the wickedness, see the folly of it. You thought to make them mad, but just to such a degree as should serve your own turn; that is to say, mad, and yet just as wise as yourselves. Were you not very imprudent to think to govern madness?"-P. 15. "The king was hunted as a partridge in the mountains, and though the hounds have been hanged, yet the hunters were as guilty as they, and deserved no less punishment. And the decypherers (Wallis had decyphered the royal letters) and all that blew the horn, are to be reckoned among the hunters. Perhaps you would not have had the prey killed, but rather have kept it tame. And yet who can tell? I have read of few kings deprived of their power by their own subjects that have lived any long time after it, for reasons that every man is able to conjecture. He closes with a very odd image of the most cynical contempt: "Mr. Hobbes has been always far from provoking any man, though, when he is provoked, you find his pen as sharp as yours. All you have said is error and railing; that is, stinking wind, such as a jade lets fly when he is too hard girt upon a full belly. I have done, I have considered you now, but will not again, whatsoever preferment any of your friends shall procure you.' These were the pitched battles; but many skirmishes occasionally took place. Hobbes was even driven to a ruse de guerre. When he found his mathematical character in the utmost peril, there appeared a pamphlet, entitled, "Lux Mathematica, etc., or, Mathematical Light struck out from the clashings between Dr. John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in the celebrated University of Oxford (celeberrima Academia), and Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury; augmented with many and shining rays of the Author, R. R. 1672." Here the victories of Hobbes are trumpeted forth; but the fact is, that R. R. should have been T. H. It was Hobbes's own composition! R. R. stood for Roseti Repertor, that is, the Finder of the Rosary, one of the titles of Hobbes's mathematical discoveries. Wallis asserts, that this R. R. may still serve; for it may answer his own book, Roseti Refutator, or, the Refuter of the Rosary. Poor Hobbes gave up the contest reluctantly; if, indeed, the controversy may not be said to have lasted all his life. He acknowledges he was writing to no purpose; and that the medicine was obliged to yield to the disease. "Sed nil profeci, magnis authoribus Error Fultus erat, cessit sic Medicina malo." He seems to have gone down to the grave, in spite of all the reasonings of the geometricians on this side of it, with a firm conviction, that its superficies had both depth and thickness'. Such were the fruits of a great genius, entering into a province out of his own territories; and, though a most energetic reasoner, so little skilful in these new studies, that he could never know when he was confuted and refuted". The strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from their principles concerning the real quantity of matter, and the reality of space, have been noticed by Pope, in the Dunciad : "Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined, Too mad for mere material chains to bind : Dunciad, book iv., ver. 31. 2 When all animosities had ceased, after the death of Hobbes, I find Dr. Wallis, in a very temperate letter to Tenison, exposing the errors of Hobbes in mathematical studies; Wallis acknowledges that philology had never entered into his pursuits,-in this he had never designed to oppose his superior genius; but it was Hobbes who had too often turned his mathematical into a philological controversy. Wallis has made a just observation on the nature of mathematical truths :-" Hobbes's argumentations are destructive in one part of what is said in another. This is more convincingly evident, and more unpardonable, in mathematics than in other discourses, which are things capable of cogent demonstration, and so evident, that though a good mathematician may be subject to commit an error, yet one who understands but little of it, cannot but see a fault when it is showed him." Wallis was an eminent genius in scientific pursuits. His art of decyphering letters was carried to amazing perfection; and among other phenomena he discovered, was that of teaching a young man, born deaf and dumb, to speak plainly. He humorously observes, in one of his letters :-"I am now employed upon another work, as hard almost as to make Mr. Hobbes understand mathematics. It is, to teach a person dumb and deaf to speak, and to understand a language." JONSON AND DECKER. BEN JONSON appears to have carried his military spirit into the literary republic-his gross convivialities, with anecdotes of the prevalent taste, in that age, for drinking-bouts-his "Poetaster" a sort of Dunciad, besides a personal attack on the frequenters of the theatres, with anecdotes-his Apologetical Dialogue, which was not allowed to be repeated-characters of DECKER and of MARSTON-DECKER's Satiromastix, a parody on JONSON's Poetaster-BEN exhibited under the character of "Horace Junior"specimens of that literary satire; its dignified remonstrance, and the honourable applause bestowed on the great bard-some foibles in the literary habits of BEN, alluded to by DECKER-JONSON's noble reply to his detractors and rivals. THIS quarrel is a splendid instance how genius of the first order, lavishing its satirical powers on a number of contemporaries, may discover, among the crowd, some individual who may return with a right aim the weapon he has himself used, and who will not want for encouragement to attack the common assailant: the greater genius is thus mortified by a victory conceded to the inferior, which he himself had taught the meaner one to obtain over him. JONSON, in his earliest productions, "Every Man in his Humour" and "Every Man out of his Humour," usurped that dictatorship, in the Literary Republic, which he so sturdily and invariably maintained, though long and hardily disputed. No bard has more courageously foretold, that posterity would be interested in his labours; and often with very dignified feelings, he casts this declaration into the teeth of his adversaries : but a bitter contempt for his brothers and his contemporaries was not less vehement, than his affections for those who crowded under his wing. To his "sons" and his admirers he was warmly attached; and no poet has left behind him, in MS., so many testimonies of personal fondness, in the inscriptions and addresses, in the copies of his works, which he presented to friends: of these, I have seen more than one, fervent and impressive. DRUMMOND of Hawthornden, who perhaps carelessly and imperfectly minuted down the heads of their literary conference on the chief authors of the age, exposes the severity of criticism which Ben exercised on some spirits as noble as his own. The genius of Jonson was rough, hardy, and invincible, of which the frequent excess degenerated into ferocity; and by some traditional tales, this ferocity was still inflamed by large potations for Drummond informs us, "Drink was the element in which he lived '." Old Ben had given, on two occasions, The gross convivialities of the times, from the age of Elizabeth, were re some remarkable proofs of his personal intrepidity. When a soldier, in the face of both armies, he had fought single-handed with his antagonist, had slain him, and carried off his arms as trophies. Another time he killed his man in a duel. Jonson markable for several circumstances. Hard-drinking was a foreign vice, imported by our military men on their return from the Netherlands: and the practice, of whose prevalence Camden complains, was even brought to a kind of science. They had a dialect peculiar to their orgies. See Curiosities of Literature, p. 278, 11th edition. Jonson's inclinations were too well suited to the prevalent taste, and he gave as largely into it as any of his contemporaries. Tavern-habits were then those of our poets and actors. Ben's " Humours," at "the Mermaid," and at a later period, his "Leges Convivales" at " the Apollo," the club-room of "the Devil," were doubtless one great cause of a small personal unhappiness, of which he complains, and which had a very unlucky effect, in rendering a mistress so obdurate, who " through her eyes had stopt her ears." This was, as his own verse tells us, "His mountain-belly and his rocky face." He weighed near twenty stone, according to his own avowal-an ElephantCupid! One of his "Sons," at the "Devil," seems to think that his "Catiline" could not fail to be a miracle, by a certain sort of inspiration which Ben used on the occasion. "With strenuous sinewy words that Catiline swells, I reckon it not among men-miracles. How could that poem heat and vigour lack, R. BARON'S POcula Castalia, p. 113, 1650. "He Jonson, in the Bacchic phraseology of the day, was "a Canary-bird.” would (says Aubrey) many times exceed in drink; Canary was his beloved liquor; then he would tumble home to bed; and, when he had thoroughly perspired, then to study." 66 Tradition, too, has sent down to us several tavern-tales of "Rare Ben." A good-humoured one has been preserved of the first interview between Bishop Corbet, when a young man, and our great bard. It occurred at a tavern, where Corbet was sitting alone. Ben, who had probably just drank up to the pitch of good fellowship, desired the waiter to take to the gentleman a quart of raw wine; and tell him," he added, "I sacrifice my service to him.”—“ Friend," replied Corbet, "I thank him for his love; but tell him, from me, that he is mistaken; for sacrifices are always burned."-This pleasant allusion to the mulled wine of the time, by the young wit, could not fail to win the affection of the master-wit himself. Harl. MSS. 6395. Ben is not viewed so advantageously, in an unlucky fit of ebriety recorded by Oldys, in his MS. Notes on Langbaine; but his authority is not to me of a suspicious nature he had drawn it from a MS. collection of Oldisworth's, who appears to have been a curious collector of the history of his times. He was secretary to that strange character, Philip, Earl of Pembroke. It was the custom of those times to form collections of little traditional stories and other good things; we have had lately given to us by the Camden Society, an amusing one, from the L'Estrange family, and the MS. already quoted is one of them. There could be no bad motive in recording a tale, quite innocent in itself; and which is further confirmed by Isaac Walton, who, without alluding to the tale, notices that Jonson parted from Sir Walter Raleigh and his son "not in cold blood." Mr. Gifford, in a MS. note on this work, does not credit this story, it not being appears to have carried the same military spirit into the Literary Republic. Such a genius would become more tyrannical by success, and naturally provoked opposition, from the proneness of mankind to mortify usurped greatness, when they can securely do it. The man who hissed the poet's play, had no idea that he might himself become one of the dramatic personages. Ben then produced his "Poetaster," which has been called the Dunciad of those times; but it is a Dunciad without notes. The personages themselves are now only known by their general resemblance to nature; with the exception of two characters, those of Crispinus and Demetrius. accordant with dates. Such stories may not accord with dates or persons, and yet may be founded on some substantial fact. I know of no injury to Ben's poctical character, in showing that he was, like other men, quite incapable of taking care of himself, when he was sunk in the heavy sleep of drunkenness. It was an age when kings, as our James I. and his majesty of Denmark, were as often laid under the table as their subjects. My motive for preserving the story is the incident respecting carrying men in baskets it was evidently a custom, which perhaps may have suggested the memorable adventure of Falstaff. It was a convenient mode of conveyance for those who were incapable of taking care of themselves before the invention of hackney coaches, which was of later date, in Charles the First's reign. Camden recommended Jonson to Sir Walter Raleigh, as a tutor to his son, whose gay humours not brooking the severe studies of Jonson, took advantage of his foible, to degrade him in the eyes of his father, who, it seems, was remarkable for his abstinence from wine: though, if another tale be true, he was no common sinner in "the true Virginia." Young Raleigh contrived to give Ben a surfeit, which threw the poet into a deep slumber; and then the pupil maliciously procured a buck-basket, and a couple of men, who carried our Ben to Sir Walter, with a message, that "their young master had sent home his tutor." There is nothing improbable in the story; for the circumstance of carrying drunken men in baskets was a usual practice. In the Harleian MS. quoted above, I find more than one instance; I will give one. An alderman, carried in a porter's basket, at his own door, is thrown out of it in a qualmish state. The man, to frighten away the passengers, and enable the grave citizen to creep in unobserved, exclaims, That the man had the falling sickness! These were Marston and Decker, but as is usual with these sort of caricatures, the originals sometimes mistook their likenesses. They were both townwits, and cronies, of much the same stamp; by a careful perusal of their works, the editor of Jonson has decided that Marston was Crispinus. With him Jonson had once lived on the most friendly terms: afterwards, the great poet quarrelled with both, or they with him. Dryden, in the preface to his "Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco," in his quarrel with Settle, which has been sufficiently narrated by Dr. Johnson, felt, when poised against this miserable rival, who had been merely set up by a party, to mortify the superior genius, as Jonson had felt when pitched against Crispinus. It is thus that literary history is so interesting to authors. How often, in recording the fates of others, it reflects their own! "I knew indeed (says Dryden) that to write against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben Jonson had done it before to Decker, our author's predecessor, whom he chastised in his Poctaster, under the character of |