semblance to that of Shakspeare's. The "charms" and magic practices were common property; and were supplied to both by the books of demonology and witchcraft of their time.

But the versatility of Jonson's genius is no where more conspicuous than in his dramatic pastoral of the "Sad Shepherd; and no where does there appear a more triumphant refutation of the vulgar traditionary calumnies, respecting his servile art and laborious pedantry. From this character of his pieces, we should be led to expect a mere parody of the Greek Sicilian idyls: but what he has introduced from Theocritus is adapted to his plan with the grace and spirit of a poet who borrows from the fulness of his memory, rather than from the need of his mind. It has been thoughtlessly affirmed by Whalley, that the pastoral is an imitation of Fletcher's "Faithful Shepherdess: " but the two pieces are quite of a different species. Jonson's is not a mere fantastic pastoral, a vehicle of poetry, and of the common-place sentiment of whining love; but, together with poetry the most exquisitely fanciful and wild, Jonson has infused into his production the nature of common life, the reality of individual character, the truth of passion, and the interest of a probable and surprising tale. The supernatural machinery is contrived with such exact conformity to the popular superstition, as to have all the air of credibility and Maudlin, with her malice and cunning, her transformations and revenges, is a true country witch, and is supported with singular animation. The language of Eglamour, the sad shepherd, who is crazed at the loss of his mistress, supposed to be drowned, is sustained to the very height of romantic frenzy; and flows in such a strain of pathetic extravagance, and with such a stream of luxuriant images, as to challenge the proudest successes of Shakspeare and Milton.

:

The drama opens in Sherwood Forest, with this spirited and beautiful monologue:

"Egl. Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow :
The world may find the spring by following her;

For other print her airy steps ne'er left.

Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,

Or shake the downy blow-ball from its stalk!

But like the soft west-wind she shot along;

And where she went the flowers took thickest root,

As she had sowed them with her odorous foot. (Exit. )” The sudden entrances and exits of the melancholy lover, give a wonderful consistency and spirit to the character.

Mr. Gifford supposes the last verse to have been improved from the "quicquid calcaverit rosa fiat" of Persius: we think without necessity. The image of flowers and verdure springing

from under a lady's foot is as old as Hesiod's Venus: and Virgil had said of Camilla,

Illa vel intactæ segetis per summa volaret

Gramina, nec teneras cursu læsisset aristas.

These metaphors were common poetical property: but Jonson, in his use of them, displays that ingenious felicity of thought and diction which stamps originality, and claims the honours of invention.

The reader may not be sorry to see more:

"A spring, now she is dead? of what? of thorns?
Briars and brambles? thistles, burs, and docks?
These may grow still: but what can spring beside?
Did not the whole earth sicken when she died?
As if there since did fall one drop of dew
But what was wept for her! or any stalk
Did bear a flower, or any branch a bloom,
After her wreath was made! in faith, in faith,.
You do not fair to put these things upon me,
Which can in no sort be: Earine,

Who had her very being and her name
With the first knots and buddings of the spring,
Born with the primrose, or the violet,

Or earliest roses blown-do not I know

How the vale wither'd the same day?—that since
No sun, or moon, or other cheerful star,

Look'd out of heav'n; but all the cope was dark
As it were hung so for her exequies!

And not a voice or sound to ring her knell

But of that dismal pair, the screeching owl

And buzzing hornet! hark! hark! hark! the foul
Bird! how she flutters with her wicker wings!
Peace! you shall hear her screech!"

The following scene of artless passion merits transcription, as it presents Jonson in a light, in which those who learn their opinions by rote probably never dreamed of beholding him.

(The entrance to Robin Hood's Bower.-Amie discovered lying on a bank: Marian and Mellefleur sitting by her.)

Mar. How do you, sweet Amie, yet?

Mel.

She cannot tell :

If she could sleep, she says, she should do well:
She feels a hurt, but where she cannot show,
Any least sign that she is hurt or no:
Her pain's not doubtful to her, but the seat
Of her pain is her thoughts too work and beat
Oppress'd with cares: but why she cannot say :
All matter of her care is quite away.

66

Or

Mar. Hath any vermin broke into your

fold?

any rot seiz❜d on your flock? or cold?
Or hath your feighting ram burst his hard horn,
Or any ewe her fleece, or bag, hath torn,
My gentle Amie?

Amie. Marian, none of these.

Mar. Have you been stung by wasps or angry bees,
Or rased with some rude bramble or rough briar?
Amie. No, Marian, my disease is somewhat nigher,
I weep, and boil myself away in tears,

And then my panting heart would dry those fears:
I burn, though all the forest lend a shade:

And freeze, though the whole wood one fire were made.
Mar. Alas!

Amie. I often have been torn with thorn and briar
Both in the leg and foot, and somewhat higher;
Yet gave not then such fearful shrieks as these:
I often have been stung too with curst* bees,
Yet not remember that I then did quit
Either my company or mirth from it.

And therefore what it is that I feel now,

And know no cause of it, nor where, nor how

It entered in me, nor least print can see,

I feel afflicts me more than briar or bee.

(sighs.)

(sighs again.)

(again.)

How often when the sun, heaven's brightest birth,
Hath with his burning fervour cleft the earth:
Under a spreading elm or oak, hard by
A cool clear fountain, could I sleeping lie
Safe from the heat! but now no shady tree
Nor purling brook can my refreshing be."

Yet Dryden could assert that the last pieces of Jonson were among his dotages!" The truth of his assertion would have been still better appreciated, if this delightful fragment had come down to us entire. Ben Jonson died like the fabled swan; and his breath uttered, while expiring, its sweetest music.

It is not to be expected that the same genius should, with equal facility, "hew a colossus from the rock, and carve a head upon a cherry-stone." We cannot follow the editor to the extent of his career of admiration respecting the minor poems of Ben Jonson. The two short pieces from Catullus; the lyric version of the pretty amatory conceit of Philostratus, beginning "Drink to me only with thine eyes;" and the epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke; as they are the oftenest quoted of Jonson's smaller pieces, so perhaps they are the best. Of the love-song, Mr. Gifford observes that, "pleasing as it is, it is not superior to many others scattered through his works." We have looked again

through his "Forest," and his "Underwoods," and have not been so fortunate as to meet with even a few that can be pronounced their equals. There is, however, one song of exquisite prettiness and softness, beginning

"See the chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my Lady rideth :"

And ending with a stanza which deserves quotation:
"Have you seen but a bright lilly grow

Before rude hands have touch'd it?
Have you mark'd but the fall o' the snow
Before the soil hath smutch'd it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
Or swan's down ever?

Or have smelt o' the bud of the briar,
Or the nard in the fire?

Or have tasted the bag of the bee?

O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!"

But in love-odes he is generally inferior to Carew; and what we have of his in devotional poetry is technical and cold, and is far exceeded by Habington, in those noble paraphrases of texts from the psalmist of Israel, which have not yet obtained their due regard and praise from the critics on English literature. Of the higher style of lyric poetry, Jonson has left us a specimen in his "Ode on the Death of Sir H. Morison."

"Nothing," observes Mr. Gifford, "but ignorance of this noble ode can excuse the critics from Dryden downwards, for attributing the introduction of the Pindaric Ode in our language to Cowley. Cowley mistook the very nature of Pindar's poetry, at least of such as has come down to us; and, while he professed to imitate the style and manner of his odes, was led away by the ancient allusions to those wild and wonderful strains, of which not a line has reached us."

This is perfectly just; but they who hear from Mr. Gifford, that Jonson" has caught the very soul of Pindar," will naturally expect, amidst the tracts of ethical instruction and philosophic reflexion, some of those spots of greenness, which, as in the instance of the state of the Blessed in the happy isles, smile suddenly upon us, fresh and vivid, and sprinkled with ethereal dew. This elegiac ode resembles those of Pindar in the regular, yet digressive, plan of disposition; the grave harmony of the metre; and the interspersion of illustrative imagery; but the resemblance is to those odes, in which the Theban poet has more of his moralizing tone, and less of that "air and fire, which make his verses clear:" one stanza is, indeed, conceived in the best manner of Pindar:

"It is not growing, like a tree

In bulk, doth make men better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear:
A lilly of a day

Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant and flower of light:
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be."

It has been long considered as an infallible mark of good taste to carp at Ben Jonson's translations. We shall, therefore, say a few words on them. Denham's metaphysical antithesis of poesy and language led the way in precept, and Pope's Homer in practice, to the mode of florid paraphrase and feeble licentiousness of imitation. Lord Woodhouselee has commended Pope for improving Homer, and has instanced the moonlight scene, which Pope did not understand, and of which he has marred the distinctness, violated the silence, and disturbed the solitary interest. The secret is not to refine upon the original, but to copy him with strength and exactness; exactness, however, in the modern canons, is thought to be incompatible with strength. Mr. Gifford himself, in the strong conciseness of his Juvenal, has practically refuted this dogma among the modern translators; among the old, Ben Jonson.

They who trouble themselves to form any idea of the art of poetry of Horace, as Englished by Ben Jonson, conceive of it as tame, quaint, forced, and pedantic; whereas it is nothing of all this. Roscommon's remark, that "the constraint of rhyme and a literal translation (to which Horace in his book declares himself an enemy) has made him want a comment in many places," is every way unfounded. Horace, so far from forbidding literal translation, takes it for granted as proper; but he is not giving rules for translation at all. He tells us merely, that we are not to treat of subjects, in which other poets have preceded us, with that fidelity which would be proper in a translator. The sense of Horace is perfectly clear in Jonson; the rhyme is so far from shackling him, that his expressions are remarkably easy and unlaboured: his verses run into each other, according to the manner of the mixed couplets of his age; but with a harmony and freedom exceeding that of his contemporaries; and are more rhythmical, more varied in their pauses, than the blank numbers of his rival, Roscommon, who was not constrained by rhyme. We take a passage at random:

"Cato's and Ennius' tongues have lent much worth And wealth unto our language, and brought forth