In 1613 he made a short trip to the Continent, and, being in Paris, was introduced to the Cardinal du Perron, who, in compliment to his learning, showed him his translation of Virgil. Ben, according to Drummond's anecdotes, told the cardinal that it was nought; a criticism by all accounts as just as it was brief.

Of his two next pieces, 'Bartholomew Fair' (in 1614), and 'The Devil is an Ass' (in 1616), the former was scarcely a decline from the zenith of his comic excellence, the latter certainly was, if it was meant to ridicule superstition, it effected its object by a singular process of introducing a devil upon the stage. After this he made a long secession of nine years from the theatre, during which he composed some of his finest masques for the court, and some of those works which were irrecoverably lost in the fire that consumed his study. Meanwhile he received from his sovereign a pension of 100 marks, which in courtesy has been called making him poet laureat. The title, till then gratuitously assumed, has been since appropriated to his successors in the pension.

The poet's journey to Scotland (1619) awakens many pleasing recollections when we conceive him anticipating his welcome among a people who might be proud of a share in his ancestry, and setting out with manly strength on a journey of 400 miles on foot. We are assured by one who saw him in Scotland that he was treated with respect and affection among the nobility and gentry; nor was the romantic scenery of Scotland lost upon his fancy. From the poem which he meditated on Lochlomond it is seen that he looked on it with a poet's eye. But, unhappily, the meagre anecdotes of Drummond have made this event of his life too prominent by the over-importance which has been attached to them. Drummond, a smooth and sober gentleman, seems to have disliked Jonson's indulgence in that conviviality which Ben had shared with his Fletcher and Shakspeare at the Mermaid. In consequence of those anecdotes Jonson's memory has been damned for brutality, and Drummond's for perfidy. Jonson drank freely at Hawthornden, and talked big things neither incredible nor unpardonable. Drummond's perfidy amounted to writing a letter beginning "Sir," with one very kind sentence in it, to the man whom he had described unfavourably in a private memorandum which he never meant for

publication.

As to Drummond's decoying Jonson under his roof with any premeditated design on his reputation, no one can seriously believe it.*

By the continued kindness of King James our poet was some years after [September 1621] presented with the reversionary grant of the mastership of the revels, but from which he derived no advantage, as the incumbent, Sir John Astley, survived him. It fell, however, to the poet's son, by the permission of Charles I.† King James, in the contemplation of his laureat's speedy accession to this office, was desirous of conferring on him the rank of knighthood; but Jonson was unwilling to accept the distinction, and prevailed on some of his friends about the court to dissuade the monarch from his purpose. After the death of his patron James, necessity brought him again upon the theatre, and he produced The Staple of News,' a comedy of no ordinary merit. Two evils were at this time rapidly gaining on him

"Disease and poverty, fell pair.”

He was attacked by the palsy in 1625, and had also a tendency to dropsy, together with a scorbutic affection inherent from his youth, which pressed upon the decaying powers of his constitution. From the first stroke of the palsy he gradually recovered so far as to be able to write in the following year the antimasque of 'Sophiel.' For the three succeeding years his biographer suspects that the court had ceased to call upon him for his customary contributions, a circumstance which must have aggravated his poverty; and his salary it appears was irregularly paid. Meanwhile his infirmities increased, and he was unable to leave his room. In these circumstances he produced his 'New Inn,' a comedy that was driven from the stage with violent hostility. The epilogue to this piece forms a melancholy contrast

*["The furious invective of Gifford against Drummond for having written private memoranda of his conversations with Ben Jonson, which he did not publish, and which, for aught we know, were perfectly faithful, is absurd. Any one else would have been thankful for so much literary anecdote."-Hallam, Lit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 505.]

[This is not quite correct: the son died in 1635, Jonson in 1637, and Astley a year or so after. Astley thus survived the father, to whom the reversion had been granted, and the son, to whom the transfer had been made. See Gifford, p. cxliv., and Collier's Annals,' vol. ii. p. 89. Sir Henry Herbert was Astley's successor.]

He "whom

to the tone of his former addresses to the audience. the morning saw so great and high "* was now so humble as to speak of his "faint and faltering tongue," and of his "brain set round with pain." An allusion to the king and queen in the same epilogue awoke the slumbering kindness of Charles, who instantly sent him 1007., and, in compliance with the poet's request, also converted the 100 marks of his salary into pounds, and added of his own accord a yearly tierce of canary, Jonson's favourite wine. His Majesty's injunctions for the preparation of masques for the court were also renewed till they were discontinued at the suggestion of Inigo Jones, who preferred the assistance of one Aurelian Townsend to that of Jonson in the furnishing of those entertainments. His means of subsistence were now perhaps both precariously supplied and imprudently expended. The city in 1631, from whom he had always received a yearly allowance of 100 nobles by way of securing his assistance in their pageants, withdrew their pension.† He was compelled by poverty to supplicate the Lord Treasurer Weston for relief. On the rumour of his necessities assistance came to him from various quarters, and from none more liberally than from the Earl of Newcastle. On these and other timely bounties his sickly existence was propped up to accomplish two more comedies, 'The Magnetic Lady,' which appeared in 1632, and 'The Tale of a Tub,' which came out in the following year. In the last of these, the last indeed of his dramatic career, he endeavoured to introduce some ridicule on Inigo Jones through the machinery of a puppet-show. Jones had distinguished himself at the representation of 'The Magnetic Lady' by his boisterous derision. The attempt at retaliation was more natural than dignified; but the court prevented it, and witnessed the representation of the play at Whitehall with coldness. Whatever humour its manners contain was such as courtiers were not likely to understand.

In the spring of 1633 Charles visited Scotland, and on the

*

Sejanus.

[Yesterday the barbarous court of aldermen have withdrawn their chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard, 33l. 6s. 8d."-Jonson to the Earl of Newcastle, 20th December 1631. It was, however, soon restored.]

road was entertained by the Earl of Newcastle with all the luxury and pageantry of loyal hospitality. To grace the entertainment Jonson sent, in grateful obedience to his benefactor the earl, a little interlude, entitled 'Love's Welcome at Welbeck,' and another of the same kind for the king and queen's reception at Bolsover. In despatching the former of these to his noble patron the poet alludes to his past bounties, which had "fallen like the dew of heaven on his necessities."

In his unfinished pastoral drama of 'The Sad Shepherd,' his biographer traces one bright and sunny ray that broke through the gloom of his setting days. Amongst his papers were found the plot and opening of a domestic tragedy on the story of Mortimer Earl of March, together with The Discoveries' and 'Grammar of the English Tongue;' works containing no doubt the philological and critical reflections of more vigorous years, but which it is probable that he must have continued to write till he was near his dissolution. That event took place on the 6th of August, 1637.

THOMAS CARE W.

[Born, 1589. Died, 1639.]

WHEN Mr. Ellis pronounced that Carew certainly died in 1634, he had probably some reasons for setting aside the date of the poet's birth assigned by Lord Clarendon ; but as he has not given them, the authority of a contemporary must be allowed to stand. He was of the Carews of Gloucestershire, a family descended from the elder stock of that name in Devonshire, and a younger brother of Sir Matthew Carew, who was a zealous adherent of the fortunes of Charles I. He was educated at Oxford, but was neither matriculated nor took any degree. After returning from his travels, he was received with distinction at the court of Charles I. for his elegant manners and accomplishments, and was appointed gentleman of the privy chamber, and sewer in ordinary to his Majesty. The rest of his days seem to have passed in affluence and ease, and he died just in time to save him from witnessing the gay and gallant court, to which he had contributed more than the ordinary

literature of a courtier, dispersed by the storm of civil war that was already gathering.*

The want of boldness and expansion in Carew's thoughts and subjects excludes him from rivalship with great poetical names; nor is it difficult, even within the narrow pale of his works, to discover some faults of affectation, and of still more objectionable indelicacy. But among the poets who have walked in the same limited path he is pre-eminently beautiful, and deservedly ranks among the earliest of those who gave a cultivated grace to our lyrical strains. His slowness in composition was evidently that sort of care in the poet which saves trouble to his reader. His poems have touches of elegance and refinement, which their trifling subjects could not have yielded without a delicate and deliberate exercise of the fancy; and he unites the point and polish of later times with many of the genial and warm tints of the elder Muse. Like Waller, he is by no means free from conceit; and one regrets to find him addressing the Surgeon bleeding Celia, in order to tell him that the blood which he draws proceeds not from the fair one's arm, but from the lover's heart. But of such frigid thoughts he is more sparing than Waller; and his conceptions, compared to that poet's, are like fruits of a richer flavour, that have been cultured with the same assiduity.

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

[Born, 1568. Died, 1639.]

SIR HENRY WOTTON was born at Bocton-Malherbe, in Kent. Foreseeing the fall of the Earl of Essex, to whom he was secretary, he left the kingdom, but returned upon the accession of James, and was appointed ambassador to the court of Venice. Towards the close of his life he took deacon's orders, and was nominated provost of Eton.†

* [He is mentioned as alive in 1638 in Lord Falkland's verses on Jonson's death; and as there is no poem by Carew in the 'Jonsonus Virbius,' it is not unlikely that he was dead before its publication.]

"[Sir Henry Wotton's verses of A Happie Lyfe' he hath by heart." Ben Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, edition Laing, p. viii.]