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Updated: September 1, 2025
More will I speak with you at leisure, on your duties as a page, which office in former days used to be the very school of chivalry; whereas of late, by the disorderly times, it has become little better than a school of wild and disordered license; which made rare Ben Jonson exclaim"
He truly predicts that "his discoveries would be verified in succeeding ages," and prefers his own glory to the possession of the electorate of Saxony. It was this solitary majesty, this futurity of their genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of Bacon, of Newton, and of Montesquieu; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and Corneille; and of Michael Angelo.
He could recall the death of Queen Elizabeth; the advent of Scottish James; the ruffling, brilliant, dissolute, audacious Duke of Buckingham; the impeachment and disgrace of Francis Bacon; the production of the great plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; the meetings of the wits and poets at the Apollo and the Mermaid.
A man does not change his temperament on taking office. General Jackson still swore "by the Eternal," and his illustrious military successor of a more recent period seems, by his own showing, to have been able to sudden impulses of excitement. It might be said of Motley, as it was said of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson, "aliquando sufflaminandus erat." Yet not too much must be made of this concession.
"A fellow by the hand of Nature marked, Quoted, and signed, to do a deed of shame." Shakspeare. King John. "He is a scholar, if a man may trust The liberal voice of Fame, in her report. Myself was once a student, and indeed Fed with the self-same humour he is now." Ben Jonson. Every Man in his Humour.
The humiliation which Shakespeare endured because his calling was despised by his aristocratic young friend is largely the theme of a poem, Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Such a sense of shame seems to be back of the dilettante artist, wherever he appears in verse. After Byron's vogue died out, this mood slept for a time.
This characteristic witticism was received with great applause; and Jonson, taking a candlestick from the fair fingers of the exasperated Mrs. Brimstone, the hand thus conveniently released, immediately transferred itself to Fib's cheeks, with so hearty a concussion, that it almost brought the rash jester to the ground.
He seems to have made no complaint, but to have taken his full share in the rough-and-tumble sports of his comrades in a school which has given many distinguished men to the literature and public life of England: as, for instance, the younger Vane whom Milton extolled Ben Jonson and Dryden, Prior and Locke, Cowper and Southey, Gibbon and Warren Hastings.
The Arcadia was originally written for the amusement of his sister, afterwards Countess of Pembroke, the "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," of Ben Jonson. Though its interest now is chiefly historical, it enjoyed an extraordinary popularity for a century after its appearance, and had a marked influence on the immediately succeeding literature.
He then went to town with Thornton, and constantly attended "the club" to which Jonson had before introduced him; at first, among his new comrades, and while the novel flush of the money, he had so fearfully acquired, lasted, he partially succeeded in stifling his remorse.
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