BEN JONSON 1573-1637 L'ALLEGRO Owes amends to the memory of Ben Jonson for popularizing the legend that learning was his chief distinction. Like inferior contemporaries who referred to Jonson's learning, Milton limited the qualification to the drama.1 By that he intended panegyric rather than blame. Later ages have construed the criticism as general, and read into it a charge of pedantry. Far from repelling any such insinuation, Jonson himself, it must be admitted, seems in his plays to confirm it. Yet I do not know that, applicable as it may be to him, it is not equally appropriate to others. For the most part dramatists of the period were scholars, and not shy of displaying their classical attainments. To Jonson's lyrics, at all events, it is not much more relevant than to Fletcher's, certainly not more than to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, or the Rape of Lucrece. Consider them on their intrinsic merits; and it may be argued that they have equals; I think it would be hard to find their superiors. Simplicity is among their primary charms, as in the ideal woman : Give me a look, give me a face, They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.2 The same quality rises to perfection in the Song to Celia : Drink to me, only with thine eyes, And I'll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise, But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I sent thee late a rosy wreath, But thou thereon didst only breathe, Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, 4 Nothing here is elaborate; there is scarcely a show of ingenuity. The idea is the merest thistledown. The words might be set to an infant school for a spelling exercise. They have fallen each into its own natural, necessary place, as easily as the stones into the walls of Thebes at the bidding of Amphion's lute. So with the eulogy of Truth: Truth is the trial of itself, And needs no other touch; It is the life and light of love, It is the warrant of the word, It runs as limpidly as a popular hymn; only, with depths in it. The Epitaph on 'Elizabeth' would equally befit a village tombstone and a monument in Westminster Abbey: Underneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as could die ; Doubtless art informed the fabric; but the scaffolding is gone. It is seldom indeed that, as towards the conclusion of the otherwise spontaneous lament for the Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel : Weep with me, all ye that read This little story; And know, for whom a tear you shed he cares in his lyrics to parade his knowledge, astronomical or mythological-' three-filled Zodiacs', and repentant 'Parcae'. Such display is exceptional. Commonly, even when he chooses to be gracefully, almost coldly, Hellenic, as in a Hymn to Diana, there is no affectation of classical tropes and phraseology: Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep : Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess, excellently bright. Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal shining quiver; Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever The same virtue distinguishes the famous epitaph on Lady Pembroke: Underneath this sable herse Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; Time shall throw a dart at thee! 8 Jonson's authorship has been disputed on the ground, partly, of its appearance, with an added stanza, in manuscripts of William Browne's poems; partly, of Browne's reference in his elegy on Lady Pembroke's grandson, Lord Herbert, to verses by him mourning the young lord's grand-dame. Possibly the copyist intentionally prefixed Jonson's six lines to Browne's; and Browne's own allusion in his epitaph on Lord Herbert, still more probably, was to his undoubted elegy on the grandmother. To me the stanza, terse and masterful, breathes all over of Jonson. But he is rich enough to dispense even with it, or with any other controverted attributions in Underwoods. I have dwelt first on the beauty of his simplicity, in answer to the popular fable of his pedantry. The feature which, more than his learning, and equally with the simple sweetness, impresses me in his verse, is the gift of thinking high thoughts while he sings. The melody flows on meanwhile; the diction, which suited the lament for a dead child, remains as unaffected, though on a different plane, when he discourses profundities. The meaning is recondite, the language continues to be beautifully natural. View the Picture he dreams of a noble mind lodged in as fair a body: A mind so pure, so perfect fine, As 'tis not radiant, but divine; And so disdaining any trier, 'Tis got where it can try the fire. Whose notions when it will express Of grace, and music to the ear, And though the sound were parted thence, But that a mind so rapt, so high, So swift, so pure, should yet apply Earth's grossness; there's the how and why. So polish'd, perfect, round, and even, And where it stays, it there becomes In action, wingèd as the wind; Begotten by the wind and showers.9 It is the same in the imaging of true love : A golden chain let down from heaven, That falls like sleep on lovers ; 10 in his promise of Heaven's blessing to the honest soldier : Go seek thy peace in war; Who falls for love of God shall rise a star 11 ; |