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Our proprietor one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I ever met I remember his gravely informing a correspondent once that Ben Jonson had written Rabelais to pay for his mother's funeral, and only laughing good-naturedly when his mistakes were pointed out to him wrote with the aid of a cheap encyclopedia the pages devoted to "General Information," and did them on the whole remarkably well; while our office boy, with an excellent pair of scissors for his assistant, was responsible for our supply of "Wit and Humour."
The invalid rejoined, by a request to Jonson to reach him a draught, and we had to undergo a farther delay, until his petition was complied with; we then proceeded up the passage, till we came to another flight of steps, which led to a door: Job opened it, and we entered a room of no common dimensions.
Dryden was born in 1631. He was accordingly six years old when Jonson died, was nearly a quarter of a century younger than Milton, and may have personally known Bishop Hall, the first English satirist, who was living till 1656. On the other side, he was older than Swift by thirty-six, than Addison by forty-one, and than Pope by fifty-seven years.
The remark in The Return from Parnassus that few of the University can pen plays well, smelling too much of that writer Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis, has, in our opinion, also reference to John Marston whose first dramatic attempts although he, like Jonson, may be called a 'University man' do not admit of any comparison with those of Shakspere.
"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," for whom Ben Jonson wrote the celebrated epitaph. I am almost afraid to say it, but I never could admire the line, "Lies the subject of all verse," nor the idea of Time dropping his hour-glass and scythe to throw a dart at the fleshless figure of Death. This last image seems to me about the equivalent in mortuary poetry of Roubiliac's monument to Mrs.
Lingering through one of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, "O rare Ben Jonson!" and remembered the story of stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright, not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but because standing-room was all that could reasonably be demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities of his age.
They are all in the base court, and shall wait on you when you please, and then you can make your election." "So far well," replied Finett; "it may be that we shall have Ben Jonson here to-day rare Ben, the prince of poets and masque-writers. Sir Richard Hoghton expects him.
The famous inscription, "O, rare Ben Jonson!" is three times cut in the Abbey; once in Poets' Corner and twice in the north aisle, where he was buried, a little slab in the pavement marking his grave. Dr. In that house he wrote the first dictionary of the English language and the characteristic, memorable letter to Lord Chesterfield.
I see, Mr. Jonson, that you are beginning to understand me; let me facilitate so desirable an end by an additional information, that, since it is preceded with a promise to open my purse, may tend somewhat to open your heart; I am, at this moment, in great want of your assistance favour me with it, and I will pay you to your soul's content. Are we friends now, Mr. Job Jonson?"
We are all ready for "O rare Ben Jonson!" as we stand over the place where he was planted standing upright, as if he had been dropped into a post-hole. We remember too well the foolish and flippant mockery of Gay's "Life is a Jest."
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