The little that can be ascertained of the birth and parentage of Ben Jonson is derived from his own account, as given to Drummond. From this we find that his grandfather was a native of Scotland, who, removing to Carlisle during the reign of Henry VIII., was subsequently taken into that King's service. In the Privy Purse Expenses,' from 1529 to 1532, we find several entries of payments to one 'John Johnson, Master of the King's barge,' for 'serving the King's highness,' and also for the rent of a house at Westminster, where the henxmen (pages) lye.' It is very probable that this Johnson was the grandfather of the poet. His son, we learn from the same authority, possessed a considerable estate, but that he not only forfeited it, but suffered a long imprisonment, in the reign of Mary, for his attachment to Protestantism, and on the accession of Elizabeth he became a preacher—a grave minister of the Gospel,' according to Antony. à Wood- -a phrase which seems rather to indicate him as a devoted pastor and teacher, than as a mere clerk in orders.' He probably married rather late in life, as the poet seems to have been his only child; but this child he was not permitted to behold, for he died a short time before the birth of the unconscious orphan. It was in 1573 that Benjamin Jonson was born, in Westminster, and there seems to have been some allusion to the mournful circumstances of his birth in the name—at this period a very uncommon one-that was given him; it seems to tell alike the grief of the surviving parent, and the joy she felt in her new-born child. Very little, however, is known of the mother; and from the solitary allusion Ben Jonson has made to her, she would seem to have been more remarkable for a fierce and indomitable spirit, than for the exercise of the gentler virtues. Fuller traces her, while Jonson was yet a little child, to 'Hartshorn-lane, near Charing-cross, where she married a bricklayer for her second husband.' The name of this second husband cannot be ascertained-the claim of Thomas Fowler, whom Malone and Gifford assign to her, having been disproved by the fact that he survived his third wife, who died in 1590, while Jonson's mother was undoubtedly living in 1604-5. The more important fact, however, that he treated his step-son with fatherly kindness, is, we think, well established. The first instruction young Jonson received was, we are told, at a school at St. Martin's-in-the-fields-doubtless the free school there and from thence he was sent to that at Westminster. Gifford, determined to assimilate the customs of the sixteenth century to those of the nineteenth, has lamented over the degradation of a clergyman's widow marrying a bricklayer, and has told Sent to Westminster School-goes to Flanders. 287 us about some friend who, pitying the poor orphan, sent him at his own expense to Westminster School. Now, had that learned critic only condescended to have looked over the records in Strype, he would have found that the clergy in the days of Elizabeth occupied a far inferior station then, and that it was from among the small farmers and inferior tradesmen that their ranks were chiefly recruited; and have learnt, too, that although, in the nineteenth century, admission to Westminster School may require both money and interest, at this time it was, according to the intention of its foundress, 'a free grammar school.' It was expressly to afford an eleemosynary education to the youth of Westminster that Elizabeth founded Westminster School, and the bricklayer's step-son was as eligible as any one else. As the illustrious Camden was second master at the time when young Jonson was sent, and as he appears among his earliest friends, it is not unlikely that Camden might have been a friend of the family, and discovering the superior abilities of the young boy, might probably suggest his being sent thither. This is, however, but conjectural. That young Jonson amply profited by the advantages he thus secured, and always retained feelings of most grateful attachment to his master, are well-known facts. How long Jonson remained at Westminster School, or whether it was originally intended that he should be sent to college, cannot be ascertained; but that he was not sent to Cambridge, but was taken from his studies to learn his step-father's calling, as he himself told Drummond, is proved both by the utter absence of any allusion to his college life in all his writings, and the omission of his name in the University Register. Among the numerous conjectures of Jonson's biographers as to the age at which he quitted Westminster School, it seems rather curious that the fact, that if he worked as a bricklayer he must have been an apprentice, never occurred to them. There seems little doubt, therefore, that, at fourteen, the reluctant young scholar, who probably hoped to have gone to college, was taken from his cherished studies, and bound to his step-father to learn the craft, art, and mystery of a bricklayer.' We have an interesting picture given us, in a few words, by Fuller, where he tells us the future dramatist helped in the structure of Lincoln's Inn, and, having a trowel in his hand, had a book in his pocket.' But most distasteful was this drudgery; he could not endure the occupation,' as he told Drummond. The haughty spirit chafed at the mean employment; the daring, adventurous youth, not yet eighteen, thirsted for a more stirring life than the indentures of the apprentice would allow; so, like many another ''prentice tall' of those days, he left his trade for the gentlemanly profession of arms, 6 and flung aside the trowel to trail a pike in the Low Countries. It is very unlikely, we think, that this was with the consent of his step-father or his mother. The character of the volunteers employed in Flanders was very low; their pay was not good, their privations were often great; and, on their return, sick or maimed, their only resource was the pass-equally the right of the wandering beggar-and the precarious benevolence of the passer-by. Indeed, to go as a man-at-arms in the days of Elizabeth, was the climax of the hard fate generally prophesied to the scapegrace of the family. Young Jonson, however, went. As large reinforcements were sent to Ostend-then garrisoned by English troops-in 1591, Gifford supposes this was the date of his enlistment, and Ostend probably his destination. His stay was short, apparently only one campaign; but his impulsive courage displayed itself by his killing an enemy in single combat, and carrying off his spoils in the sight of the two armies, as he told Drummond, exultingly, almost thirty years after. Whatever might be the cause of his returning so soon, disgust of his profession had no share in it. He seems to have ever looked back on his campaign in Flanders with pride and pleasure, always declaring he loved the profession of arms; and many years after, in his epigram addressed To True Soldiers,' he says 'I swear by your true friend, my Muse, I love, It was probably about the close of 1591 that Jonson returned to England. He was now utterly without means of subsistence. Whether his father-in-law was still living is uncertain; but those biographers who seem to think that disgust of his trade alone. prevented Jonson from resuming the trowel, are all forgetful that his indentures having been broken, he really could not return to his calling. If, as was most probably the case, he ran away, then the hard labour and hard fare of Bridewell-name of fear to the refractory apprentice of those days-were in terrorem before him; and well may we believe that that fiery spirit would endure every privation rather than risk the chance of such a punishment. In truth, the young soldier was now, in the eye of the law, ‘a masterless man,' with no employment, without means of subsistence, forming one of that large class whose increasing numbers, during Elizabeth's reign, had so frequently awakened the anxieties of her ministers, and against whom so many stringent laws had of The Hireling Player' in the Reign of Elizabeth. 289 late been passed. Flung thus, a waif and stray, upon society, it is really creditable to the young adventurer of eighteen that he did not join some of the many bands of gipsies whose wild wandering life offered attractions to the youth of that day almost equal to those of the merry outlaws of Sherwood, or some company of bearwards, or jugglers, or, half beggar, half bully, haunt Tower-hill, or Moorfields, with courtly bow entreating the honourable gentleman for the loan of a piece of silver, the price of two cans of beer'-a far more lucrative trade then, it would seem, than the one he adopted-but that he joined the most reputable class of outcasts, and became a hireling player.' 6 6 A singular phase of literary life does the biography of our dramatic writers, in the reign of Elizabeth, unfold to us. Men herding together in mean or disreputable localities, existing literally from hand to mouth, the covenanted servants' of employers who had often risen from the lowest ranks as tapsters or bearwards-writers receiving the poor pittance, even in those days, of 'five shillings a weeke for the first yeare, and six and eightpence for the seconde,' and, if honoured to compose or to alter plays, paid from three to five pounds in lingering instalments, or fifteen or twenty shillings for addycions; sometimes flaunting in hat and feather, and brave cloak of cremysine, passimented wyth silvere,' sometimes begging the loan of a threadbare 'gowne, for all myne be in pawne; sometimes carousing with sack and canary, or the Rhenish, so fatal to poor Greene, and then piteously praying for an advance of five shillings, to pay some necessary debt incurred for wife or child-how strange is this! But stranger still is it to remember that these men were mostly of good family, had received a university education, many authorized to write M.A. after their names, and all writers of vigorous prose, and sweetest and noblest poetry, men who have made the English drama famous for all time! And yet, what a standing was theirs! Paris Gardens raising its flag to tell that the bull-baitings were about to begin; and the Rose and the Hope theatres, hard by, raising theirs, to summon an audience to tremble at the fearful end of Faustus, to laugh with Falstaff, or to weep over the sorrows of the Woman Killed with Kindness, or the deeper sorrows of Lear. And then, when the bright days of summer came, these very writers, trudging beside the heavily-laden cart from town to town, looked upon as scarcely better than vagrants, and still sharing the popular favour with jugglers and bearwards. The bearward, with Sackerson and the well-muzzled mastiffsthe players, with Peele, Nashe, Heywood, Jonson, Shakespere, in their train-alike entering the country town, and proclaiming, with beat of drum, the entertainment each was prepared to give-the bearward, with badge on his arm, as servant of some nobleman, the players only guarded from the stocks and tumbril by the same protection; both humbly suing permission of the worshipful mayor, ere they were allowed to amuse her Highness's liege subjects; and both sharing the largesse equally bestowed on ye bearewardes and ye players thys Whitsontyde.' Can we wonder that men thus placed should have been reckless and profligate? Can we wonder at the sad fate of Greene and Marlowe, or the shirking life' of Nashe and Peele? The wonder is, that among these poor outcasts any one should have retained his self-respect; that some few should have been decent, striving family men; that the greatest among them should, when but just passed his middle age, have retired to his native town honoured as a worthy householder, as well as famed as our greatest dramatist; and that the chief actor of his day, Alleyn, the employer too, of so many of our foremost writers, should, in his honoured old age, have numbered nobles and prelates among his guests at God's Gift College,' and taken the daughter of the Dean of St. Paul's (Dr. Donne) for his second wife. There must have been a depth of moral feeling among all classes of society in the reign of Elizabeth, which has not been sufficiently recognised, to account for this; the salt must have penetrated deeply, when we find, too, that even the most profligate among these dramatists dared not to treat morality or religion with the scorn which was considered indispensable in the days of Charles the Second, and that whatever coarseness may be found in their writings, the more serious charge of calling evil good, and good evil, cannot be brought against them. In society such as we have just described there must have been much attraction for the young man-at-arms whose earlier years had been passed at Westminster School. Wild excitement, licence, unknown to the sober craftsman under whose roof his childhood had been fostered, Jonson had doubtless already found in camp and garrison; but here, with equal excitement, with equal freedom, were now the superadded pleasures of converse with educated and highly-gifted men. We can scarcely assign a later date than the beginning of 1592 for Jonson's introduction to the stage and, at that time, both Greene and Marlowe were living. With them he may have revelled, perhaps quaffed with them draughts of the rich canary' so celebrated by him in after days; and then, Peele, Nashe, Dekker, Heywood, Shakespere, ere long became his associates. Jonson's first engagement, we are told, was at the Green Curtain,' near Shoreditch, an inferior theatre, but which has given its name to a locality which, through all the changes of more than two hundred and sixty years, it has |