J O N S O N. 



225 



i ttnee, bles a-year. King James seems to have looked with 

 no ordinary degree of favour on the learning and inge- 

 nuity of Jonson ; but, at an early period of the reign, 

 our poet was accidentally involved in a disagreeable af- 

 fair, which did not seem to augur that he should ever 

 be the favourite poet of the court. He had taken some 

 slight 'hare, along with Marston and Chapman, in the 

 comedy of Eastward Hoe; a play in which some satiri- 

 cal expressions about the Scotch gave ?o much offence, 

 that Chapman and Marston were committed to prison 

 as its authors. Jonson, though he had no share in the 

 offensive passage, thought himself bound in honour to 

 share the fate of his associates, and voluntarily accom- 

 panied them to prison. They were all speedily libera- 

 ted, but not before a report had gone abroad, that it 

 was intended to punish them by slitting their ears and 

 note*. Had this barbarous sentence been passed, the 

 mother of our poet intended to have given him a poi- 

 son, and to have drank it along with him. From MU It 

 a parent, it has been justly observed, that he must have 

 derived no small share of that personal resolution which 

 so atrvinfrty marked his character. 



i n.i (for we-need not stop to notice the date* 

 t masques and entertainments) was first acted in 

 and unfavourably received. In its first state, the 

 author himself informs us that another hand had a 

 good share in it ; but when recast, with alterations en- 

 tirely his own. it was again brought on the stage, and 

 experienced a much better recvii'.ion. It wa not |mb- 

 1 till I 1 '.*". It ii remarkable, that it is not divided 

 into scenes in any of the editions ; it has neither exits 

 i:'.r entrance*, and is, upon the whole, the most invol- 

 ved and puzzling drama, in its internal arrangement*, 

 that was < nut haa all the learning 



of Jonson, and it alto displays the peculiar force and 

 loftiness of mind that belonged to him. It has pas* 

 sages of great eloquence, and a masculine tone of mo- 

 rality ; but its merit is more hiitorical and oratorical 

 than, strictly speaking, dramatic. We come, how- 

 (anno IG05) to the very brightest period of his 

 dramatic career, when, in the course of a few yean, 

 successively came out, his Yolponr, or FOJT; his Epi- 

 cene, or Silent Woman ; and his Alcfiymitl. The Fox 

 was fir* acted at the Globe theatre in Ifi05. It kept 

 the stage till the dispemion of the players by the Pu- 

 ritans : Was revived at the Restoration, and made its 

 last appearance in the life-time of the elder Colman, 

 but unfortunately at a period when the dramatic taste 

 of the age was giving way. not to the hatred of tl 

 ritans, but to the growing affection of the public for 

 the exhibition of quadruped* on the stage. The Epi- 

 <>T .VI/TM/ Woman, alo continued a popular fa- 

 .te in the best times of the stage. Oarrirk attempt- 

 ed to retrieve it also from the neglect which it began 

 to experience in the latter part of the last century, but 

 is said to have ber: isful I roro what is re- 



corded of his power of acting in Abel Drugger, it must 

 be supposed that he succeeded better with the Ale hy- 

 Indeed, we cannot willingly believe public taste 

 to be at any period so degraded as to make the Alchy. 

 mitl unwelcome. The Akhymul ha*, indeed, been 

 well pronounced in the words of Tate, * to be ast< 

 ing. It has a full popular breadth of humour a vast 

 strength and well uij'i-'.rd complexity of character* 

 and a rich minuteness of information respecting the 

 profound mummeries of alchemy, that leave the mind 



as much amused with the learning, as exhilarated by Jonson, 

 the wit and humour of the poet. He speaks like an Bcn - 

 initiated mystic in alchemy, whilst he makes us laugh """V" 

 at its exposed imposture ; and he exhibits so much 

 knowledge of the pretended secrets of the science, that 

 we feel as if he had taken to pieces in our presence 

 some curious automaton, which had deceived the eyes 

 of the ignorant with an imitation of life. 



Catiline, which followed the Alchymisl, was brought 

 out in lO'l 1. It was not, as Mr. Malone asserts, deser- 

 vedly damned ; it met, indeed, with opposition, but 

 continued on the stage until the civil wars. Whatever 

 may l>e the faults of Catiline, as a tragedy, it has pages 

 of Roman eloquence, which neither deserves to be 

 damned nor forgotten. We allude particularly to the 

 speeches of Petreius, which are not, as has been rashly 

 asserted, mere translations from the classics. That one 

 which begins with the following lines is wholly origi- 

 nil: 



The itnitf and needs of Catiline being such 

 A* he mart fight with one of the two armies 

 That then had near iiickwed him ; it pleu'd fate 

 To make u the object of his desperate choice. 

 Wherein the danger almost pained the honour. 

 And ai he rose the day grew black with him, 

 And Fate demoded nearer to the earth, 

 Ai if ahe meant to hide the name of things 

 I'nder her wing*, and make the world ber quarry. 

 At tlii we KHM'd, lot one small minute'. May 

 Had left it to be inquired what Home was, 

 And. at we ought, arm'd in the confidence 

 ur great came, in form of bank Mood ; 

 Whikt Catiline came on. not with the face 

 Of any man. but of a pubbc rain. 

 Hi* countenance WM a civil war itjclf, 

 And all hi. bot had .landing in their looks 

 The palrne of the death that wai to come ; 

 Yet cried they out like vulture*, and urg'd on, 

 Ai if they would precipitate our fate*. 



In the same year King James settled upon Jonson a 

 pension for life, of a hundred marks per annum. This 

 Has been in courtesy termed his appointment to be lau- 

 reate, and perhaps it was to. Hitherto, any one who 

 chose to write verses for the court, called himself, and 

 was often called by others, the laureate ; but the title 

 haa since been confined to those who receive a pen. 

 sion. 



In the summer of 1618, our poet made a journey to 

 Scotland ; and in the April of the following year, alter 

 having resided for several months on visits to different 

 noblemen and gentlemen who shewed him hospitality, 

 reserved his last visit for his poetical acquaintance U'il. 

 liam Drummond of Hawthornden. From the record 

 of his conversations with Drummond, no pains have 

 been spared to draw matter of detraction upon his cha- 

 racter. It has certainly been Jonson 's fate to be calum- 

 niated. His memory has absolutely been loaded with 

 persecutions sufficient to shake the confidence of a 

 mind conscious of its own virtue in that justice which, 

 it is common to say, that posterity exerts towards the 

 virtuous. At the late vindications of Jonson's memory, 

 who wi 'ild not rejoice ? It is from no wish to cavil at 

 those vindications, that we beg leave to differ in some 

 points from the sentiments which Jonson's latest editor 

 .iigraphtr has expressed respecting Drummond. 

 Jonson came to the house of Drummond, who took 

 note* of his conversation, and threw them into his re- 



Talc'. Preface tt Onto W no Duke. 



VOL. XII.. PART I. 



