Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

BEN JONSON.

THE life of this great Poet is not a subject of pleasurable retrospect-it was darkened by envy, it was saddened by necessity-and as if his suffering were never to have an end, his WIT is disparaged and GENIUS undervalued, even by that Posterity to which he might be supposed to refer his claims with assurance of justice.

SHAKSPERE is the man before whose contempotary excellence JONSON fades away-To whose injured friendship his fame, both as a man and as a writer, is sacrificed for propitiation.

THE COMMENTATORS upon our greatest POET seem, with infinite industry, to have raked up the ashes of forgotten aspersions, and to have violated that Grave in which all injuries are permitted to enjoy oblivion-JONSON has written dispraisingly of their Idol, it therefore follows in their idea, that wanting gratitude, he has wanted all-and they wish to deny that excellence

in his writings, which there is reasonable ground for presuming did not do honour to his life-Yet, esteemed and learned Gentlemen, Envy is a passion too apt to invade either the literate or the illiterate; and though JONSON might write under its influence, I cannot expect you to pity what you never felt. None of you have ever vindictively laboured to smother up a commenting rival-None of you are skilled in the art of plunging a name into oblivion, that your plagiarisms may never rise in judgment against you-Ye comment and criticise as though the precise accuracy of CAPELL had never preceded your toil. And may he continue to moulder in obscurity ! for, alas! should a fair estimate of his researches be made, the high plumed sagacity of one Commentator, and the unpresuming modesty of another, might be expunged from the burthened pages of the Poet,

"And like the baseless Fabric of your Visions,
"Leave not a Rack behind."

LET me be pardoned if any thing acrimonious should be inferred from aught above written. The Writer is just fresh from the perusal of the following play, and excellence, come from whom it may, is apt to win so warm an interest in his

B

bosom, that the very Gentlemen alluded to might enkindle within his breast a similar enthusiasm, were it possible to discover any congeniality of merits in their elaborate compositions.

THE above I owe to the fame of Jonson, what I am indebted to his life shall be punctually paid to his inimitable VOLPONE.

THE BIOGRAPHER.

THE ALCHYMIST.

THE characters of JONSON cannot be defined like those of SHAKSPERE;

"Which are not of an age, but of all times."

They are such as only existed for the most part in his own-They speak in consequence a language deformed by affectation, and obscured by local allusion. Yet, so wonderful is the strength of this Hercules, that he may be stiled the great Historian of the Drama, and from his page is reflected the most perfect image of the domestic manners of our Ancestors in the Sixteenth Century.

OUR romantic Sires, as a worthy companion to their belief in the doctrine of Demons and Witches, believed in the transmutation of Metals, the Philosopher's Stone, and other conundrums of a similar nature; to ridicule the latter folly, this admirable play was written.

If the Writer did not dread the undefined terrors of LIBEL, he might venture to say, JONSON was too wise to attack the belief in Witchcraft, sanctioned by the learned ignorance of his SOVEREIGN's sublime treatise entitled, Damonologia.

THE ARGUMENT.

T be sickness hot, a master quit for fear,
His house in town, and left one servant there;
E ase him corrupted, and gave means to know,

A cheater and bis punk; who, now brought low,
Leaving their narrow practice, were become
Coz'ners at large; and only wanting some
House to set up, with him they bere contract,
E ach for a share, and all begin to act.
Much company they draw, and much abuse,
In casting figures, telling fortunes, news,
Selling of flies, flat bawd'ry, with the stone;
Till it, and they, and all, in fume are gone.

PROLOGUE.

FORTUNE, that favours fools, these two short hours
We wish away, both for your sakes and ours,
Judging spectators; and desire in place,
To the author justice, to ourselves but grace.
Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known,
No country's mirth is better than our own:
No clime breeds better matter for your whore,
Bawd, 'squire, impostor, many persons more,
Whose manners, now call'd humours, feed the stage;
And which have still been subject for the rage

« VorigeDoorgaan »