierce of Canary wine to his yearly stipend of £100, as poet laureate. Habits of hard drinking were common in those days. With the exception of this too potent conviviality, and bating some inherent faults of character, Jonson seems to have been one of the best men of his time. He was honest and honorable. He had a hearty hatred of meanness and baseness, and shot his sharp invective at the crimes and follies of his day with commendable courage. More than most of his contemporaries, he estimated the dignity of the poet's vocation. In the dedication of Volpone he feeling' alludes to the bad reputation into which his order had fallen; and in the midst of much pedantry and arrogance, we discern a true love for his art. He anticipates Milton in asserting "the impossibility of any man's being the good poet, without first being a good man." With terrible force he lashes those of his craft who have betrayed the good cause by ribaldry and profaneness, and also declaims against the depravity of the which supports them in their sins. But that all the dramatic poets are "embarked on this bold adventure to hell," he calls a malicious slander; and to show his own innocence, pounces on those "miscelline interludes," where, he says, "nothing but the filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry able to violate the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Christian to water." He laments, that, through the insolence of these writers, the name of poet, once so honorable, has become "the lowest scorn of the age;" and in a sentence worthy of Miton, asserts, that, if the Muses be true to him, he will "raise the despised head of poetry age again, and, stripping her out of those rotter and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty and render her worthy to be embraced and kissed of all the great and master spirits of our world." These are brave and bright words, and show deep feeling. His works display, in a hundred places, a similar spirit. He rails at the age continually for its degeneracy and wick. edness; and takes the strong ground, that the "principal end of poesie is to inform men in the best reason of liv ing." Jonson really scorned the office of pander to de praved tastes. We do not think that he ever consciously surrendered principle to profit. The exaggerated notion he entertained of his own powers made him more disposed to lead than to follow; and the worst that can be said of him is, that, if he failed in an honest effort, he went growling back into his den, savage but unconquered. Fletcher's lighter brain and looser principles allowed him to slide more easily into the debasing habit of meeting a demand for brilliant profligacy with ample supplies. The dramas of Jonson are formed of solid materials, bound and welded rather than fused together. Most of his comic characters are local, and representative of particular traits or humors, - dramatic satires on contemporary follies and faults. His greatest delineation `we tonceive to be Sir Epicure Mammon, in The Alchemist, though Volpone and Bobadil might contest the palm. The "riches fineless" of learning and imagery lavished upon this character perfectly astound the imagination Nothing can be more masterly than the manner in which it is sustained; the towering sensuality of the man the visions of luxury and wealth in which his mind roam, and revels, his intense realization of the amazing fictions he himself creates, the complete despotism established by his imagination over his senses, and the resolute credulity with which he accommodates the most obstinate facts to his desires, make up a character which, in originality, force, and truth of delineation, seems to us only second to Falstaff, or, at least, to have, out of Shakspeare, no peer among the comic creations of the English drama. As a Volpone, Bobadil, Sejanus, and Catiline are strong delineations, which we cannot pause to consider. specimen, however, of Jonson's ponderous style, we cannot refrain quoting a few lines in the tragedy of Catiline, from the scene in the first act, on the morning of the conspiracy. Lentulus says: "Lent. It is methinks a morning full of fate. It riseth slowly, as her sullen car Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it. Her face is like a water turned to blood, And her sick head is bound about with clouds, As if she threatened night ere noon of day. It does not look as it would have a hail Or health wished in it, as on other morns." Catiline, in allusion to the massacres of Sylla, gives a stern and terrible image of death: 'Slaughter bestrid the streets, and stretched himself To seem more huge;" and he exclaims afterwards: "Cinna and Sylla Are set and gone; and we must turn our eyes And the awed purple dropt their rods and axes. The very walls sweat blood before the change; It would be easy to extract largely from Jonson's plays to illustrate his powers of satire, fancy, observation, and wit; and to quote numberless biting sentences, that seem steeped "in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire." His masks are replete with beautiful poetry, as delicate as it is rich. We have only space, however, to introduce from The Sad Shepherd one specimen of his sweetness, which seems to have been overlooked by others. "Here she was wont to go! and here! and here! And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, Tennyson has a similar idea in The Talking Oak, bu* has added a subtle imagination, which our old bard's mind would not have been likely to grasp:· "And light as any wind that blows, So fleetly did she stir, The flowers, she touched on, dipt and rose, The plays of THOMAS DECKER, honest old Decker, are the records of one of the finest and most lovable spirits in English literature. His name has suffered much from Jonson's cutting scorn, and, indeed, with many readers he still bears about the same relation to old Ben tha* |