After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to the university of Cambridge; but at the utmost he can only have made a transitory appearance in a scene of which as a painter of men and manners he nowhere reproduces a single feature. And doubtless he felt that neither his crop of learning and experience nor his wild oats were yet fully sown, when, goose quill or other implement in hand, he had to apply himself to the family business. He soon had enough of it, and was soldiering in the Netherlands, much to his own subsequent satisfaction when the days of self- ·conscious retrospect arrived, but to no further purpose beyond that of seeing something of the world. By the middle of 1597 we at last come across documentary evidence of him at home in London, in the shape of an entry in Henslowe’s diary on July 28th of 3s. 6d. “received of Bengemenes Johnsones share.” He was therefore by this time, when Shakespeare, his senior by nearly nine years, was already in prosperous circumstances and good esteem, at least a regular member of the profession, with a fixed engagement in the Lord Admiral’s company, then performing under the experienced Henslowe’s management at the Rose. The traditions may very possibly be true according to which he had previously acted at the Curtain (a former house of · the Lord Admiral’s men), and “taken mad Jeronimo’s part” as a stroller. This latter appearance would in that case have probably been in The Spanish Tragedy, since in The First Part of Jeronimo Jonson would have had to dwell on the “smallness” of his “bulk.” He was at a subsequent date (1601) employed by Henslowe to write up The Spanish Tragedy, in pursuance of a fashion differing from that of later times, when old plays have more usually been written down to the taste of modern audiences. Jonson’s additions, which were not the first changes made in the play, are usually supposed to be those printed with The Spanish Tragedy in the edition of 1602; Charles Lamb’s doubts on the subject are an instance of that subjective kind of criticism in which it is unsafe to put absolute trust.

Ben Jonson may be supposed to have married two or three years before the date of Henslowe’s first entry of his name. Of his wife he afterwards spoke with scant enthusiasm, and for one (undated) interval of five years he preferred to live without her. Long burnings of “oil” among his books, and long spells of recreation at the tavern, such as Jonson loved, are not the most favoured accompaniments of family life. But Jonson was no stranger to the tenderest of affections: two at least of the several children whom his wife bore to him he commemorated in touching little tributes of verse; nor in speaking of his lost eldest daughter did he forget “her mother’s tears.”

Within a year’s time, or little more, from the date at which we first find Ben Jonson in well-authenticated connexion with the English stage, he had produced one of the most memorable plays in its history. Every Man in his Humour, the original example of a species of English comedy which cannot be said to have become altogether extinct even with the Restoration, was first acted in 1598 —probably in the earlier part of September—by the Lord Chamberlain’s company, which was then still performing at the so-called Theatre, and in which Shakespeare was just on the eve of acquiring one or more shares. He certainly was one of the actors in Jonson’s comedy, and it is in the character of Old Knowell in this very play that, according to a bold but ingenious guess, Shakespeare is represented in the half-length portrait of him in the folio of 1623, beneath which were printed Jonson’s lines concerning the picture. Every Man in his Humour was probably followed by The Case is Altered, which was certainly acted by 1599, and which contains a satirical attack upon the pageant poet Anthony Munday. Inasmuch as the earlier of these two comedies was indisputably successful, and as Jonson’s reputation was already sufficient to ensure him a mention in the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, published in the same year, 1598, as one of the chief writers in tragedy (on the strength of what play or plays is unknown), it was an awkward fatality that before the year was out he should have found himself in prison and in danger of the gallows. He had had the misfortune of killing in a duel, fought in Hogsden Fields, for some cause unknown, an actor of Henslowe’s company named Gabriel Spenser; possibly Henslowe’s uncourteous designation of Jonson as a “bricklayer” may imply that the success of the new comedy at the other house had not been a subject of congratulation at that to which its author had formerly belonged. In prison Jonson was visited by a Roman Catholic priest—a prison being the most likely place in which to meet a priest in those days; and the result was his conversion to the Church of Rome, to which he adhered for twelve years. Jonson was afterwards a diligent student of divinity; but, though his mind was religious, it is not probable that its natural bias much inclined it to dwell upon creeds and their controversies. Though in prison spies were set upon him, which was then thought to be an admirable method for expediting justice, yet his judges (he afterwards boasted) could get nothing out of him but “aye” or “no.” And thus after a short imprisonment he was released, some time early in 1599, in which year he is found back again at work for Henslowe, receiving, together with Dekker, Chettle, and “another gentleman,” earnest-money for a tragedy called Robert II., King of Scots. It is of more importance that in the same year he brought out through the Lord Chamberlain’s company (possibly already at the Globe, then newly built or building) the elaborate comedy of Every Man out of his Humour,— a work which subsequently had the honour, for which it was in some respects specially fitted, of being presented before Queen Elizabeth. The sunshine of court favour, rarely diffused during her reign in rays more than metaphorically golden, was not to bring any material comfort to the most learned of her dramatists, before the inevitable hand was laid upon her of which his courtly epilogue had besought death to forget the use.. Indeed, of his Cynthia's Revels (1600), no doubt primarily designed as a piece of unctuous flattery to the address of the queen, the most marked result had been to offend two playwrights of note with whom he had formerly worked in company— Dekker, who had a coarse and healthy grip of his own,jmd Marston, who was perhaps less dangerous by his strength than by his versatility. Learning their intention, or at least that of Dekker, to wreak literary vengeance upon him, he seems to have sought to anticipate its effect by covering them with contemptuous ridicule beforehand. The Poetaster (1601), which he states to have been completed fifteen weeks after the plot of it was first conceived, did not, however, silence his adversaries; it rather gave them the opportunity of the last word, which Dekker took in producing his Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1602). There was indeed an attempt at some more last words on Jonson’s part; but on the whole he appears to have thought (and very wisely) that the time for a season of silence had arrived for him as a court poet. According to a statement by Overbury, early in 1603, “Ben Johnson, the poet, now lives upon one Townesend” —who this generous patron was we do not know—“and scornes the world.” That, however, he was not sulking in the friendly tent with which he had been accommodated is shown by the fact that in this year (1603) was produced at the Globe the earlier of his two extant tragedies, Sejanus, —Shakespeare once more taking a part in the performance.

Meanwhile, in. the year which dates the tragedy eon-cerning the fall of the great favourite, there had. begun a reign in England destined to be remembered as that of favourites hardly less hated than he. Adulatory loyalty seemed intent on showing that it had not exhausted itself at the feet of Gloriana, and Jonson’s well-stored brain and ready pen had their share in devising and executing ingenious variations on the theme “Welcome—since we cannot do without thee !” It is very remarkable how promptly his genius, which it is sheer prejudice to describe as wanting in flexibility and lightness, suited itself to the sudden demands of the new taste for masks and entertainments—new of course in degree rather than in kind —introduced with the new reign. The pageant which on the 7th of May 1603 bade the king welcome to a capital dissolved in joy was partly of Jonson’s partly of Dekker’s devising; and, having thus been prominently brought into notice, he was able to deepen and diversify the impression by the composition of masks presented to James I. when entertained at houses of the nobility. He was soon occasionally employed by the court itself,— already in 1606 in conjunction with Inigo Jones as responsible for the “painting and carpentry,”—and thus speedily showed himself master in a species of composition to which he, more than any other of our poets before Milton, secured an enduring place in our national poetic literature. Personally, no doubt, he derived considerable material benefit from the new fashion, very valuable to poets in days when there were no monthly magazines,— more especially if his statement to Drummond was anything like correct, that out of his plays he had never gained a couple of hundred pounds.

Good humour seems to have come back with good fortune. Joint employment had reconciled him with Dekker; and with Marston also he was again on good terms. When therefore, in 1604, the latter and Chapman (who, Jonson told Drummond, was loved of him, and whom he had probably honoured as “Virgil” in The Poetaster') produced the excellent comedy of Eastward Ho, it appears to have contained some contributions by Jonson; at all events, when the authors were arrested on account of one or more passages in the play which were deemed insulting to the Scotch, he voluntarily imprisoned himself with them. They were soon released, and a banquet at his expense, attended by Camden and Selden, terminated the incident. If Jonson is to be believed, there had been a report that the prisoners were to have their ears and noses cut, and, with reference apparently to this peril, “at the midst of the feast his old mother drank to him, and showed him a paper which she had intended (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prison among his drink, which was full of lusty strong poison; and that she was no churl, she told him, she minded first to have drunk of it herself.” Strange to say, in 1605 Jonson and Chapman, though the former, as he averred, had so “attempered” his style as to have “given no cause to any good man of grief,” were again in prison on account of “a play”; but they appear to have been once more speedily set free, in consequence of the (very manly and dignified) letter addressed by Jonson to the earl of Salisbury. Tn the same year he played a part—which had till recently remained unknown, and is still in some measure obscure— in the mysterious history of the Gunpowder Plot. On November 7th, very soon after the discovery of the conspiracy, whose threads it became the immediate duty of the council to unravel, that body appears to have sent for Ben Jonson, at the advice no doubt of Salisbury, who (ashas just been seen) knew of Jonson; indeed, the latter has been supposed to have given his support as a dramatist to the party headed by Robert Cecil before Queen Elizabeth’s death. As a loyal Roman Catholic Jonson was asked, and undertook to give, his good offices in inducing the priests to do something required by the council,—one hardly likes to conjecture it to have been some tampering with the secrets of confession. In any case, the negotiations fell through, because the priests declined to come forth out of their hiding-places to be negotiated with— greatly to the wrath of Ben Jonson, who declares in a letter to Lord Salisbury that “they are all so en weaved in it that it will make 500 gentlemen less of the religion within this week, if they carry their understanding about them.” Jonson himself, however, did not declare his separation from the Church of Rome for five years longer, however much it might have been to his advantage to do so.

His powers as a dramatist were at their height during the earlier half of the reign of James I.; and by the year 1 SI6 he had produced nearly all the plays which are worthy of his genius. They include the tragedy of Catiline (1611), which achieved only a doubtful success, and the comedies of Volpane or The Pox (acted 1605), Epicοene or The Silent Woman (1609), the Alchemist (1610), Bartholomew Pair (1614), and The Devil is an Ass (1616). During the same period he produced several masks, usually in connexion with Inigo Jones, with whom, however, he seems to have quarrelled already in this reign, though it is very doubtful whether the architect is really intended to be ridiculed in Bartholomew Pair under the character of Lanthorn Leatherhead. In 1616 a modest pension of 100 marks a year was conferred upon him; and possibly this mark of royal favour may have encouraged him to the publication of the first volume of the folio collected edition of his works (1616).

He had other patrons more bountiful than the crown, and for a brief space of time (in 1613) had travelled to France as governor to the eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh, then a state prisoner in the Tower, for whose society Jonson may have gained a liking at the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, but for whose moral character he, like so many of his contemporaries, seems to have had but small esteem. Thus by the year 1616 Jonson seems to have made up his mind to cease writing for the stage, where neither his success nor his profits had equalled his merits and expectations. He continued to produce masks and entertainments when called upon; but he was attracted by many other literary pursuits, and had already accomplished enough to furnish plentiful materials for retrospective discourse over pipe or cup. He was already entitled to lord it at the Mermaid, where his quick antagonist in earlier wit-combats no longer appeared even on a visit from his comfortable retreat at Stratford. That on the other hand Ben carried his wicked town habits into Warwickshire, and there, together with Drayton, made Shakespeare drink so hard with them as to bring upon himself the fatal fever which ended his days, is a bit of petty scandal with which we may fairly refuse to load his memory.

It was in the year 1618 that Ben Jonson, like his great namesake a century and a half afterwards, resolved to have a real holiday for once, and about midsummer started for his ancestral country, Scotland. He had (very heroically for a man of his habits) determined to make the journey on foot; and—imitation is the sincerest kind of flattery—was speedily followed by John Taylor, the water-poet, who still further handicapped himself by the condition that he would accomplish the pilgrimage without a penny in his pocket. Jonson (who put money in his good friend’s purse when he came up with him at Leith) spent more than a year and a half in the hospitable Lowlands, being solemnly elected a burgess of Edinburgh, and on another occasion entertained at a public banquet there. But the best remembered hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the learned and refined Scottish poet Drummond of Hawthornden, to which we owe the so-called Conversations. In these famous jottings, the work of no extenuating hand, Jonson lives for us to this day, delivering his censures freely in praise and blame, but by no means generously described in the postscript added by his exhausted host as “a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others.” A poetical account of this journey, “with all the adventures,” was burnt with Jonson’s library.

After his return to England Jonson appears to have resumed his former course of life. In 1619 his visits to the country seats of the nobility were varied by a sojourn at Oxford with Corbet at Christ Church, on which occasion a master’s degree was conferred upon him by the university. He confessed about this time that he was or seemed growing “restive,” i.e., lazy, though it was not long before he returned to the occasional composition of masks. The extremely spirited Gipsies Metamorphosed (1621) was thrice presented before the king, who was so pleased with it as to grant to the poet the reversion of the office of master of the revels, besides proposing to confer upon him the honour of knighthood. This honour Jonson (hardly in deference to the memory of Sir Petronel Flash) declined, but there was no reason why he should not gratefully accept the increase in his pension, which was in the same year (1621) raised to 200 marks. Yet the close of king James L’s reign found the foremost of the poets of the time in an anything but prosperous condition. It would be unjust to hold “The Sun,” “The Dog,” “The Triple Tun,” or the “Old Devil” with its Apollo club-room, where Ben’s supremacy must by this time have become established, responsible for this result; taverns were the clubs of that day, and a man of letters is not considered lost in our own because he “haunts” a smoking-room in Pall Mall. Disease had weakened the poet’s strength, and the burning of his library, as his Execration upon Vulcan sufficiently shows, must have been no mere transitory trouble to a poor man of letters. He thus thought it best to recur to writing for the stage, and in 1625 produced, with no faint heart, but with a very clear anticipation of the comments which would be made upon the reappearance of the “huge, overgrown play-maker,” The Staple of News, a comedy excellent in some respects,., but little calculated to become popular. In 1628, on the death of Middleton, some interest obtained for him the appointment of city chronologer, with a salary of 100 nobles a year—an office of which he appears to have considered the duties as purely ornamental, inasmuch as in 1631 his salary...