Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/149

BEN JONSON 133 masques, each entitled, " Love's Welcome." The splendour of these entertainments may be estimated from what the Duchess records in the Life of her husband (he was afterwards Duke), that the first cost him between four and five thousand, and the second between fourteen and fifteen thousand pounds. Clarendon, in his " History of the Rebellion," recording this "stupendous entertainment," con- cludes : " which, God be thanked, though possibly it might too much whet the appetite of others to ex- cess, no man ever after imitated." About this period Jonson writes to the Earl, in reference to we know not what work : " The faith of a fast friend with the duties of an humble servant, and the hearty prayers of a religious beadsman, all kindled upon this altar to your honour, my honourable lady, your hopeful issue, and your right noble brother, be ever my sacrifice ! — It is the lewd printer's fault that I can send your lordship no more of my book, . . . My printer and I shall afford subject enough for a tragi-comedy ; for with his delays and vexation I am almost become blind ; and if heaven be so just, in the metamorphosis, to turn him into that creature which he most resembles, a dog, with a bell to lead me between Whitehall and my lodging, I may bid the world good night. And so I do." But one more play calls for notice, the "Sad Shepherd;" of which, unfortunately, only the first two acts and two scenes of the third have come down to us. Gifford says : " That it was completed I have little doubt : its mutilated state is easily accounted for by the confusion which followed the author's death. Into whose hands his papers fell, as he left apparently no will nor testamentary document