'Tis not enough (thy piety is such) To cure the call'd King's Evil with a touch; And in these cures dost so thyself enlarge, But the munificence of the Sovereign did not stop here in 1630, the Laureat's salary of a hundred marks was augmented to a hundred pounds per ann., with the addition of a tierce of Canary wine out of his Majesty's cellar of Whitehall, which has been continued (in kind, or in value) to his successors ever since. Though with this, however, he enjoyed also a pension from the city, and received occasional assistance likewise from his friends, his Want, coupled with his intemperance, was radical and incurable; and some of his latest productions were mendicant poems addressed to different patrons.* The powers of his body * In the postscript of a letter (preserved in the British Museum) addressed to the Earl of Newcastle, and dated 1631, he appears to allude to this city-pension: "Yesterday the barbarous Court of Aldermen have withdrawn their chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard, 331. 6s. 8d." The whole composition shows so much of his temper and spirit at this time, as Mr. Chalmers observes, that a longer transcript may be excused: "I myself, being no substance, am fain to trouble you with shadows, or what is less, an apologue or fable in a dream. I, being stricken with the palsy in 1628, had by Sir Thomas Badger, some few months since, a fox sent me for a present; which creature, by handling, I endeavoured to make tame, as well for the abating of my disease, as the delight I took in speculation of his nature. It happened this present year 1631, and this very week being and his mind began now to sink into a visible decay. We have two comedies, indeed (The Magnetical Lady,' and 'The Tale of a Tub') written by him sub the week ushering Christmas, and this Tuesday morning in a dream (and morning-dreams are truest) to have one of my servants come to my bedside, and tell me, Master, master, the fox speaks!' Whereat methought I started, and trembled, and went down into the yard to witness the wonder. There I found my Reynard in his tenement, the tub I had hired for him, cynically expressing his own lot to be condemned to the house of a poet, where nothing was to be seen but the bare walls, and not any thing heard but the noise of a saw dividing billets all the week long, more to keep the family in exercise, than to comfort any person there with fire, save the paralytic master; and went on in this way, as the fox seemed the better fabler of the two. I, his master, began to give him good words, and stroke him; but Reynard, barking, told me this would not do, I must give him meat.' I, angry, called him stinking vermin.' He replied, 'Look into your cellar, which is your larder too, you will find a worse vermin there.' When presently, calling for a light, methought I went down, and found all the floor turned up, as if a colony of moles had been there, or an army of salt-petre vermin. Whereupon I sent presently into Turtle Street for the King's most excellent mole-catcher, to release me, and hunt them; but he, when he came and viewed the place, and had well marked the earth turned up, took a handful, smelt to it, and said, Master, it is not in my power to destroy this vermin; the K., or some good man of a noble nature, must help you: this kind of mole is called a Want,' which will destroy you and your family, if you prevent not the working of it in time. And, therefore, God keep you, and send you health!' "The interpretation both of the fable and dream is, that I, waking, do find Want the worst and most working vermin in a house; and therefore, my noble Lord, and next the King my best patron, I am necessitated to tell it you. I am not so imprudent to borrow any sum of your Lordship, for I have no faculty to pay; but my needs are such and so urging, as I do beg what your bounty can give me, in the name of good letters, and the bond of an ever-grateful and acknowledging servant to your honour." sequently: but they are such, as have not been unfitly called his dotage,' and exposed him to the malevolence of criticism, which seldom spares even old age. Upon the appearance of the former, Alexander Gill, Master of St. Paul's School, attacked him with such fury, as drew from Jonson a short but extremely caustic reply. He wholly laid aside his pen soon afterward. His last production was, the New Year's Ode for 1635. His disorder was the palsy, which put a period to his life August 16, 1637, in the sixty third year of his age. He was interred in Westminster Abbey, at the north-west end, near the belfry. Over his grave was laid a common pavement-stone, with the laconic inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson!" This was done at the expense † of Mr. (afterward Sir) John Young, of Great Milton in Oxfordshire. But a much better monument was raised to his memory six months afterward by Dr. Duppa (Bishop of Winchester, and tutor to Charles Prince of Wales) ‡ in a collection of * Of two other unfinished pieces, the Sad Shepherd,' and the Fall of Mortimer,' the latter has only the plan and two scenes (written, however, with classical spirit and simplicity) extant; and the former terminates in the third act. He had joined with Fletcher and Middleton, also, in writing a comedy, called the Widow;' and had assisted Dr. Hacket, afterward Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in translating into Latin the Essays of Lord Bacon. That expense, says Bathurst, for cutting was eighteen pence! By the wits of the day, who considered him as at the head of English poetry, he was generally addressed under the reverential title of Father Ben.' This prelate, it is said, when M. A., had been acquainted with Jonson, and often visited him in his last illness; at which time the penitent poet expressed great sorrow for having profaned the Scriptures in his plays. He had, undoubtedly (adds elegies and poems entitled, Jonsonius Virbius; or, the Memory of Ben Jonson revived by the Friends of the Muses."'* A design was, likewise, conceived to erect a marble monument with his statue, and a considerable sum of money was collected for that purpose; but the breaking out of the civil war prevented it's execution, and the subscriptions were returned. The bust in bas-relief with the above inscription under it, which is now fixed to the wall in the Poet's Corner, near the south-east entrance into the Abbey, was set up by the second Harley Earl of Oxford. In himself his family became extinct; for he survived the whole of his seven children, in none of whom was he happy. His eldest son, a poet and a dramatist, died in 1635. Of his wife, nothing is known. With respect to his person and character, if we may depend upon his own description, his body was corpulent and bulky, and his countenance hard.† Of Whalley) a sense, and was under the influence of religion; and it may be observed in his favour, that his offences against piety and good manners are very few. By the rudeness, indeed, and indelicacy of that age grosser language was permitted, than the chaste ears of more polished times will bear. To this collection most of his contemporaries, distinguished by their genius, contributed; among others, Lords Falkland and Buckhurst, Sirs John Beaumont and Thomas Hawkins, Waller, Mayne, Cartwright, King, May, Cleveland, Feltham, &c. + In Decker's angry Satiro-Mastrix' he is represented as having "a most ungodly face; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet-apple, when 'tis bruised;" and again, it is said to be "punched full of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan." To Dr. Warton's remark, that most of our poets were handsome men,' Jonson appears to have been a signal exceptionthough his bust is said to resemble that of Menander. the cast of his temper and natural disposition, his host Drummond says, that he was "a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; choosing rather to lose his friend, than his jest;' jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which was one of the elements in which he lived;* a dissembler of the parts which reigned in him, a bragger of some good that he wanted; he thought nothing right, but what either himself or some of his friends had said or done. † He was passionately kind and angry; care * Hard drinking, as D'Israeli observes, had been imported, previously to this time, by our military men on their return from the Continent, reduced into a kind of science, and furnished with an appropriated dialect. Jonson's inclinations were but too well adapted to the prevalent taste; and to his twenty four 'Leges Convivales,' drawn up in Latin and engraved in marble over the chimney of his club-room, the Apollo, in the Old Devil Tavern (near Temple Bar) may not improbably be ascribed that Mountain belly and that rocky face, of which he himself complains, as having alienated from him the affections of his mistress: one of his sons,' as he calls them (R. Bacon) affirms, that each line of his 'Catiline' oft "cost him a cup of sack." "He would many times," says Aubrey, "exceed in drink: Canary was his beloved liquor. Then he would tumble home to bed; and, when he had thoroughly perspired, then to study." "One was friendly telling Benjamin Jonson, of his great and excessive drinking continually: "Here's a grievous clutter and talk (quoth Benjamin) concerning my drinking; but here's not a word of that thirst, which so miserably torments me day and night." T. S. Fragmenta Aulica, 12mo. 1662.) +Howel, in one of his Letters, delineates what the late Mr. Seward considered as the leading feature of Jonson's character: "I was invited yesterday to a solemn supper by B. J., where you were deeply remembered. There was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome. One thing |