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And let those things in plush,

Till they be taught to blush,

Like what they will, and more contented be

With that Broome swept from thee.

And Carew's reply, though not so direct, may have intended Brome by the person1

Who hath his flock of cackling geese compared

To thy tuned choir of swans.

Carew says further:

Thy labour'd works shall live, when time devours
Th' abortive offspring of their hasty hours.
Thou art not of their rank.

Two more recollections of this ill-feeling appeared in Jonsonus Virbius 2 (1638). One of these, signed I. C.,3 says:

Let him who daily steales

From thy most precious meales

(Since thy strange plenty finds no loss by it) Feed himself with the fragments of thy wit.

This I suppose to be Brome. At any rate the 'grosse base stuffe' in the next stanza is doubtless intended to include his work. The other, by R. Brideoake, I shall quote more at length:

And though thy fancies were too high for those
That but aspire to Cockpit-flight, or prose,
Though the fine plush and velvets of the age
Did oft for sixpence damn thee from the stage,
And with their mast and acorn stomachs ran
To the nasty sweepings of thy serving man,
Before thy cates, and swore thy stronger food,
'Cause not by them digested, was not good.

1 Carew, Poems (Muses' Lib.), pp. 90, 91.

2 Works 9. 449.

* Berdan (Cleveland's Poems, 1903, p. 177) thinks it is not by Cleveland.

The not unnatural resentment and jealousy of Jonson, which had given rise to all these bitter comments in verse, seems to have completely disappeared by 1632. In that year Brome's first publication, the very successful Northern Lass, came out with six copies of prefatory verses, headed by the following from Jonson1:

To my old Faithful Servant, and (by his continued Vertue) my loving Friend, the Author of this Work, Mr. Richard Brome.

I Had you for a Servant, once, Dick Brome;

And you performed a Servants faithful parts.

Now, you are got into a nearer room,

Of Fellowship, professing my old Arts. And you do doe them well with good applause,

Which you have justly gained from the Stage, By observation of those Comick Lawes

Which I, your Master, first did teach the Age. You learn'd it well, and for it serv'd your time

A Prentice-ship: which few doe now adays. Now each Court-Hobby-horse will wince in rime;

Both learned and unlearned all write Playes. It was not so of old: Men took up trades

That knew the Crafts they had bin bred in right: An honest Bilbo-Smith would make good blades,

And the Physician teach men spue or shite;

The Cobler kept him to his nall, but now

He'll be a Pilot, scarse can guide a Plough.

Ben. Johnson.

The latter part of these verses is doubtfully complimentary, but what would be an insult from an ordinary individual might be intended as a mark of extreme graciousness from Ben. At any rate they seem to have been so construed by Brome, who, whenever he refers to his master, is ever grateful and loyal. How close the relations between the two were from this time on till Jonson's death it is impossible to say. Brome is never alluded to

1 Brome, Works 3. ix; also Ben Jonson, Works 8. 342.

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as a Son of Ben' by any of his contemporaries, but of course very few of the circle of young men about Jonson are actually so called.

The Sons of Ben' probably never existed as a definitely organized club, but were merely a number of men with a common interest in Jonson, whose powerful personality easily attracted and dominated. I think it doubtful whether all of them even knew one another. The term 'son' in the seventeenth century was a somewhat vague evidence of friendship and approval exhibited towards a young man by one considerably older. Many instances of this can be found. For example, the prologue at a revival of Beaumont and Fletcher's Custom of the Country1 (between 1635 and 1642) was spoken by my son Clark,' an actor; Nathaniel Field addresses an urgent appeal for 40 £ to ' Father Henchlowe' (Henslowe); Massinger wrote lines to his son,' Sam Smith, upon his Minerva; and Dekker wrote verses 'to my Sonne Broom.'4 The explanation of this custom offered by Sir Harris Nicolas, that it was a practice which originated among the alchemists, I think, rather far fetched, for it is a quite natural way of showing affection or respect, and one that might arise without any precedent.

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It has become customary to allude to the dozen or so of young men who modeled their work in the lyric or the drama on Jonson's, as his sons.' Though we have evidence that there was a personal friendship between most of them and Jonson, and, in some cases, friendships among

1 Works (1844) 4. 390, note c. 2 Dict. Nat. Biog. 18. 409. 3 Wit Restored (1658), ed. J. C. Hotten, London, n. d., p. 262. 4 Before Northern Lass: Brome's Works 3. xi.

5 Complete Angler, ed. Sir H. Nicolas, 2. 323, n.

• In Covent Garden Weeded (3. 1. p. 39), Capt. Driblow calls his band of roarers' sons'.

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themselves, there are but seven of these admirers whom I find definitely alluded to as 'sons.' Howell,1 Lovelace, and Marmion3 call Jonson 'father,' or speak of themselves as son.' Randolph has a poem called, A Gratulatory to Mr. Ben Johnson, for adopting him to be his sonne, and the story of his being received by Jonson as such is told in an apocryphal jest-book a century later. Jonson calls Joseph Rutter my Dear Son, and Right Learned Friend." Aubrey' relates an anecdote of a certain wit, named John Hoskyns, who desired to be adopted by the elder poet. And, finally, Humphrey Mosely, the publisher, quotes Jonson as saying 'my son Cartwright writes all like a man. These are all the definite references I have found. There are, besides, two poems in Underwoods—an Epigram to a Friend and Son, and An Epistle Answering to one that asked to be sealed of the tribe of Ben1o—and Falkland's reference to Jonson's adopted children.'11 There is nothing here indicative even of a literary club, and the Verses placed over the Door at the Entrance into the Apollo,12 Jonson's favorite room at the Devil Tavern, as well as the Leges Conviviales,13 lead one to think that the 'Sons of Ben' who met there with him did it more for the joy in life, and the pleasure of repartee, than for serious literary criticism and mutual improvement.

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1 Epistola Ho-Eliana, ed. Jacobs, 1. 267, 276, 322; 2. 376.

2 On Sanazar, Poems, ed. Hazlitt, p. 240.

3 Jonsonus Virbius: Ben Jonson, Works 9. 465.

4 Works, ed. Hazlitt, 2. 537.

5 Ben Jonson's Jests, or the Wit's Pocket Companion, London, 1751.

• Prefatory verses to the Shepherd's Holiday: Ben Jonson, Works 9. 336.

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13 Works 9. 67.

11 Jonsonus Virbius : Ben Jonson, Works 9. 426.

12 Works 9. 73.

The allusions to the Apollo in the Staple of News, in Herrick's poem, and in Marmion's Fine Companion, bear out the idea that it was a place for glorious bacchanalian revels.

As none of the men definitely called the Sons of Ben,' with the exception of Shakerley Marmion, are known to have had any relations with Brome, it is quite possible that he did not find himself wholly welcome to the Oracle of Apollo' among the rather aristocratic circle. Perhaps, however, the mere existence or non-existence of complimentary verses is too slight a ground for such a conjecture.

Whatever his relations with his contemporary poets and playwrights may have been, he was undoubtedly becoming a most successful rival. We have already seen that one of his plays was produced at court by the King's Company in 1629. He seems to have continued his relations with them until 1635, and had his plays1 put on at the Globe and Blackfriars during the period between those dates, at the same time that that company was playing many of the masterpieces of Fletcher, Massinger, and Ford. The latter part of Brome's work for the King's Men seems to have consisted in rewriting at least three old plays of Heywood.2

In 1635 he was evidently considered such a success as a dramatist that the King's Revels Company ventured to make a three-year contract with him. This has been unearthed by Professor Wallace, of the University of Nebraska, in his search for Shakespearean documents. I quote from one of his articles: Richard Brome in 1635 made a contract with the Salisbury Court Theatre to write three plays a year for three years at a salary

1 For a probable list of extant plays written during this period see Chronology, below.

2 Fleay, Biog. Chron. 1. 301.

1910).

Shakspere and the Blackfriars,' Century, Vol. 80 (September

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