never forgot that he had wielded the trowel. Dekker calls him the "lime-andmortar poet." Jonson had precisely the mind to prefer the honest labour of his hands to the fearful shifts and hateful duplicities to which the unhappy man of genius was in those days too often degraded. Thus, then, about four years before the death of Elizabeth, there was a dramatic writer in London who, though scarcely twenty-five years of age, had studied society under many aspects. He was a scholar, bred up by the most eminent teachers, amongst aristocratic companions; but his home was that of poverty and obscurity, and he had to labour with his hands for his daily bread. He delighted in walking not only amidst the open fields of ancient poetry and eloquence, but in all the by-places of antiquity, gathering flowers amongst the weeds with infinite toil: but he possessed no merely contemplative spirit: he had high courage and ardent passions, and whether with the sword or the pen he was a dangerous antagonist. This humbly-born man, with the badge of the "hod and trowel" fixed on him by his enemies-twitted with ambling "by a play-waggon in the highway"—with a face held up to ridicule as being "like a rotten russet apple when it is bruised," or "punched full of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming pan"-described by himself as remarkable for "His mountain belly and his rocky face"— with "one eye lower than t'other and bigger," as Aubrey has it—and, according to the same authority, "wont to wear a coat like a coachman's coat, with slits under the arm-pits ;"-this uncouth being was for a quarter of a century the favourite poet of the court,-one that wrote masques not only for two kings to witness, but for one to perform in,-the founder and chief ornament of clubs where the greatest of his age for wit, and learning, and rank, gathered round him as a common centre; but, above all, he was the rigid moralist, who spared no vice, who was fearless in his denunciation of public or private profligacy, who crouched not to power or riches, but who stood up in the worst of days a real man. The pictures which Jonson has left of the London of his time are more full, more diversified, and more amusing, than those of any contemporary writer,—perhaps of all his contemporaries put together. He possessed a combination of the power of acute and accurate observation with unrivalled vigour in the delineation of what he saw. Aubrey, one of the shrewdest as well as the most credulous of biographers, has a very sensible remark upon the characteristics of Shakspere's comedy, as compared with the writers after the Restoration. "His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum; now, our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood." This is precisely the case with Jonson as compared with Shakspere; but he is on this account a far more valuable authority for what essentially belongs to periods and classes. Shakspere has purposely left this field uncultivated; but it is Jonson's absolute domain. Studied with care, as he must be to be properly appreciated, he presents to us an almost inexhaustible series of Daguerreotypes,-forms copied from the life with absolute certainty of the manners of three reigns,-when there was freedom enough for men to abandon themselves without disguise to what they called their humours, and the conflicts of opinion had not yet become so violent as to preclude rated a honorary member of Christ Church in Oxford), where he continued but few weeks for want of further maintenance, being fain to return to the trade of his father-in-law. And let not them blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket." Aubrey tells the story of his going to college with a little more romance. He had not only the book in his pocket, but he was heard to repeat “Greek verses out of Homer ;" and a bencher, discoursing with him, gave him an exhibition at Trinity College. Jonson's name does not appear in any of the Cambridge registers; and he probably remained at the University a very short time. Aubrey continues, "Then he went into the Low Countries, and spent some time (not very long) in the army, not to the disgrace of it, as you may find in his epigrams." The little poem to which Aubrey alludes is an address To True Soldiers :'- "I swear by your true friend, my muse, I love In Jonson's Conversation with Drummond of Hawthornden' he is made to tell that 66 In his service in the Low Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed one enemy and taken opima spolia from him." Jonson was born in 1574; and there is little doubt that his feats of arms were performed before he was twenty. In 1597 we find him in London, a player and a writer for the stage. Philip Henslow, one of the theatrical managers in that prosperous time of theatres, records in his diary of July, 1597, a loan of four pounds to Benjamin Jonson, player; and on the 3rd of December of the same year he also advances him twenty shillings "upon a book which he was to write for us before Christmas next.' At this time he had written Every Man in his Humour,' for Henslow's theatre; not, however, in its present state, but with its scene laid in Italy. In the Life of Alleyn,' recently published by Mr. Collier, there is a letter from Henslow to Alleyn, for the first time printed, which contains the following very curious passage:-" Since you were with me I have lost one of my company, which hurteth me greatly—that is Gabrell, for he is slain in Hogsden Fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer." This letter is dated in September, 1598. The use of the term "bricklayer," to designate Jonson's calling, is most remarkable. Either Henslow was ignorant (which appears very improbable) that the man who slew "Gabrell" was one of his own authors; or Jonson, with that manly independence which we cannot enough admire in his character, followed his step-father's laborious occupation even at the time when he was struggling to attain the honours of a poet. That he unhappily killed a man in a duel there can be no doubt; he himself told the story to Drummond. "Since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary, which hurt him in the arm, and whose sword was ten inches longer than his; for the which he was imprisoned and almost at the gallows." Aubrey, in his loose way, says, "He killed Mr. Marlowe, the poet, on Bunhill." Marlowe was killed in 1593. Gifford supposes that this unfortunate event happened in 1595; but, if there be no error as to the date of Henslow's letter, "Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer," was a poet of no mean reputation at the time of this event. His enemies never forgot that he had wielded the trowel. Dekker calls him the "lime-andmortar poet." Jonson had precisely the mind to prefer the honest labour of his hands to the fearful shifts and hateful duplicities to which the unhappy man of genius was in those days too often degraded. Thus, then, about four years before the death of Elizabeth, there was a dramatic writer in London who, though scarcely twenty-five years of age, had studied society under many aspects. He was a scholar, bred up by the most eminent teachers, amongst aristocratic companions; but his home was that of poverty and obscurity, and he had to labour with his hands for his daily bread. He delighted in walking not only amidst the open fields of ancient poetry and eloquence, but in all the by-places of antiquity, gathering flowers amongst the weeds with infinite toil: but he possessed no merely contemplative spirit: he had high courage and ardent passions, and whether with the sword or the pen he was a dangerous antagonist. This humbly-born man, with the badge of the "hod and trowel" fixed on him by his enemies-twitted with ambling "by a play-waggon in the highway"—with a face held up to ridicule as being "like a rotten russet apple when it is bruised," or "punched full of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming pan"-described by himself as remarkable for "His mountain belly and his rocky face” with "one eye lower than t'other and bigger," as Aubrey has it—and, according to the same authority, "wont to wear a coat like a coachman's coat, with slits under the arm-pits ;"-this uncouth being was for a quarter of a century the favourite poet of the court,-one that wrote masques not only for two kings to witness, but for one to perform in, the founder and chief ornament of clubs where the greatest of his age for wit, and learning, and rank, gathered round him as a common centre; but, above all, he was the rigid moralist, who spared no vice, who was fearless in his denunciation of public or private profligacy, who crouched not to power or riches, but who stood up in the worst of days a real man. The pictures which Jonson has left of the London of his time are more full, more diversified, and more amusing, than those of any contemporary writer, perhaps of all his contemporaries put together. He possessed a combination of the power of acute and accurate observation with unrivalled vigour in the delineation of what he saw. Aubrey, one of the shrewdest as well as the most credulous of biographers, has a very sensible remark upon the characteristics of Shakspere's comedy, as compared with the writers after the Restoration. "His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum; now, our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcom beities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood." This is precisely the case with Jonson as compared with Shakspere; but he is on this account a far more valuable authority for what essentially belongs to periods and classes. Shakspere has purposely left this field uncultivated; but it is Jonson's absolute domain. Studied with care, as he must be to be properly appreciated, he presents to us an almost inexhaustible series of Daguerreotypes,-forms copied from the life with absolute certainty of the manners of three reigns,-when there was freedom enough for men to abandon themselves without disguise to what they called their humours, and the conflicts of opinion had not yet become so violent as to preclude the public satirist from attacking sects and parties. There is a peculiar interest, too, about Jonson and his writings, if we regard him as the representative of the literary class of his own day. In his hands the stage was to teach what the Essayists of a century afterwards were to teach. The age was to be exhibited; its vices denounced; its follies laughed at. Gifford has remarked that there is a singular resemblance between Benjamin Jonson and Samuel Johnson. Nothing can be more true; and the similarity is increased by the reflection that they are both of them essentially London men: for them there is no other social state. Of London they know all the strange resorts: they move about with the learned and the rich with a thorough independence and self-respect; but they know that there are other aspects of life worthy to be seen, and they study them in obscure places where less robust writers are afraid to enter. The subject of "Ben Jonson's London" is a very large one, and in looking therefore at his living pictures, either separately or in the aggregate, we pretend to no completeness. But if we fail to amuse our readers, we shall at any rate make them more familiar with some things that are worth remembering. Ben Jonson has been somewhat neglected; but he belongs to that band of mighty minds whose works can never perish. We have said that Ben Jonson is essentially of London. He did not, like his illustrious namesake, walk into the great city from the midland country, and throw his huge bulk upon the town as if it were a wave to bear up such a leviathan. Fuller traces him "from his long coats;" and from that poor dwelling “in Hartshorn Lane near Charing Cross" he sees him through " a private school in St. Martin's Church" into the sixth form at "Westminster." What wanderings must the bricklayer's stepson have had during those school-days, and in the less happy period when they were passed! And then, when the strong man came back from the Low Countries, and perhaps on one day was driven to the taverns and the playhouses by the restlessness of his genius, and on another ate the sweeter bread of manual labour, how thoroughly must he have known that town in which he was still to live for forty years; and how familiarly must all its localities have come unbidden into his mind! There is no writer of that age, not professedly descriptive, who surrounds us so completely with London scenes as Ben Jonson does. As his characters could only have existed in the precise half-century in which he himself lived, so they could only have moved in the identical places which form the background in these remarkable groups. We open Every Man in his Humour: Master Stephen dwells at Hogsden, but he despises the archers of Finsbury and the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington ponds." We look upon the map of Elizabeth's time, and there we see Finsbury Field covered with trees and windmills; and we understand its ruralities, and picture to ourselves the pleasant meadows between the Archery-ground and Islington. But the dwellers at Hoxton have a long suburb to pass before they reach London. "I am sent for this morning by a friend in the Old Jewry to come to him; it is but crossing over the fields to Moorgate." The Old Jewry presented the attraction of "the Windmill" tavern; and near it dwelt Cob, the waterman, by the wall at the bottom of Coleman Street, "at the sign of the Water Tankard, hard by the Green Lattice." Some thirty years after this we have in The Tale of a Tub' a more extended picture of suburban London. 6 369 The characters move about in the fields near Pancridge (Pancras) to Holloway, Highgate, Islington, Kentish Town, Hampstead, St. John's Wood, Paddington, and Kilburn: Totten-Court is a mansion in the fields: a robbery is pretended to be committed in "the ways over the country" between Kentish Town and Hampstead Heath, and a warrant is granted by a "Marribone" justice. In London the peculiarities of the streets become as familiar to us as the names of the taverns. There is "a rare motion (puppet-show) to be seen in Fleet Street," and "a new motion of the city of Nineveh with Jonas and the Whale at Fleet Bridge."+ This thoroughfare was the great show-place up to the time of the Restoration. Cromwell, according to Butler's ballad, was to be there exhibited. The Strand was the chief road for ladies to pass through in their coaches; and there Lafoole in the Silent Woman' has a lodging, "to watch when ladies are gone to the china-houses, or the Exchange, that he may meet them by chance and give them presents." Cole-Harbour, in the parish of All Hallows the Less, is not so genteel-it is a sanctuary for spendthrifts. Sir Epicure Mammon, in The Alchymist,' would buy up all the copper in Lothbury; and we hear of the rabbit-skins of Budge Row and the stinking tripe of Panyer Alley. At the bottom of St. Martin's Lane was a nest of alleys (some remains of which existed within the last twenty years) the resort of infamy in every shape. Jonson calls them "the Straits," "where the quarrelling lesson is read,* and the "seconds are bottle-ale and tobacco."§ The general characteristics of the streets before the Fire are not forgotten. In The Devil is an Ass' the Lady and her lover speak closely and gently from the windows of two contiguous buildings. Such are a few examples of the local proprieties which constantly turn up in Jonson's dramas. · Before we proceed to our rapid and necessarily imperfect review of the more prominent exhibitions of the social state of London to be found in Jonson's comedies, we may properly notice the personal relations in which this great dramatist stood in regard to his literary compeers; for indeed his individual history, as exhibited in his writings, is not an unimportant chapter in the history of the social state of London generally. The influence of men of letters even upon their own age is always great; it is sometimes all-powerful. In Jonson's time the pulpit and the stage were the teachers and inciters; and the stage, taken altogether, was an engine of great power, either for good or evil. In the hands of Shakspere and Jonson it is impossible to over-estimate the good which it produced. The one carried men into the highest region of lofty poetry (and the loftier because it was comprehensible by all), out of the narrow range of their own petty passions and low gratifications: the other boldly lashed the follies of individuals and classes, sometimes with imprudence, but always with honesty. If others ministered to the low tastes and the intolerant prejudices of the multitude, Jonson was ever ready to launch a bolt at them, fearless of the consequences. No man ever laboured harder to uphold the dignity of letters, and of that particular branch in which his labour was embarked. He was ardent in all he did; and of course he made many enemies. But his friendship was as warm as his enmity. No man had more friends or more illustrious. He was the father of many sons, to use the affectionate phrase which indicated the relation between Every Man out of his Humour. *The Fox. |