to the utmost extent of his means and opportunities. He indulged freely in wine, and Howell testifies to the epicurean luxury with which he entertained his friends. But wine was not his ruling passion. His admiration of beauty carried him into other, and, perhaps, more dangerous excesses. He was proud of his intimacy with ladies of rank, some of whom played in his masques at court and elsewhere; and it was for charging him with this general devotion to the sex, that he originally quarrelled with Marston.

Whalley has carefully summed up in the following passage some of the chief features in Jonson's character:-' He was laborious and indefatigable in his studies; his reading was copious and extensive; his memory so tenacious and strong, that, when turned of forty, he could have repeated all that he had ever wrote; his judgment accurate and solid; and often consulted by those who knew him well in branches of very curious learning, and far remote from the flowery paths loved and frequented by the muses. The Lord Falkland celebrates him as an admirable scholar; and saith, that the extracts he took, and the observations which he made on the books he read, were themselves a treasure of learning, though the originals should happen to be lost. By the death of Jonson his family itself became extinct, the only issue he left being his plays and poems.'

If nothing remained of Jonson but his plays, we should arrive at very imperfect and erroneous conclusions upon his personal and poetical character. We could never know him from his plays, as we believe we know Shakspeare. The rough vigour, the broad satire, and the tendency to exhibit the coarse and base aspects of the world in preference to the gentle and Loble, convey an inadequate, and in some respects a false, impression of his genius. It is in his minor poems we must look for him as he lived, felt, and thought. Here his express qualities are fully brought out; his close study of the classics; his piety, sound principles, and profound knowledge of mankind; his accurate observation of social modes and habits; and that strong common sense,

taking the most nervous and direct forms of expression, in which we may trace the germs of Dryden more clearly than in any other writer. Here, too, and here alone, we find him surrounded by the accomplished society in the midst of which he lived, and of whose principal celebrities he has transmitted to us a gallery of imperishable portraits.

His pictures of town life, of the lowest dens and denizens of the metropolis, and of interior morals from the palace to the hot-house, are no less conspicuous in his minor poems than in his plays. But it is in the poems alone, with the exception of the Sad Shepherd, and a few passages in the masques, otherwise overweighted with lead, that he developes his fine vein of pastoral feeling. His descriptions of country life, and rural scenery and associations, are no less remarkable for their truthfulness than their relishing sweetness. The lines on Penshurst, and the epistle to Sir Robert Wroth, may be selected as special examples of excellence in this kind of writing.

The predominant merit of his poems lies in their practical wisdom. Making reasonable allowances for the aberrations of flattery in an age of patronage, he is everywhere the inflexible advocate of truth and virtue, the scorner of false pretensions, and the scourger of vice and meanness. His lines are pregnant with thought applicable to the conduct of life; and without any of the affectation of aphorisms, multitudes of his couplets might be separated from the context, and preserved apart for their axiomatic completeness.

POEMS

OF

BEN JONSON.

Epigrams.*

DEDICATION.

TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE OF HONOUR AND VIRTUE, THE MOST NOBLE WILLIAM, EARL OF PEMBROKE,† LORD CHAMBERLAIN, &c.

MY LORD,-While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title: it was that made it, and not I. Under which name, I here offer to your Lordship the ripest of my studies, my Epigrams; which, though they carry danger in the sound, do not, therefore, seek your shelter; for, when I made

The text of this edition is printed from the original folio, published in 1616, under the supervision of Jonson. The title-page announces these Epigrams as Book I., Jonson evidently intending to make additional collections of similar pieces; a design which he never carried into effect. The folio is printed with much greater care than is usual in books of that period; and it is here strictly followed, except when it was necessary to remove obsolete forms, or to make slight changes in the punctuation. Gifford's text, printed also from the folio of 1616, has been consulted throughout, but it supplies no emendations, and is in many instances inaccurate.

Jonson was not happy in any of the titles he gave to these collections. Thus under the head of Epigrams' he includes numerous pieces which have nothing in common with that form of composition. The collection, as observed by Gifford, is really an Anthology. But Gifford is wrong in saying that Jonson meant by an epigram a short poem chiefly restricted to one idea, a description which would better apply to the sonnet. He showed that he clearly understood the conditions of the epigram, when he condemned the epigrams of Harrington and Owen as being bare narrations.

↑ This distinguished nobleman has been supposed by some commentators, with an obvious disregard of dates and other circumstances,

6

them, I had nothing in my conscience, to expressing of which I did need a cipher. But, if I be fallen into those times, wherein, for the likeness of vice, and facts, every one thinks another's ill deeds objected to him; and that in their ignorant and guilty mouths, the common voice is, for their security, Beware the Poet!' confessing therein so much love to their diseases, as they would rather make a party for them, than be either rid, or told of them; I must expect, at your Lordship's hand, the protection of truth and liberty, while you are constant to your own goodness. In thanks whereof, I return you the honour of leading forth so many good and great names (as my verses mention on the better part) to their remembrance with posterity. Amongst whom, if I have praised, unfortunately, any one, that doth not deserve; or, if all answer not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them: I hope it will be forgiven me that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like the persons. But I foresee a nearer fate to my book than this: that the vices therein will be owned before the virtues (though there I have avoided all particulars, as I have done names) and that some will be so ready to discredit me, as they will have the impudence to belie themselves. For, if I meant them not, it is so. Nor, can I hope otherwise. For why should they remit anything of their riot, their pride, their self-love, and other inherent graces, to consider truth or virtue; but, with the trade of the world, lend their long ears against men they love not: and hold their dear mountebank, or jester, in far better condition than all the study, or studiers of humanity. For such, I would rather know them by their vizards still, than they should publish their faces, at their peril, in my theatre, where Cato, if he lived, might enter without scandal.

Your Lordship's most faithful honourer,
BEN JONSON.

to have been the Mr. W. H. of Shakspeare's sonnets. It was to the Ear. of Pembroke, and his brother, the Earl of Montgomery, that Heminge and Condell, in 1623, dedicated the folio edition of Shakspeare's plays, in which they are said to have been assisted by Jonson

a statement entirely unsupported by evidence. The first play exhibited in England before James I. was presented by Shakspeare's company in the Earl of Pembroke's house at Wilton. His lordship was a munificent friend to Jonson, and used to send him £20 on every New Year's Day to buy books, as we learn from the Conversations preserved by Drummond. The poet's wants, however, occasionally overtook his purchases, for it appears, from the same authority, that 'sundry times he devoured his books, i. e., sold them all for necessity.'

I. TO THE READER.

PRAY thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,

To read it well; that is, to understand.

II. TO MY BOOK.

It will be looked for, Book, when some but see
Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me,

Thou shouldst be bold, licentious, full of gall,
Wormwood, and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal,
Become a petulant thing, hurl ink and wit,
As madmen stones; not caring whom they hit.
Deceive their malice, who could write it so;
And, by thy wiser temper, let men know
Thou art not covetous of least self-fame
Made from the hazard of another's shame;
Much less, with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,
To catch the world's loose laughter, or vain gaze.
He that departs with his own honesty
For vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.

III. TO MY BOOKSELLER.

Thou that mak'st gain thy end, and, wisely well,
Call'st a book good, or bad, as it doth sell,
Use mine so, too; I give thee leave; but crave,
For the luck's sake, it thus much favour have,
To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought;
Not offered, as it made suit to be bought;
Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls,*
Or in cleft sticks, advanced to make calls

It was the custom to paste advertisements not only on the dead walls of the metropolis, but on the numerous posts which stood in the public places, in front of great houses; hence the term posters, which is still applied to mural advertisements; although the special propriety of its application has long ceased. The term Knights of the Post,' has a similar origin.-See BUTLER'S Hudibras I. Can. 1.