1609, and The Alchemist followed in the succeeding year. These masterly comedies met with unqualified success, as did Bartholomew Fair in 1614. A less degree of popular approbation awaited his second tragedy, Catiline, which was produced in 1611. This group of plays represents Jonson at the height of his dramatic power.

From 1616 to 1625 Jonson produced nothing for the stage, although still not infrequently engaged in the composition of courtly entertainments. During this period

of prosperity he was enabled to continue the prosecution of those studies which have made him memorable as one of the greatest scholars of a scholarly age, and to collect his rich and varied library, afterwards unhappily destroyed by fire. He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him £20 every first day of the new year to buy new books." With another patron, Lord d'Aubigny, he lived for a period of five years. Jonson accompanied the eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh to Paris as his tutor in 1613, and told Drummond that he had written certain parts of Sir Walter's History of the World for him (see notes 30 34). Later, in 1618, Jonson set out on foot for Scotland, and spent some time with the Scotch poet, William Drummond, at Hawthornden, the latter's country-seat. In the words of Professor Ward: "His [Jonson's] moral like his physical nature was cast in a generously ample mould; he spoke his mind freely in praise and blame; uttered his opinion of men and books in round terms; and probably never gave a second thought to his sayings after they had flowed as copiously as the canary which had removed the last barrier of self-restraint. Talk such as this will not always bear analysis; and when Drummond, after Ben Jonson's departure, summarized his impressions of his guest in a note of his own

not of course intended for the public eye - it does not follow that he was in a fit mood for the purpose."

Courtly patronage failed Jonson towards the close of the

reign of James, and in 1625 he had recourse once more to the stage. While the sweeping assertion of Dryden that these later plays are "Jonson's dotages" is unfair, their inferiority to the work of his better days is as marked as it is deplorable. But there were many compensations yet left to the veteran of letters. None of the great English literary dictators enjoyed a rule more absolute than that of Ben Jonson, whether in the earlier days of the Mermaid, where, in the words of Herrick :

We such clusters had

As made us nobly wild, not mad;

And yet each verse of thine

Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine;

or in the later times of the Apollo room of the Devil Tavern. Nor was this homage confined to "the billowy realms of Bohemia." To use the words of Professor Ward once more: "Contemporary literature of every descriptionfrom Clarendon to Milton, and from Milton to Herrick abounds with testimonies together proving his position to have been unrivalled among the men of letters of his times; and on his death a crowd of poets hastened to pay their tributes of acknowledgment to one who seems to have been loved more than he was feared, and to have left behind him a gap which it was felt must remain unfilled."

Unhappily, poverty, disease, and increasing years were now aggravated by renewed petty squabbles, especially with Inigo Jones, who used his influence at Court unworthily to prevent the employment of his unhappy rival. In 1628, on the death of Thomas Middleton, Jonson obtained the post of Chronologer to the City of London, and in the ensuing year King Charles renewed his father's patronage of the old laureate with a gift of £100, and an increase of Jonson's standing salary. Now much of his time bedridden, the old poet became dependent on the liberality of noble patrons,

and yet the friendship of many of the greatest and noblest men of his day, and the adoration of a younger generation "sealed of the tribe of Ben," must have gone far towards brightening even these darkening days. Ben Jonson died August 6, 1635, and although a projected monument failed of erection in the midst of the political tension that was rapidly hurrying the nation to civil war, all must agree that "no time will efface the brief but sufficient legend

'O rare Ben Jonson.""

2. PUBLICATION AND DATE OF COMPOSITION.

Ben Jonson's Explorata, Timber or Discoveries was published posthumously in 1641, filling the last forty-seven pages of the second volume of the folio edition of 1640. Since Dr. Brinsley Nicholson's examination and collation of the folio editions of Jonson (see Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, vol. v. p. 573), we may dismiss the supposition of Lowndes that a third folio edition was printed, bearing date 1641, as well as his affirmation of the existence of a second volume of the first folio of 1616. It was not until the reprint of 1640 that a second volume, containing the Discoveries and other pieces variously dated, appeared. Gifford supposed that this volume was printed from manuscripts surreptitiously obtained (ed. Cunningham, iii. p. 277); but Dr. Nicholson has shown conclusively, and for reasons which space will not permit me to set forth here, that at least two of the plays contained in this volume had received touches from the hand of the author, and that "as to the pieces dated 1640 and 1641, some of the smaller poems are from the author's revised copies, while the same pieces in the quarto and duodecimo non-surreptitious editions of 1640 are from earlier drafts."

The separate title of the Discoveries bears no imprint beyond the words, "London, printed M.DC.XLI." The

pagination runs continuously through Horace, his Arte of Poetrie, pp. 1-29, The English Grammar, pp. 31-84, and the Discoveries, pp. 85-132; while each of the former separate titles displays the imprint, "Printed M.DC.XL." Dr. Nicholson, however, informs us that the general title of the second volume bears the imprint of R. Meighan, 1640, who was not the publisher of the other volume of the second folio. The exemplar, the property of the present editor, contains no such general title; and it would seem from Gifford's note, referred to above, that his copy exhibited a like defect. Dr. Nicholson assures us that whatever the other variants, all the copies of the Discoveries bears the date of 1641.

In view of the corrupt state of portions of the text, the evident disorder of many of the notes, and the ignorant misplacement and repetition of marginal references, it is clear that the work could never have been intended, by so careful an author as Jonson, for publication in its present form. And yet, considering the age and its posthumous appearance, the condition of the text of the folio is far from justifying the brilliant strictures of Mr. Swinburne. The truth seems that editors of Jonson have generally wearied of their task before reaching the later products of their author's brain; and, while most of the mistakes of the folio have been reproduced with sedulous fidelity, not a few new errors have crept into the text through carelessness or unnecessary zeal in emendation.

As appears from the title, the Discoveries is a "species of commonplace book of aphorisms flowing out of the poet's daily reading." But it would be far from just to regard this as all. For every note is stamped with the powerful individuality of the writer, so that even the reflected thoughts of others have become wholly Jonson's own; while the care with which the notes have been penned, and the painstaking attention to matters of style and expression, entitle Jonson

here as elsewhere to challenge the first place of his age as a master of vigorous, idiomatic English prose. There is internal evidence, too, pointing to an intent to publish, in the words: "I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted" (De Shakespeare nostrati, 23 14-16), to which may possibly be added the several passages susceptible of an autobiographical interpretation (18 8-19 2, 31 28-32 3, 43 24-44 23, etc.)

The date of the composition of the Discoveries cannot be determined with any degree of accuracy; and it is highly probable, from the nature of the work, that it was written from time to time through a series of years. One piece of external evidence we have in a letter of James Howell to Jonson, dated June 27, 1629, and containing a series of quotations on the madness of poets, nearly all of which are to be found in a passage of the Discoveries (see 75 24-76 8, and the notes thereon, in which Howell's letter is quoted). Unfortunately for this bit of evidence, the letter mentions The Magnetic Lady as a finished work, and that play was not acted until 1632. It is unlikely that Jonson kept the finished manuscript of his play in his desk three years before performance, and still more improbable that Howell should write thus familiarly of a play as yet untried. Moreover, Anthony à Wood declares (Athena Oxonienses, ed. 1817, iii. col. 746) that "many of the said letters were never written before their author was in the Fleet [1642], as he pretends they were, only feigned (no time being kept with the dates), and purposely published to gain money to relieve his necessities." Hence, while it is quite possible that Howell sent such a letter to Jonson, the date can prove nothing as to the composition of Jonson's note, if indeed the evidence of Anthony à Wood does not raise a presumption of direct borrowing on the part of Howell from Jonson's already published Discoveries.