peevishness and discontent, and his mind formed for activity. and exertion became a victim of morbid melancholy. Feeble and insensible minds may accommodate themselves to whatever place they came by through accident, and even digest the consciousness of their personal insignificance: but the inward call of talent cannot be disregarded with impuuity, and every step leading one off the native bent of one's being, carries one away from happiness and the headspring of morality, - a day-work tallying with one's disposition, by which the character of the individual is sunk in that of the profession. A man like Ben Jonson, uncommonly gifted, and driven on by violent passions; having once swerved from his natural bias, must of necessity have been the farther carried away from that anchor-ground, from the consciousness of his abilities, and his strong desire of ⚫ sensual gratification: he meant to enforce at last the applause denied him; the cold reception he met with, far from cautioning or puzzling him, on the contrary spurred him on; possessed as he was of an iron perseverance and of an extensive learning, of such qualities as survive the failures and mortifications of the moment. Few of his plays had a long run, some visibly displeased the public. But his pride bridling up against submitting to the judgments of the mass whom he had once so confidently looked to for favour and approbation, he drowned their voices, and, perhaps, his own, in foolish selfapplause, as if he were the one called and chosen amidst a general infatuation of the public, and appealed in his prefaces to the happy few who would be able to comprehend and appreciate his genius.*) These were not wanting, indeed, as we may

* He was as unhappy in his efforts at modesty as in his self-praise. His eulogy on Camden begins thus:

Camden! most reverend head, to whom I owe

All that I am in arts, all that I know;
How nothing 's that!

Of his poems written in recommendation of himself the most memorable and most severely punished is the ode to himself", in which he vented his indignation upon the occasion of the failure of the New Inn“ (1629): Come leave the loathed stage,

And the more loathsome age;

Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,

gather from the highflown encomiums bestowed upon him in the "Jonsonus Virbius": which, perhaps, induced Count Baudissin to speak of a Jonsonian school: but none of them could stop the current of popular thought and opinion which had once buoyed up the poetry of Shakspeare, and now broke through all obstacles into a new channel.

Jonson ought to have been subservient to that new spirit coming, by degrees, to reign over the age; nature seemed to have designated him for a leader in that war of opinions which under the reign of Charles ended in a political revolution. Whatever he may declare to the contrary, it was need that

Usurp the chair of wit!

Indieting and arraigning every day,'
Something they call a play.

Let their fastidious, vain

Commission of the brain

Run on and rage, sweat, censure and condemn;
They were not made for thee, less thou for them.

Say that thou pour'st them wheat,

And they will acorns eat;

Twere simple fury still thyself to waste
On such as have no taste!

To offer them a surfeit of pure bread,
Whose appetites are dead!

No, give them grains their fill,
Husks, draff to drink and swill:

If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine,
Envy them not, their palate's with the swine.

No doubt some mouldy tale,

Like Pericles, and stale

As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish
Scraps, out of every dish

Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub,
May keep up the Play-club:

There, sweepings do as well

As the best-order'd meal;

For who the relish of these guests will fit,
Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit.

And much good do't you then:

Brave plush and velvet-men,

Ges. Abh. v. Dr. Aler. Schmidt.

9

made him a poet and compelled him to disregard the signs and symptoms of the time. He supposed, perhaps, that a fine head must be fit for all; but was to learn by experience that the most eminent abilities, if taking a wrong course, will achieve but little. When he composed his most famous dramas, the cheerful and pleasurable time of Queen Elizabeth grew towards an end: not because the Puritans, adopting the rigid ceremonial of the Hebrew sabbath, declaimed against the public festivities - as is commonly asserted by way of explaining this change -, but because the people began to disrelish them, and a time of troubles and cares was setting in. A second Shakspeare, twenty

Can feed on orts; and, safe in your stage clothes,

Dare quit, upon your oaths,

The stagers and the stage-wrights too, your peers,
Of larding your large ears
With their foul comic socks,

Wrought upon twenty blocks;

Which if they are torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough,
The gamesters share your gilt, and you their stuff.

Leave things so prostitute,

And take the Alcaic flute;

Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre;

Warm thee hy Pindar's fire;

And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold
Ere years have made thee old,
Strike that disdainful heat
Throughout, to their defeat,

As curious fools, and envious of thy strain;
May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.
But when they hear thee sing

The glories of thy king,

His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men:
They may, bloodshaken then,

Feel such a fleshquake to possess their powers
As they shall cry "Like ours,
In sound of peace or wars,

No harp e'er hit the stars,

In tuning forth the acts of his sweet reign;

And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his Wain.“

To this Owen Feltham made a keen reply, from which we take leave to extract the following stanzas:

years later, would have been as great an impossibility as nowa-days with us a second Goethe. Well did Shakspeare perceive the widening contrast of reality and idealism, but what he observed, filled him not with a desire to rank with one of the .combatant parties, but with a longing for death.

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,

As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

Come leave this saucy way
Of baiting those that pay

Dear for the sight of your declining wit:
'Tis known it is not fit,

That a sale poet, just contempt once thrown,
Should cry up thus his own.

I wonder by what dower,

Or patent, you had power

From all to rape a judgment. Let 't suffice,
Had you been modest, you'd been granted wise.

'Tis known you can do well,

And that you do excell,

As a Translator: But when things require
A genius, and fire,

Not kindled heretofore by others pains;
As oft you've wanted brains,

And art to strike the white,

As you have levell'd right:

Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal,
You bellow, rave, and spatter round your gall.

Alcaeus lute had none,

Nor loose Anacreon

Ere taught so bold assuming of the bays,
When they deserv'd no praise."

To rail men into approbation,

Is new to yours alone;

And prospers not: for know,

Fame is as coy, as you

Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove

A rape on her, shall gather scorn, not love.

etc. etc.

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:

Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. *)

This poem undesignedly gives utterance to that general uneasiness and dissatisfaction gaining insensibly upon the popular mind and cankering the buds and germs of poetry. A new era of existence then waked new intellectual powers, and while Ben Jonson was obstinately snatching at a withering laurel, those men grew up and ripened, to whom England owes its political greatness. His attachment to the person, and no less to the pension, of the king prejudiced him against the righteousness and moderation of the parliamentary and popular opposition; and instead of examining into the state of affairs, and of following the advice of an unbribed conscience, he chose rather to cringe to king Charles, and dim the unhappy monarch's mind with fantastical conceits, or beguile him by masques and melodrames into sweet forgetfulness. **) At an advanced age, and when the dangers increased under the eye, and all foreboded a

*) Sonnet 66.

** Of Jonson's Entertainments" which we had not room enough here to discourse on at large, we shall speak, perhaps, at another time. Of his flatteries regarding King Charles one specimen may suffice:

To Thomas Earl of Suffolk.

Since men have left to do praiseworthy things,
Most think all praises flatteries: but truth brings
That sound and that authority with her name,
As, to be raised by her, is only fame.
Stand high, then, Howard, high in eyes of men,
High in thy blood, thy place; but highest then,
When, in men's wishes, so thy virtues wrought,
As all thy honours were by them first sought:
And thou design'd to be the same thou art,
Before thou wert it, in each good man's heart:

Which, by no less confirm'd, than thy king's choice,
Proves that is God's, which was the people's voice.

(Epigr. LXVII.)