SPECIMEN OF BACON'S PROSE.

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even where a lighter style would better suit his theme, as in treating of Gardens and Buildings, the "Essays" stand, and have always stood, among the finest works of our prose literature. What Hallam says of this classic book should not be forgotten: "It would be derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite letters, were he unacquainted with the Essays' of Bacon."

6

ON LEARNING.

Learning taketh away the wildness, and barbarism, and fierceness of men's minds: though a little superficial learning doth rather work a contrary effect. It taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the kind, and to accept of nothing but examined and tried. It taketh away vain admiration of anything, which is the root of all weakness: for all things are admired, either because they are new, or because they are great. For novelty, no man wadeth in learning or contemplation thoroughly, but with that printed in his heart, "I know nothing." Neither can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that goeth behind the curtain, and adviseth well of the motion. And as for magnitude, as Alexander the Great, after that he was used to great armies, and the great conquests of the spacious provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of Greece, of some fights and services there, which were commonly for a passage or fort or some walled town at the most, he said, "It seemed to him that he was advertised of the battle of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of;"-so certainly, if a man meditate upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it, the divineness of souls excepted, will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, or adverse fortune; which is one of the greatest impediments of virtue, and imperfections of manners. For if a man's mind be deeply seasoned with the consideration of the mortality and corruptible nature of things, he will easily concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day, and saw a woman weeping for her pitcher of earth that was broken; and went forth the next day, and saw a woman weeping for her son that was dead; and thereupon said, "Yesterday I saw a fragile thing broken, to-day I have seen a mortal thing die." And therefore Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears together.

A SQUARE time-worn stone, bearing the words, “O rare Ben Jonson," marks the spot where the remains of a great English dramatist, second only to his friend Shakspere, lie buried in Westminster. Not far from this simple but suggestive monument the poet was born in 1574, a few days after the death of his father, who was a clergyman. A hard and rugged life lay before the fatherless boy, and his sorrows soon began. His mother having married a bricklayer—not so great a descent from her former marriage as might at first sight seem to us, for the lower clergy were then the equals only of servants and tradesmen-young Ben was taken from his studies at Westminster School, and forced to carry a hod among his father's workmen. The sturdy boy, who had a soul above brick and mortar, rebelled at this, and in no long time was shouldering a pike on the battle-grounds of the Low Countries. The rough life that he saw, during this phase of his changeful story, had a powerful influence upon his character and habits. When in later times he mingled among the silken courtiers of Elizabeth and James, he never lost a certain bearishness of temper and braggart loudness of tone, which he had caught in early days in the revels of the bivouac and the guard-room. His short soldier-life over, he appears to have entered St. John's at Cambridge, where he stayed some little time.

And then, driven perhaps by poverty, perhaps by natural tastes and the desire to shine, he went on the stage, making his first appearance on the boards of a theatre near Clerkenwell. This

plunge into the troubled waters of an actor's life might have cured him of his passion for the stage, for it was a miserable failure. But he clung to the vocation he had embraced; and to his poor earnings as a third or fourth rate actor he began to add the still more precarious gains of a theatrical author. And all this when he was only twenty years of age.

So early did he find his life's work. Some men, whose names hold an honourable place among our chief English writers, scarcely taking pen in hand, except to write a common letter, until the snow of age began to fall upon their heads, have produced their great works in the winter of their days. Ben Jonson was not of these: almost before the down of manhood had darkened on his lip, the hand, that had already held the trowel and the pike, took up the pen.

A.D.

A duel with a brother actor, whom unhappily he killed, exposed him to the charge of murder, and he lay for some time in jail. Soon after his release he sprang at once into fame by the production of his well-known and still-acted play, Every Man in his Humour. How strange it seems to us, who reverence the name so deeply, to read that William Shakspere was one of the company who acted this comedy at the Globe in 1598 1598. We can hardly realize the fact that the writer of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" was only a third-rate player. Jonson followed up this successful hit with eager industry, and for some time every year produced its play. The greatest men of the day became the intimates of the roistering author. At the Mermaid Club, founded by Raleigh, and adorned by the membership of Shakspere and other great brothers of the dramatic craft, Jonson was a leading wit. Like his burly namesake of the eighteenth century, he was a man of solid learning and great conversational powers; and his social qualities, kindled by the old sack, which he loved too well, made him a most attractive companion. The Falcon at Southwark and the Old Devil at Temple Bar were the favourite tavern-haunts of Ben and his brilliant friends. This rough and roaring life was chequered by several noteworthy events.

The publication of a comedy called Eastward Hoe,

164

THE DEATH OF JONSON.

which in 1605 proceeded from the pens of a literary partnership of three-Jonson, Chapman, and Marston,-excited the anger of King James by some hits at the unwelcome presence of the Scotch in England. For his share in this work Jonson went to prison with his friends, and for some time our poet's nose and ears were in considerable danger. But the storm blowing over, he regained his freedom. In 1619, after receiving the appointment of poetlaureate, he travelled on foot to Scotland, whence his family had come, and there he paid a three weeks' visit to Drummond of Hawthornden.

The composition of court masques and lighter poems filled up some easy years of Jonson's life, which was agreeably varied by visits to his distinguished friends, correspondence with learned men at home and abroad, and the collection of rare books-a pursuit in which he took especial pleasure. But debt and the ravages of paralysis upon a frame he had never spared, cast a gloom over his last years. The malice of a former friend, Inigo Jones, the architect, shut the golden doors of court life against the poor sick laureate. His salary, never well paid, came dribbling in so slowly that he was compelled to write begging letters to some of his noble friends; who, to their honour be it said, did not refuse their aid. So the bright life dimmed, and flickered, and went out. On the 6th of August 1637 he died; and three days after was buried in an upright posture in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. A workman, hired for eighteen pence by the charity of a passer-by, cut upon the grave-stone covering the poet's clay the four short words which form his only epitaph.

The works of Jonson, numbering in all about fifty, may be classed under four heads: his Tragedies, stately, cold, and classical; his Comedies, full of the coloured fire of real life, and abounding in varieties of character, which are rendered the more striking by a very decided tinge of exaggeration;* his Masques and Interludes, forming the bulk of his writings, and nearly all produced during his brilliant days at court; and his finely written Prose notes,

*He has hence been styled the "humorous poet; "not in our modern sense of that word, but as a skilful painter of those subtile shades of temper which are called "humours."

THE CHIEF WORKS OF JONSON.

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containing some good sound criticism upon Bacon and other men of literary renown. Studding his dramatic works, like gems of the purest water and the finest cutting, are numerous songs, which have not been surpassed by any of our English lyrists. His principal tragedies are Catiline and Sejanus, founded upon two of the darkest pages of Roman history. Every Man in his Humour, The Alchemist, and Volpone are his finest comedies; and an unfinished pastoral, The Sad Shepherd, touched with the gloom of his dying days, may well stand beside these works, if we can judge of the half-done picture, when the colours are dry upon the palette, and the brush has fallen for ever from the painter's hand. His prose notes bore the odd title, Timber; or, Discoveries made upon Men and Matter.

Bobadil.-I will tell you, sir, by the way of private, and under seal, I am a gentleman, and live here obscure, and to myself; but were I known to her Majesty and the lords (observe me), I would undertake, upon this poor head and life, for the public benefit of the state, not only to spare the entire lives of her subjects in general, but to save the one-half, nay, three parts of her yearly charge in holding war, and against what enemy soever. I would select nineteen

more, to myself, throughout the land; gentlemen they should be of good spirit, strong and able constitution; I would choose them by an instinct, a character that I have: and I would teach these nineteen the special rules, as your punto, your reverso, your stoccata, your imbroccato, your passado, your montanto, till they could all play very near, or altogether as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong, we twenty would come into the field the tenth of March, or thereabouts, and we would challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not in their honour refuse us; well, we would kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them too; and thus would we kill every man his twenty a day, that's twenty score; twenty score, that's two hundred; two hundred a day five days, a thousand; forty thousand; forty times five, five times forty, two hundred days kills them all up by computation. And this will I venture my poor gentleman-like carcass t perform, provided there be no treason practised on us, by fair and discreet manhood; that is, civilly by the sword.