'Twas Jupiter that hurled thee headlong down,
And Mars that gave thee a lantern for a crown.
Was it because thou wert of old denied,
By Jove, to have Minerva for thy bride;
That since, thou tak'st all envious care and pain
To ruin every issue of the brain?

Thou might'st have yet enjoyed thy cruelty
With some more thrift, and more variety:
Thou might'st have had me perish piece by piece,
To light tobacco, or save roasted geese,
Singe capons, or crisp pigs, dropping their eyes;
Condemned me to the ovens with the pies;
And so have kept me dying a whole age,

Not ravished all hence in a minute's rage."

The death of his patron, James I., reduced Jonson to the necessity of again writing for the stage, which, it is evident from many passages in his poems, was a distasteful task, notwithstanding the great success which had attended some of his dramatic productions:

"And since our dainty age,
Cannot endure reproof,

Make not thyself a page

To that strumpet, the stage;

But sing high and aloof,

Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof."

Of Jonson's plays, his comedies were the most admired, although several were unsuccessful in acting. His two tragedies, founded on classical models, cost him much labour, but were ill-appreciated by the unlearned; "as it was never acted, but most negligently played by some, the king's servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the king's subjects," was printed by Jonson on the title-page of one of these plays, The New Inn, whose ill success his pride would allow him no other

excuse for.

Dryden says:

"Thus Jonson did mechanic humour show,
When men were dull, and conversation low,
Then Comedy was faultless, but 'twas coarse,
Cobb's tankard was a jest, and Otter's horse."

This refers to what have been termed the Comedies of Character, upon which Jonson's fame as a dramatist is chiefly founded; in the allusion to Captain Otter, he has selected a character from Epicene, or the Silent Woman, one of the most amusing of Jonson's comedies.

In 1629, when Jonson was distressed by sickness and poverty, Charles I. made him a present of £100, which the poet acknowledged in the epigram commencing :

"Great Charles, among the holy gifts of grace
Annexed to thy person and thy place,
"Tis not enough (thy piety is such)

To cure the called king's evil with thy touch;
But thou wilt yet a kinglier mastery try,

To cure the poet's evil, poverty."

Shortly afterwards he sent the king the following petition, which was acceded to, as Charles raised his pension from 100 marks to 100 pounds, with a tierce of canary :—

"THE HUMBLE PETITION OF POOR BEN; TO THE BEST OF MONARCHS, MASTERS, MEN, KING CHARLES.

แ Doth most humbly show it,

To your Majesty, your poet.

That whereas your royal father,
JAMES the blessed, pleased the rather,

Of his special grace to letters,

To make all the MUSES debtors
To his bounty, by extension
Of a free poetic pension,

A large hundred marks annuity,
To be given me in gratuity
For done service, and to come :
And that this so accepted sum,
Or dispensed in books or bread
(For with both the MUSE was fed)
Hath drawn on me, from the times,
All the envy of the rhymes,
And the rattling pit-pat noise
Of the less poetic boys,
When their popguns aim to hit,
With their pellets of small wit,
Parts of me (they judged) decayed;
But we last out still unlayed.

Please your Majesty to make
Of your grace, for goodness sake,
Those your father's marks, your pounds;
Let their spite, which now abounds,

Then go on, and do its worst;

This would all their envy burst;

And so warm the poet's tongue,

You'd read a snake in his next song."

The warrant by which King Charles increased Jonson's pension is dated March, 1630, and is the first patent regularly issued for the post of Poet Laureate.

It directs that the pension shall be

“Paid out of the said Exchequer, at the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, St. Michael the Archangel, and the Birth of our Lord God, quarterly, as by the said letters patent more at large may appear. Know yee nowe, that wee, for divers good considerations vs at this present especially movinge, and in consideration of the good and acceptable service, done vnto vs and our said father by the said Benjamin Johnson, and especially to encourage him to proceede in those services of his witt and penn, which wee have enjoined vnto him, and which we expect from him, are graciously pleased to augment and increase the said annuitie or pension of one hundred marks,

vnto an annuitie of one hundred pounds of lawful money of England for his life. . . . And further know yee, that wee of our more especial grace, certen knowledge and meer motion, have given and granted, and by these presents for vs, our heires and successors, do give and graunt vnto the said Benjamin Johnson, and his assigns, one terse of Canary Spanish wine yearly; to have, hold, perceive, receive, and take the said terse of Canary Spanish wine vnto the said Benjamin Johnson and his assigns during the term of his natural life, out of our store of wines yearly, and from time to time remayninge at or in our cellers within or belonging to our palace of Whitehall." Endorsed-Expl. apud Westm. vicesimo-sexto die Marti anno R. Caroli quinto.

Dr. Johnson says that this pension of £100 was adequate for the conveniences of life at that time, being the saine salary as was paid to the king's physician. But treasury payments in King Charles's days were far from punctual, and the wine which was promised from the royal cellars was often as much in arrear as the pension. Jonson complained of this neglect in some epigrams directed against the king's household, and in one, dated 1630, he says:—

"What can the cause be, when the king hath given
His poet sack, the household will not pay ?

Are they so scanted in their store? or driven

For want of knowing the poet, to say him nay?
Well, they should know him would the king but grant
His poet leave to sing his household true;

He'd frame such ditties of their store and want,

Would make the very Greencloth to look blue;

And rather wish in their expense of sack,

So the allowance from the king to use,

As the old bard should no canary lack ;

"Twere better spare a butt, than spill his muse. For in the genius of a poet's verse,

The king's fame lives. Go now, deny his tierce !"

These forcible and very uncourtierlike lines were ill adapted for the petition of a suitor, and Jonson did not

receive his wine until he had written another epigram in a much more submissive strain.

Towards the close of his career he was associated with Inigo Jones in the production of several Court masques, but the partnership led to a very unkindly feeling between the two artists. A quarrel took place, which, according to some writers, originated in the paltry question of the precedence of names on the title-page of a masque, and Jonson was so ill-advised as to write several bitter lampoons against the great architect, who was then in high favour at Court:

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Sir Inigo doth fear it, as I hear,

And labours to seem worthy of this fear,

That I should write upon him some sharp verse,
Able to eat into his bones, and pierce

The marrow. Wretch! I quit thee of thy pain,
Thou'rt too ambitious, and dost fear in vain :
The Libyan lion hunts no butterflies;
He makes the camel and dull ass his prize.
If thou be so desirous to be read,

Seek out some hungry painter, that, for bread,
With rotten chalk or coal, upon the wall
Will well design thee to be viewed of all
That sit upon the common draught or strand;
Thy forehead is too narrow for my brand."

Jonson's conduct in this affair was more glaringly imprudent than it had ever been, even in the hot-blooded days of his youth, and friends and foes were alike amazed at his intemperate language; for he was at this time almost entirely dependent on his Court and City pensions for support, and it must be remembered that the masques partook more of the nature of spectacles and pageants than of plays, and that the costumes, decorations, and machinery designed by Jones were probably thought more