mission to complete his education in the liberal arts at Athens was at length obtained. With regard to Ovid's mistress Corinna, however, Jonson resorts to a questionable tradition. It was a belief current in Elizabethan times (see, for example, the Life of Ovid prefixed by George Sandys to his translation of the Metamorphoses, ed. 1640) that Ovid had been banished because of an intrigue with Julia the daughter of Augustus, and that she was the Corinna of the poems. This is the story which best served Jonson's purposes in Poetaster; but a few historical facts need to be recalled in this connection. Ovid was born B. C. 43; he was exiled toward the close of 8 A. D.; the Ars Amoris, alleged cause of his banishment, had been published about I B. C. He died in exile A. D. 18. The Julia usually connected with Ovid was born to Augustus and Scribonia, B. C. 39. By M. Vipsanius Agrippa she later became the mother of five children. Having married Tiberius Nero as her third husband, B. C. 12, she became so notoriously profligate that Augustus banished her in B. C. 2, and she died in exile sixteen years later. But there was a younger Julia, daughter of the first. She married L. Aemilius Paullus, but, for adultery with D. Silanus, her grandfather the emperor banished her in 9 A. D. She died A. D. 28. It will be observed that the date of Ovid's banishment is six years later than that of the elder Julia, but coincides almost exactly with that of the younger. Modern critics incline to believe that Ovid's banishment was due to his aiding to conceal the younger Julia's evil-doing (cf. Müller, Handbuch 8. 2. 1 §191), and that the Corinna of the early verses is to be regarded as only a creation of the poet's fancy (ibid. §294). It should be remarked, in conclusion, that Jonson is historically correct in not making Ovid one of the intimates of Horace, who was much older and can never have known him well.

In Poetaster, Ovid is introduced as a poet obliged by his father to study law (I. 1); he has written a tragedy

called Medea, that is 'comming foorth for the common players' (1. 2. 12-14), but says he does not 'traffique in their theaters' (1. 2. 68). He is a second son, and has only a 'bare exhibition' from his father (I. 2. 78-9); is of gentle blood (1. 2. 148-150), and a companion of wits and courtiers (passim). He is in love with Julia, daughter of Augustus (1. 3. 24–5, et passim), whom he calls. Corinna (1. 3. 34-7); gives up law for love and the Muses (1. 3. 46-58); presides at the celestial banquet (4. 5), and is exiled1 from court by the emperor for 'soothing' Julia in her follies (4. 6. 53-8). He appears solus in 4. 8, and with Julia in 4. 9, but we get no further light on his character or history; at the end of act 4 he disappears from the drama, having been, in a way, its hero up to that point. It will be noticed that every one of these strokes of portraiture is authorized by history or tradition concerning the real Ovid, excepting as relates to the banquet of the gods, which was imitated from Homer and does not affect our consideration.

And now for Fleay's conjecture (Chr. 1. 367): 'In the play [Poetaster] Ovid, I think is Donne, who divided his attention between law and poetry, and married Anne Moore (Julia) without her father's consent. It is possible that the Medea tragedy is the Medea MS. Sloane 911; but I have not examined this. It is more likely that some other play is referred to, the name Medea being only given for local colour. It was the real name of Ovid's one play.'

I cull the following facts concerning John Donne the poet from DNB. Donne was born in 1573, the son of John Donne, a London ironmonger, by Elizabeth, daughter of John Heywood the epigrammatist. The family bore arms. The father died in Jan. 1575-6. Donne entered Hart Hall, Oxford, Oct. 23, 1584, when in his 12th year, and had for

1This cannot be regarded as Ovid's banishment to Tomi, which occurred in his fifty-second year, for he appears in Poetaster as a mere youth (cf. 1. 2, esp. 216-9).

room mate Henry Wotton. He went travelling before his four years were up; entered Lincoln's Inn May 6, 1592; was a volunteer under Robert, earl of Essex, on the Cadiz expedition, June to August, 1596. In August 1596 Donne was appointed secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper, and soon became known at court. Most of his poetry was written at this period. About Christmas, 1600, the young poet secretly married Anne More, the sixteenyear-old daughter of Sir George More, and niece of Elizabeth, second wife of the Lord Keeper Egerton. Upon the discovery of this marriage, Sir George More committed Donne to prison. The young man was soon released, but dismissed from his secretaryship. After four years of obscurity and struggle he again attempted to win preferment at court. James was attracted by him and would have advanced him in the church, had the poet been willing. The Pseudo-Martyr was published in quarto, 1610; the Oxford M.A. was received in the same year; Donne was ordained in January 1614-5, and died in 1631.

Let us note first the points of resemblance between Donne and the Ovid of Poetaster. Both are poets by nature and preference. Ovid is nobly born, while Donne may fairly be called a gentleman. Ovid is forced by his father to study law, which in the play he hates and abandons, but which in actual life he seems to have practised; Donne takes up the study of law voluntarily, but does not practise. Ovid is presented by Jonson as the accepted lover of the dissolute Julia, daughter of Augustus, and the amour is the alleged cause of his banishment from court; Donne marries in secret the young daughter of an English knight, is imprisoned and deprived of his office therefor. Both men may be called courtiers. On the other hand, the elder Donne died when his son was but three years old, while Ovid's father, who sees his poet-son grown to manhood, appears in the play. Ovid forsakes the ancestral profession of arms, but Donne, whose father was a peaceable iron

monger, takes some share in Essex's famous capture of Cadiz, 1596. Ovid is a libertine; Donne honorably, if rashly, woos and weds a virtuous maiden, whom he loves devotedly throughout her life. Ovid is not a noble or impressive character in Poetaster; he is scarcely individualized even as courtier, reveler, and poet; while Donne is a truly noble friend, whom Jonson loved and admired, a man, therefore, whom we might expect to be unmistakably and adequately represented, if represented at all.

It seems most appropriate to speak here, rather than under the name JULIA, of Fleay's notion that the mature and dissolute princess of the Poetaster is really meant for Anne More, courted in her aunt's home, and married at sixteen to a good man whom she purely loved. Donne and Anne More were wedded at Christmas-tide, 1600; it is hardly likely that anything can have occurred during the preceding year which should prompt Jonson to identify them with his ignoble Romans, poet and princess though they be.

Grosart has noted a curious coincidence between certain incidents in the careers of Ovid and of Marston, suggested to him by Marston's What You Will, act 1, scene I:

Randulfo

as we see the sonne of a divine

Seldome proves preacher, or a lawers sonne

Rarely a pleader (for they strive to run

A various fortune for their auncestors.

'It is a somewhat singular coincidence further,' writes Grosart (Marston's Poems xi) 'that in the Poetaster, already quoted from, the opening of the Comedy introduces Ovid jun. provoking Ovid sen. his father, by giving himself up to rhyming instead of the study of the Law. Of course Ovid jun. was not Marston any more than Ovid sen. was his father. Yet it is just possible that preliminary to bringing "Crispinus" (i. e. John Marston) on the stage, Ben Jonson hit at him in this through Ovid jun. Indeed a good deal in the character of Ovid jun. is equally applicable to Marston with what is said of him as Crispinus; and

in some respects more pointedly so.' Grosart's citation is interesting, but I do not see that anything else is developed concerning Ovid jun. which is notably applicable to Crispinus-Marston, while we have already seen the historic faithfulness of the Ovid portrait. The suggestion that in presenting Ovid jun. as grieving the paternal heart by a disinclination to the pursuit of law, Jonson was striking a sort of preparatory blow at Marston, is wholly unconvincing. Jonson preferred direct rather than oblique attacks, and he accomplished in this instance an arraignment of Marston as Crispinus that seems to have driven the lesser poet into retirement for a considerable period. Jonson may or may not have known that the elder Marston was disappointed in that his second son preferred poetry to law; but it is quite unlikely that he ever heard of the expressions of regret in the father's will.1 The audience, moreover, cannot be supposed to have possessed all this information, even if Jonson did. Grosart himself has overlooked another point of similarity between the real Ovid and Marston: both were second sons. It is unlikely that the Elizabethan audience, particularly when observing the character Ovid jun. in a play which definitely presented Crispinus as the dramatist Marston, would have known or cared whether such minute correspondence might be discovered between the Roman poet and the English satirist. Only as a coincidence, therefore, does Grosart's parallel deserve attention.

An unsigned article on 'Ben Jonson's Quarrel with Shakespeare,' in the No. Brit. Rev., 1870, vol. 52, makes a fantastic effort (pp. 410-1) to identify Ovid of Poetaster with Shakespeare. As the conjecture is not supported by a single valid fact, and has never been maintained by any but this anonymous author, it requires no discussion here. This same article (p. 424) furnishes us with one more assumption, which I here record as quite the most astounding thing

1Dated 24 Oct. 1599, proved 29 Nov. 1599; cf. Grosart, Marston's Poems x-xi.