years afterward, drew from him his verses called, An Execration upon Vulcan.' He seems, indeed, never to have let a twelvemonth pass, without the amusement of writing some of these smaller pieces. And those with the masques, which his office as Laureat periodically elicited at Christmas, filled up the interval to the year 1625; when his comedy, entitled, The Staple of News,' made it's appearance. Not long afterward, he fell into an ill state of health, which however did not obstruct the discharge of his duty at court. He found time, likewise, to gratify the more agreeable exercise of play-writing; for, in 1629, he brought out his New Inn, or the Light Heart.' But, here, his adversaries prevailed: the comedy," most negligently played, and more squeamishly beheld and censured," was hissed off the boards on it's first exhibition; upon which Jonson, in an Ode to Himself,'* threatened to leave the stage, as he did shortly afterward. This step having reduced his finances, his royal master graciously sent him a purse of a hundred pounds; in return for which, he addressed the following

EPIGRAM TO KING CHARLES FOR A HUNDRED POUNDS HE
SENT ME IN MY SICKNESS, 1629.

Great Charles, among the holy gifts of grace
Annexed to thy person and thy place,

and Selden, had completed eight out of the nine years. (Oldys MS. Notes to Langbaine in Brit. Mus.)

This Ode drew from Owen Feltham, author of the Resolves,' another in reply written in the same measure with great satiric acerbity. By Suckling, also, he was heavily censured. To console him for this severe reprimand, Randolph, his adopted poetical son, displayed all the warmth of ingenuous and grateful affection,

'Tis not enough (thy piety is such)

To cure the call'd King's Evil with a touch;
But thou wilt yet a kinglier mastery try,
To cure the Poet's Evil, poverty:

And in these cures dost so thyself enlarge,
As thou dost cure our evil at thy charge.
Nay, and in this thou show'st to value more
One poet, than of other folks ten score.
O piety! so to weigh the poor's estates ;
O bounty! so to difference the rates.
What can the poet wish his King may do,
But that he cure the People's Evil too?'

But the munificence of the Sovereign did not stop here in 1630, the Laureat's salary of a hundred marks was augmented to a hundred pounds per ann., with the addition of a tierce of Canary wine out of his Majesty's cellar of Whitehall, which has been continued (in kind, or in value) to his successors ever since. Though with this, however, he enjoyed also a pension from the city, and received occasional assistance likewise from his friends, his Want, coupled with his intemperance, was radical and incurable; and some of his latest productions were mendicant poems addressed to different patrons.* The powers of his body

* In the postscript of a letter (preserved in the British Museum) addressed to the Earl of Newcastle, and dated 1631, he appears to allude to this city-pension: "Yesterday the barbarous Court of Aldermen have withdrawn their chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard, 33l. 6s. 8d." The whole composition shows so much of his temper and spirit at this time, as Mr. Chalmers observes, that a longer transcript may be excused: "I myself, being no substance, am fain to trouble you with shadows, or what is less, an apologue or fable in a dream. I, being stricken with the palsy in 1628, had by Sir Thomas Badger, some few months since, a fox sent me for a present; which creature, by handling, I endeavoured to make tame, as well for the abating of my disease, as the delight I took in speculation of his nature. It happened this present year 1631, and this very week being

and his mind began now to sink into a visible decay. We have two comedies, indeed (The Magnetical Lady,' and 'The Tale of a Tub') written by him sub

the week ushering Christmas, and this Tuesday morning in a dream (and morning-dreams are truest) to have one of my servants come to my bedside, and tell me, 'Master, master, the fox speaks! Whereat methought I started, and trembled, and went down into the yard to witness the wonder. There I found my Reynard in his tenement, the tub I had hired for him, cynically expressing his own lot to be condemned to the house of a poet, where nothing was to be seen but the bare walls, and not any thing heard but the noise of a saw dividing billets all the week long, more to keep the family in exercise, than to comfort any person there with fire, save the paralytic master; and went on in this way, as the fox seemed the better fabler of the two. I, his master, began to give him good words, and stroke him; but Reynard, barking, told me this would not do, I must give him meat.' I, angry, called him stinking vermin.' He replied, 'Look into your cellar, which is your larder too, you will find a worse vermin there.' When presently, calling for a light, methought I went down, and found all the floor turned up, as if a colony of moles had been there, or an army of salt-petre vermin. Whereupon I sent presently into Turtle Street for the King's most excellent mole-catcher, to release me, and hunt them; but he, when he came and viewed the place, and had well marked the earth turned up, took a handful, smelt to it, and said, Master, it is not in my power to destroy this vermin; the K., or some good man of a noble nature, must help you this kind of mole is called a Want,' which will destroy you and your family, if you prevent not the working of it in time. And, therefore, God keep you, and send you health!'

"The interpretation both of the fable and dream is, that I, waking, do find Want the worst and most working vermin in a house; and therefore, my noble Lord, and next the King my best patron, I am necessitated to tell it you. I am not so imprudent to borrow any sum of your Lordship, for I have no faculty to pay; but my needs are such and so urging, as I do beg what your bounty can give me, in the name of good letters, and the bond of an ever-grateful and acknowledging servant to your honour."

sequently:* but they are such, as have not been unfitly called his dotage,' and exposed him to the malevolence of criticism, which seldom spares even old age. Upon the appearance of the former, Alexander Gill, Master of St. Paul's School, attacked him with such fury, as drew from Jonson a short but extremely caustic reply. He wholly laid aside his pen soon afterward. His last production was, the New Year's Ode for 1635.

His disorder was the palsy, which put a period to his life August 16, 1637, in the sixty third year of his age. He was interred in Westminster Abbey, at the north-west end, near the belfry. Over his grave was laid a common pavement-stone, with the laconic inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson!" This was done at the expense of Mr. (afterward Sir) John Young, of Great Milton in Oxfordshire. But a much better monument was raised to his memory six months afterward by Dr. Duppa (Bishop of Winchester, and tutor to Charles Prince of Wales) ‡ in a collection of

* Of two other unfinished pieces, the Sad Shepherd,' and the Fall of Mortimer,' the latter has only the plan and two scenes (written, however, with classical spirit and simplicity) extant; and the former terminates in the third act. He had joined with Fletcher and Middleton, also, in writing a comedy, called the Widow;' and had assisted Dr. Hacket, afterward Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in translating into Latin the Essays of Lord Bacon.

+ That expense, says Bathurst, for cutting was eighteen pence! By the wits of the day, who considered him as at the head of English poetry, he was generally addressed under the reverential title of Father Ben.'

This prelate, it is said, when M. A., had been acquainted with Jonson, and often visited him in his last illness; at which time the penitent poet expressed great sorrow for having profaned the Scriptures in his plays. He had, undoubtedly (adds

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elegies and poems entitled, Jonsonius Virbius; or, the Memory of Ben Jonson revived by the Friends of the Muses.'* A design was, likewise, conceived to erect a marble monument with his statue, and a considerable sum of money was collected for that purpose; but the breaking out of the civil war prevented it's execution, and the subscriptions were returned. The bust in bas-relief with the above inscription under it, which is now fixed to the wall in the Poet's Corner, near the south-east entrance into the Abbey, was set up by the second Harley Earl of Oxford.

In himself his family became extinct; for he survived the whole of his seven children, in none of whom was he happy. His eldest son, a poet and a dramatist, died in 1635. Of his wife, nothing is known. With respect to his person and character, if we may depend upon his own description, his body was corpulent and bulky, and his countenance hard. Of

Whalley) a sense, and was under the influence of religion; and it may be observed in his favour, that his offences against piety and good manners are very few. By the rudeness, indeed, and indelicacy of that age grosser language was permitted, than the chaste ears of more polished times will bear.

To this collection most of his contemporaries, distinguished by their genius, contributed; among others, Lords Falkland and Buckhurst, Sirs John Beaumont and Thomas Hawkins, Waller, Mayne, Cartwright, King, May, Cleveland, Feltham, &c. + In Decker's angry Satiro-Mastrix' he is represented as having a most ungodly face; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet-apple, when 'tis bruised;" and again, it is said to be "punched full of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan." To Dr. Warton's remark, that most of our poets were handsome men,' Jonson appears to have been a signal exceptionthough his bust is said to resemble that of Menander.