Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/137

BEN JONSON 121 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 ? " After enumerating many sorts and samples of literature which would have made a fit meal for Vulcan to lick up, he specifies his own chief manuscript losses : — " But in my desk what was there to accite So ravenous and vast an appetite ? I dare not say a body, but some parts There were of search, and mastery in the arts. All the old Venusine, in poetry. And lighted by the Stagerite, could spy. Was there made English : with a grammar too, To teach some that their nurses could not do, The purity of Language ; and, among The rest, my journey into Scotland sung, Wilh all the adventures : three books, not afraid To speak the fate of the Sicilian maid, To our own ladies : and in story there Of our fifth Henry, eight of his nine year ; Wherein was oil, beside the succours spent, Which noble Carew, Cotton, Selden lent : And twice twelve years stored up humanity ; With humble gleanings in divinity, — After the fathers, and those wiser guides Whom faction had not drawn to study sides." It is probable that the pastoral of the " May Lord," which he mentioned to Drummond, as well as other dramas, were likewise destroyed. As Gifford remarks : " There is a degree of wit and vivacity in these verses [the whole of the " Execration "] which does no little credit to the equanimity of the poet, who speaks of a loss so irreparable to him, not only with forbearance, but with pleasantry and good humour." Of these