poetry, letters, which the British public now finds in the literary columns of The Times, and in journals. such as The Saturday Review or what was lately The Athenæum. The influence of Jonson's theory and practise of literature on his age is incapable of exaggeration. He literally dominated his time. Wherefore the importance to be attached to his opinions. Unhappily Jonson's criticism was mostly talked and only occasionally noted down as in some interesting cases which shall now claim our attention. In 1619 Jonson, who was threatened with obesity, determined on exercise as a remedy, and set out on foot from London to Edinburgh, stopping for the most part of nights at the houses of admiring friends among the nobility and gentry. It may be surmised that his nights sometimes undid his days; for the simple Elizabethans had not yet learned of the sinfulness of thirst and practiced several methods of alleviating it "with no allaying Thames." In Edinburgh the prominent Scottish poet and laird, William Drummond, entertained Jonson for some weeks at his beautiful home, Hawthornden; and, chatting daily with him, noted the great poet's comments and personal gossip in a precious document which was left by one of his descendants to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and which was only printed in its completeness some 230 years after Jonson's death. I should like to dwell on some of the entertaining gossip and comment of these 2 2 I do not share the "doubts" lately cast on the authenticity of the celebrated Conversations. See C. L. Stainer, Jonson and Drummond, a Few Remarks on an Eighteenth Century Forgery, 1925. See P. Simpson, in Review of English Studies, ii. 42. Conversations of Drummond with Jonson. How he declared that "Spenser's stanzas pleased him not, nor his matter; " that "Marston wrote his father-in-law's preachings, and his father-in-law his comedies; "that "he esteemeth John Donne the first poet in the world in some things" but that "Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging.' Similarly shrewd and terse are the two deliverances of the Conversations as to Shakespeare: one is that Shakespeare "wanted art; "the other calls attention to the absurdity of anybody's suffering shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia. Here is the critic appraising a trifle, a spot on the sun - and a spot is striking on the face of so bright and radiant a luminary. The old age accepted the seacoast of Bohemia and the pistol of Pericles, the sombreros of the conspirators in Julius Caesar and the striking clock in republican Rome; but the new critic recoiled at these things and called them a want of art," that is, a deficiency in artifice and attention to detail, which I am inclined to think we must confess they really are. Jonson nowhere actually criticises Shakespeare for not writing like the ancients. But Jonson himself, trying to write in a manner which should profit by ancient example and succeeding measurably well, has, from these little observations, come to be taken as the champion of classical ideals as against Shakespeare's unquestionably romantic spirit. Here is the first seed in our pod, by the happy art of generalization soon to grow into much, having to do with allegations of Shakespeare's "carelessness," his 3 "Conversations," Gifford Cunningham, Jonson, vol. ix. want of constructive ability," (Jonson was both careful and constructive), having to do with Shakespeare's untaught genius (Jonson's genius was nothing if not abundantly taught), together with the rest of the innumerable phrases and designations of the school of critical condescension, headed by Pope and Warburton; until Shakespeare became to the former an undomesticated fowl, "warbling his native woodnotes wild," and to M. Voltaire, "a natural born savage, drunk with the wine of genius." From the abundant outpourings of the school of critical condescension we have recovered only partially in this generation of our own. Like Dryden after him, Ben Jonson's common sense was occasionally at variance with his learning; for learning is the acquisition of an uncommon sense, rather than the maintenance of a common one. When Jonson died, a note book or a commonplace-book, as such were called, was found among his papers. In it he had noted passages of his extensive reading among the ancients, translating them into literary and wellfiled English and applying them to certain persons at times. For example he begins a fine paragraph on Dominus Verulanus, whom we call without any warrant whatsoever "Lord Bacon," with these words: "Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more presly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion." * Now this passage is almost word for word a transcription from Seneca the Elder, but not a plagiarism; for an ability "to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own uses " was one of Jonson's frankly avowed requisites "in our poet," as it is and ever has been a requisite in the honorable guild of authorship. Jonson is merely refreshingly frank about it. In Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter, as the whole title of Jonson's commonplace-book runs, you will find much about poetry, about language, style and oratory; and besides, discourse of princes, state and other weighty subjects discussed with the brevity of table-talk and culled, a blossom here, rich fruit there, from the poet's discursive reading up and down the ages. But the most precious parts of the book are the little summaries on his contemporaries such as that on the oratory of Bacon just quoted above and the famous passage about Shakespeare, our fellow country-man, which illustrates, better than any other, Jonson's scholarly preconceptions, dashed with the lucid intervals of his robust common sense. "I remember " he says, "the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand,' 4 Discoveries, ed. Schelling, 1892, p. 30. which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor." Here speaks the scholar, the professional, the man who invests his talent, who reprobates the readiness, the spendthrift habits, he would call them, of genius. But immediately Jonson's common sense, which was quickened by a warm heart, asserts itself, and he continues: " for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, (Jonson's favorite adjective for himself), and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions." And once more the critic gets the upper hand and he concludes, balancing the judicial scales: "gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped. ‘Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him: 'Caesar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied: 'Caesar did never wrong but with just cause:' and such like, which were ridiculous." Jonson is here alluding to the reply of Caesar to Metellus which in the text which we have reads: Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause 5 Ibid., 23. |