A few parallel passages between the Discoveries and other works of Jonson may be found, as the statement" that poets are far rarer births than kings" (Disc. 76 12, Epigram, 79, and the Epilogue to New Inn), or the allusion to the passage of Julius Cæsar (Disc. 23 27, and the Induction to The Staple of Newes); but such points prove little, and need not be pressed. The two or three parallels between the Discoveries and works of contemporary authors (Bacon's Advancement of Learning, 31 13, 66 12, 17; Selden's Table Talk, 73 3) are of about equal uncertainty. Several allusions to contemporary persons and events are somewhat more fruitful. The disgrace of Lord Bacon in 1621 was assuredly prior to the writing of the note (31 28-32 3); whilst that concerning his eloquence (30 10-21)-unless the literality of the translation from Seneca mislead- - must have been written subsequent to the chancellor's death in 1626. The allusions to Taylor, the Water Poet (229 and 14), amount to nothing, as Taylor continued the production of his booklets long after the death of Jonson; that to Heath's Epigrams (228) is more definite, unless reminiscent, as Heath does not appear to have written subsequent to 1620. These allusions lead to 1620 or 1621, as the earliest possible date assignable to the composition of any of the notes constituting the Discoveries; while the date, 1630, contained in the note on Archy Armstrong (13 18), the reminiscent character of Jonson's remarks on Bacon, Shakespeare, and others, the adaptation of Seneca's words on the failure of his memory to Jonson himself (18 12-29) and his frequent bitterness of spirit (11 18-29, 21 16 seqq., 43 24-44 23), all point to a still later period as the probable date of composition. It is likely that little violence will be done to the truth in assigning the composition of the Discoveries to the last years of the poet's life.

3. LITERARY INFLUENCES.

The nature of this work is not such as to warrant the treatment of so extended a topic as the learning of Ben Jonson. We must therefore be content with a brief consideration of the literary influences discernible in the Discoveries. In view of the restoration of some scores of passages to their respective owners - for which the reader is referred to the notes - it is to be hoped that the Discoveries may thenceforth be regarded in a very different light from a production of original English prose. As Whalley said long ago (ed. Jonson, vii. p. 71), and as the title of the work imports, "Many of the following passages are imitations or observations made upon the authors of Jonson's daily reading"; and I may add that quite as many are literal quotations, Jonson's own merely in the sense that he has translated them, and applied their very words to the changed conditions of his time. It is notable that to this latter class belong several of the passages most commonly quoted as autobiographical or reminiscent of the poet's contemporaries (e.g. 18 10-29, 28 17 seqq., and the notes thereon), and not a few which have been enthusiastically admired as Jonson's by those imperfectly conversant with their originals. See especially the passage of Euripides, translated at 4 15, and highly extolled by Mr. Swinburne in his Study of Ben Jonson, p. 131; and the discussion of the advantages of a public over a private education at 53 21 seqq., a literal transcript of a well-known passage of Quintilian, equally exalted as Jonson's with the lavish panegyric of which the same critic is so consummate a master (ibid. p. 167–168, and my note on 54 16), and pronounced by Professor Ward "very English in spirit" (English Dramatic Literature, i. p. 542, note 2).

In reading the Discoveries, it is not difficult to discern the influences under which a given series of notes was written. Now the author was reading the elder Seneca, and

the reminiscent character of the proemia to the several books of his Controversies led Jonson into an application of the rhetorician's words to himself (18 8-29, 28 17–29 3), to the eloquence of Lord Bacon (30 10-21), or to his recollection of Shakespeare (23 22–24). A diligent study of the Institutes of Quintilian and the Poetics of Aristotle inspires respectively the essays on style and poetry. In another place we find traces of Plutarch running through several pages, dipping into the various topics of the Morals, gleaning an anecdote here and there from the Lives, and diverted through similarity of subject-matter into other allusions. The more usual Greek and Latin classics are of course pervading; and quotations from the writings of Petronius Arbiter, Varro, Aulus Gellius, Vitruvius, and the collections of Stobæus are sufficient to prove the range and the diversity of Jonson's classical reading. Of the moderns he has made no less use; and we find frequent reference or familiar allusion to the commentaries and original works of the famous scholars of the classical Renaissance, such as the Scaligers, Erasmus, Vives, Lipsius, Heinsius, and others. Elsewhere a consideration of the attributes of princes brings into discussion tenets of Macchiavelli, and involves the citation of several passages of The Prince (see pp. 37-39 passim); whilst other notes are the result of a recent study of the essay On the Advancement of Learning or other parts of the Instauratio Magna. (For references to these several authors, see the Index and Notes.)

Thus we find the Discoveries, like all the other productions of this veritable Titan, attesting Jonson's unparalleled reading and that audacious power with which he has appropriated the literary spoils of all ages to his royal will and disposal, holding a reckless course beneath a burden of learning that must have overpowered a less than colossal frame. In the words of Mr. Symonds (Ben Jonson, English Worthies, p. 52): "This wholesale and indiscriminate trans

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lation is managed with admirable freedom. He held the prose writers and poets of antiquity in solution in his spacious memory. He did not need to dovetail or weld his borrowings into one another, but rather, having fused them in his own mind, poured them plastically forth into the mould of thought."

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In a case like the present we should guard against applying our own conditions to a consideration of the past. In the essay on style (see 77 14) Jonson speaks of an ability "to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use" as a requisite in our poet" only second to "natural wit" and the exercise of his powers. And Dryden shows his appreciation of this theory, as well as of its practice, in the words: "The greatest man of the last age, Ben Jonson, was not only a professed imitator of Horace, but a learned plagiary of all the others; you track him everywhere in their snow. . . . But he has done his robberies so openly that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him" (An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, Arber's English Garner, iii. pp. 551 and 519). Plagiarism has been well termed "an invention of the nineteenth century," and, in view of the extended borrowings of Shakespeare and other lesser Elizabethans, may properly be considered a crime little recognized as such to that age. Jonson was consistent in theory and practice, and believed a great thought to be always his who expresses it best. As to Jonson's power in this respect, we may agree with the judicious Fuller when he says: "What was ore in others he was able to refine unto him" (Worthies of England, ed. 1840, ii. p. 425).

Finally, whatever may be said of Jonson's other works, in that under consideration the very title disarms criticism in this particular. "Silva, timber, the raw material of facts and thoughts," are the author's words; and such is the

humble relation which he would have the Discoveries bear to the Forest and Underwoods of his works.

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4. STYLE.

The Discoveries come in character as in time midway between Hooker and Dryden, and they incline rather to the more than to the less modern form" (Saintsbury, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 219). Two things explain this position. Jonson's vocabulary is somewhat more antiquated than that of most of his contemporaries, and the conservatism of increasing years only added to that of constitution. "Words borrowed of antiquity," he writes, "do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes; for they have the authority of years and out of their intermission do win themselves a kind of grace like newness" (61 14-18). A comparison of the vocabulary of Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesie with that of the Discoveries, written nearly sixty years later, will disclose a far larger number of words demanding explanation in the latter. On the other hand, a like comparison between the two works with reference to the structure of sentence and paragraph will exhibit a form and symmetry, a sense of order and proportion, and a consciousness of the demands of literary presentment in the Discoveries for which we may look in vain in the somwhat loosely-strung periods and formless paragraphs of the Defense. This contrast becomes the more startling when we remember that Sidney's work is characterized by a logical sequence and continuity of thought often wanting in the disjointed entries of the Discoveries.

The chief traits of Jonson's prose are force, condensity and directness. The first often rises to genuine eloquence and displays in its reserve and union with grace a truly classic dignity. (See the well-known passage on the eloquence of