AN ELEGY ON

BEN JONSON.

DARE not, learned Shade, bedew thy herse
With tears, unless that impudence, in verse,
Would cease to be a sin; and what were
crime

In prose, would be no injury in rhyme.
My thoughts are so below, I fear to act
A sin, like their black envy, who detract;
As oft as I would character in speech

That worth, which silent wonder scarce can reach.
Yet, I that but pretend to learning, owe
So much to thy great fame, I ought to shew
My weakness in thy praise; thus to approve,
Although it be less wit, is greater love :
'Tis all our fancy aims at; and our tongues
At best, will guilty prove of friendly wrongs.
For, who would image out thy worth, great Ben,
Should first be, what he praises; and his pen
Thy active brains should feed, which we can't have,
Unless we could redeem thee from the grave.
The only way that's left now, is to look
Into thy papers, to read o'er thy book;
And then remove thy fancies, there doth lie
Some judgment, where we cannot make, t' apply
Our reading some, perhaps, may call this wit,
And think, we do not steal, but only fit

degree of Bachelor of Arts, and was admitted of Grays Inn the 6th August, 1615. In 1617 he joined with his mother Joan May and his cousin Richard May of Eslington, in alienating the estate of Mayfield to John Baker, Esq., whose descendants have ever since enjoyed it. May's attachment to Charles I. and his subsequent apostacy, his dramatic writings and translations, and his history of the parliament, are sufficiently known. He died—already deaddrunk-the 13th November, 1650. GILCHRIST.

Thee to thyself; of all thy marble wears,
Nothing is truly ours, except the tears.

O could we weep like thee! we might convey New breath, and raise men from their beds of clay Unto a life of fame; he is not dead,

Who by thy Muses hath been buried.

Thrice happy those brave heroes, whom I meet
Wrapt in thy writings, as their winding sheet !
For, when the tribute unto nature due,
Was paid, they did receive new life from you;
Which shall not be undated, since thy breath
Is able to immortal, after death.

Thus rescued from the dust, they did ne'er see
True life, until they were entomb'd by thee.

You that pretend to courtship, here admire
Those pure and active flames, love did inspire:
And though he could have took his mistress' ears,
Beyond faint sighs, false oaths, and forced tears;
His heat was still so modest, it might warm,
But do the cloister'd votary no harm.
The face he sometimes praises, but the mind,
A fairer saint, is in his verse enshrin'd.

He that would worthily set down his praise,
Should study lines as lofty as his plays.
The Roman worthies did not seem to fight
With braver spirit, than we see him write;
His pen their valour equals; and that age
Receives a greater glory from our stage.
Bold Catiline, at once Rome's hate and fear,
Far higher in his story doth appear;
The flames those active furies did inspire,
Ambition and Revenge, his better fire
Kindles afresh; thus lighted, they shall burn,
Till Rome to its first nothing do return.

Brave fall, had but the cause been likewise good,
Had he so, for his country, lost his blood!
Some like not Tully in his own; yet while

All do admire him in thy English style,
I censure not; I rather think, that we
May well his equal, thine we ne'er shall see.

DUDLEY DIGGS.9

TO THE IMMORTALITY OF MY LEARNED FRIEND, MASTER JONSON.

PARLIED once with death, and thought to
yield,

When thou advised'st me to keep the field;
Yet if I fell, thou wouldst upon my herse,

Breathe the reviving spirit of thy verse.

I live, and to thy grateful Muse would pay
A parallel of thanks, but that this day
Of thy fair rights, thorough th' innumerous light,
That flows from thy adorers, seems as bright,
As when the sun darts through his golden hair,
His beams diameter into the air.

In vain I then strive to encrease thy glory,
These lights that go before make dark my story.
Only I'll say, heaven gave unto thy pen
A sacred power, immortalizing men,
And thou dispensing life immortally,
Dost now but sabbatise from work, not die.

GEORGE FORTESCUE.1

9 Dudley Digges, the son of sir Dudley Digges, master of the rolls, was born at Chilham in Kent in 1612. He became a commoner in University College, Oxford, in 1629, took his B. A. degree in 1631, the year following was made probationer-fellow of All Souls, as founder's-kin, and in 1635 was licensed M. A. He was a man of strong parts and considerable attainments, and was firmly attached to the service of the king. He died at an early age, of a malignant fever called the Camp disease, and was buried in the chapel of All Soul's College, October 1643. GILCHRIST.

I am unable to mention any thing concerning George For

AN ELEGY UPON THE DEATH OF

BEN JONSON,

THE MOST EXCELLENT OF ENGLISH POETS.

HAT doth officious fancy here prepare?—
Be't rather this rich kingdom's charge and

care

To find a virgin quarry, whence no hand E'er wrought a tomb on vulgar dust to stand, And thence bring for this work materials fit : Great Jonson needs no architect of wit; Who forc'd from art, receiv'd from nature more Than doth survive him, or e'er liv'd before.

And, poets, with what veil soe'er you hide,
Your aim, 'twill not be thought your grief, but pride,
Which, that your cypress never growth might want,
Did it near his eternal laurel plant.

Heaven at the death of princes, by the birth
Of some new star, seems to instruct the earth,
How it resents our human fate. Then why
Didst thou, wit's most triumphant monarch, die
Without thy comet? Did the sky despair
To teem a fire, bright as thy glories were?
Or is it by its age, unfruitful grown,

And can produce no light, but what is known,
A common mourner, when a prince's fall
Invites a star t' attend the funeral?

But those prodigious sights only create,

Talk for the vulgar: Heaven, before thy fate,

tescue, further than his having some commendatory verses prefixed to Rivers's Devout Rhapsodies, 4to. 1648; Sir John Beaumont's Bosworth Field, 8vo. 1629; and sir Thomas Hawkins's translation of some of Horace's Odes, 4th edition 8vo. 1638. GILCHRIST.

That thou thyself might'st thy own dirges hear,
Made the sad stage close mourner for a year;
The stage, which (as by an instinct divine,
Instructed,) seeing its own fate in thine,
And knowing how it ow'd its life to thee,
Prepared itself thy sepulchre to be;
And had continued so, but that thy wit,
Which as the soul, first animated it,

Still hovers here below, and ne'er shall die,
Till time be buried in eternity.

But you! whose comic labours on the stage,
Against the envy of a froward age

Hold combat! how will now your vessels sail,
The seas so broken and the winds so frail,
Such rocks, such shallows threat'ning everywhere,
And Jonson dead, whose art your course might steer?
Look up! where Seneca and Sophocles,
Quick Plautus and sharp Aristophanes,
Enlighten yon bright orb! doth not your eye,
Among them, one far larger fire, descry,

At which their lights grow pale? 'tis Jonson, there
He shines your Star, who was your Pilot here.
W. HABINGTON.2

2 William Habington, the son of Thomas Habington of Hendlip in Worcestershire by Mary Parker, sister to the lord Mounteagle to whom the mysterious letter was sent by which the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, was born at his father's seat on the 5th November, 1605. He was educated in the religion of his father at Paris and St. Omer's. He married Lucy, daughter of lord Powis, the Castara of his muse, and died on the 30th November, 1654. The poems of Habington, though aspiring to none of the higher classes of poetry, are tolerably musical in their numbers, and indicate a purity of morals and gentleness of manners in their author: they must have been at one period popular, since they passed through three impressions between 1635 and 1640. Indeed, his merits have been rewarded with unusual liberality, his comedy found a place in Dodsley's Collection of old Plays; his life of Edward IV. was admitted into bishop Kennet's compleat history of England, and the volume of poems before spoken of has been lately reprinted. GILCHRIST.