And that which is (as he said) a Picture of himselfe.1 I doubt that Love is rather deafe than blinde, For else it could not bee, That shee Whom I adore so much, should so slight mee, And cast my sute behinde : I'm sure my language to her is as sweet, In numbers of as subtile feete As makes the youngest hee, That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree. "O! but my conscious feares, That flye my thoughts betweene, Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace And all these, through her eies, have stop'd her eares." "To the Honouring Respect To the Friendship contracted with And the Perpetuating the same by all Offices of I, Benjamin Jonson, Whom he hath honoured with the leave to be called his, On a Lover's Dust, made Sand for an Hour-glass." 1 See "My Picture left in Scotland," vol. viii. p. 312. These were headed with the following brief inscription, which may be regarded as a continuation of the longer one in the last note; "Yet that love when it is at full may admit heaping, receive another, and this a Picture of myself." January 19, 1619. He [Fonson] is a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to losse a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (especiallie after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth); a dissembler of ill parts which raigne in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth; thinketh nothing well bot what either he himself or some of his friends and countrymen hath said or done; he is passionately kynde and angry; careless either to gaine or keep; vindicative, but, if he be well answered, at himself." For any religion, as being versed in both. Interpreteth best sayings and deeds often to the worst. Oppressed with fantasie, which hath ever mastered his reason, a generall disease in many Poets. His inven 2 I have no doubt that Drummond, a valetudinarian and "minor poet," was thoroughly borne down by the superior powers, physical and mental, of Jonson, and heartily glad when he saw the last of his somewhat boisterous and somewhat arrogant guest. The picture drawn by one who thus felt himself "sat upon " at every turn was not likely to be a flattering one, and yet there is nothing in the Conversations to lead us to expect that the portrait given at the end of them would be composed almost entirely of shadows. But may we not suppose that on the 24th of January, 1619, on his way to Leith, Jonson may have passed the night at Hawthornden, and full of the idea of returning home, and warmed with the generous liquors, for the abundance and quality of which "The heart of Scotland, Britain's other eye" has always been famous, have forgotten that he was at the table of a prim Scotch laird, and dreaming himself already in the Apollo or at the Mermaid, given vent to each feeling as it rose, whether vanity, scorn, contempt, ridicule, mistrust, boasting, love of country and friends, passionate kindness, regardlessness of money and gain, eagerness to conquer, and readiness to own himself vanquished. Had Drummond waited till time and distance had mellowed his feelings, he would, I am persuaded, have employed some such terms as I have here one by one carefully softened down from the harsher-sounding synonymes actually recorded. tions are smooth and easie; but above all he excelleth in a Translation.3 When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted, ther was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that that play was well named the Silent Woman, ther was never one man to say Plaudite to it.* 3 The spirit of toleration and respect for honest difference of religious opinion, which Jonson had arrived at by study and reflection, must have led him to be regarded as a "very Gallio " by the average Scotchman of his age; while his great and various experience of courts and courtiers doubtless caused him to express anything but blind confidence in the large promises and smooth excuses of the great. What follows about the characteristics of his poetry is quite consistent with what we know to have been his own honest belief, although surely no poet has ever been farther from allowing fancy to master reason. Enough has been already said of his peculiar ideas about translation. 4 This amusing circumstance was in all likelihood derived from Johnson's own mouth, and at the worst is innocent and probable enough; but Gifford (vol. iii. p. 326) must needs say of it, "The story is highly worthy of the hypocrite who picked it up; and not at all discreditable to the loads of malignant trash which the reporter has so industriously heaped together to fling at Jonson !" |