relater Fuller describes as follows: "Many were the wit-contests betwixt him (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare (like the latter) lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing; could turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." The comparison would have perhaps been more striking, if Fuller had spoken of two fencers, the one of whom, confiding in his superior skill, casts away his shield and affects to be off his guard, in order to hit his unwieldy antagonist the more quickly and unexpectedly. For in combats of that description mother-wit will always rely upon its own resources; heavy scholarship takes the field with a store of ponderous authorities.

This account of Fuller's sets our whole question in its proper light. We shall not condemn Ben Jonson for partaking of the common propensity to lay hold on the appearing weaknesses of others, nor blame him much for valuing himself upon what he supposed Shakspeare to be deficient in. He is related by Drummond to have said, "Shakspeare wanted art and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered ship-wrack in Bohemia, where is no sea near by 100 miles." There is no reason to disbelieve his having made use of this example of Shakspeare's supposed ingnorance, but we are entitled by the customary strain of his criticism, to set light by it and question the unqualified harshness and unkindness of those expressions given by Drummond. His judgment of Shakspeare preserved in his Discoveries sounds quite otherwise. "I remember, says he, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature;

had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was` necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius.*) His wit was in his own power, would the rule if it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, "Caesar, thou dost me wrong. He replied, "Caesar did never wrong but with just cause," and such like; which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." Here we have a frank acknowledgment of Shakspeare's poetical merits, and along with it the reproaches of that school-doctrine prevailing for more than a century, up to the time of our subject's namesake Samuel Jonson, and it would be a crying injustice to impeach Ben Jonson of envy and personal malice towards Shakspeare rather than of unacquaintance with those principles of criticism traced out long after him. Nay, we shall be entirely reconciled to his many sournesses, when we read his poem "To the memory of my beloved Master William Shakspeare," in which he assigns his late rival a place above all English poets of all ages as well as above the admired Greek, and occasionally breaks into that enraptured eulogy frequently made use of as a motto:

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,

To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!**)

*) Of Ben Jonson himself, on the other hand, Fuller says: "His parts were not so ready to run of themselves as able to answer the spur; so that it may be truly said of him, that he had an elaborate wit, wrought out by his own industry."

**) We shall, for the convenience of the reader, transcribe here the whole poem, and will do so hereafter as often as occasion offers, in order to enable the reader to form a judgment of the style and manner of Jonson.

To draw no envy, Shakspeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame:
While I confess thy writings to be such,
As neither man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:

Having said thus much, we might easily wave this subject and return to our principal question, but for a singular instance of crafty criticism exhibited by the author of "Ben Jonson und seine Schule, the most honourable Count Wolf-Baudissin. If it be of no other use, it will, at least, excuse us from entering into more details concerning the adversaries of our poet. Count

For silliest ignorance on these may light,

Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance ;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd, or whore,
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.

I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!
MY SHAKSPEARE rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie

A little further off, to make thee room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportion'd Muses:
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlow's mighty line.

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I will not seek
For names: but call forth thund'ring Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,

To live again, to hear thy buskin tread,

And shake a stage: or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome
Send forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!

Baudissin undoubtedly deserves the highest praise for his taste and skill in translating, and we should have a more readable German Shakspeare, if, instead of consulting Mr. Tieck, he had relied on his own judgment or applied to such a master both of the English and German languages as the late Mr. Schlegel. But he has, I am sorry to say, in all his literary enterprizes

And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,

Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,

As they were not of nature's family.
But must I not give nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion: and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he, thinks to frame;

Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;

For a good poet 's made, as well as born.

And such wert thou! Look how the father's face

Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines

In his well turned, and true filed lines;

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.

Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were

To see thee in our water yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James!

But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere

Advanced, and made a constellation there!

Shine forth, thou Star of poets, and with rage,

Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light,

too closely adhered to that notable depraver of good sense and taste, as not to contract some of his peculiarities. Jonson's "Every man in his humour," first acted in 1596, is introduced by a prologue apparently written for the first representation, and running thus:

Though need make many poets, and some such

As art and nature have not better'd much;

Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,
As he dare serve the ill customs of the age,
Or purchase your delight at such a. rate,
As, for it, he himself must justly hate:

To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars,
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see
One such to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,

Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please:
Nor nimble squib is seen to make a feard
The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard
To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they 're ill.
I mean such errors as you'll all confess,

By laughing at them, they deserve no less:

Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then,
You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men.

These verses the noble count asserts to be composed, in order to ridicule Shakspeare, in the year 1616, when Ben Jonson published a collected edition of his plays.*) "We ask, exclaims he with great warmth, we ask any impartial reader, if it be possible not to regard these verses as the most manifest persiflage on the Histories, the King Lear, the Cymbeline, the

*) Ben Jonson und seine Schule, tom. I., p. 439.