Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/160

144 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Ben Jonson and Hester Hopkins, 27th July, 1623." He would be then just past fifty. A monument of another kind was achieved to him in the '■'■Jonsonus Virbius ; or, the Memory of Ben Jonson. Revived by the Friends of the Muses ; " being a collection of elegies in English and latin, with one in Greek, published about six months after his death, under the care of Duppa, Bishop of Win- chester and tutor to the Prince of Wales, and reprinted by Gifford at the end of the " Works." In the list of contributors are some of the best known names of the period (we must bear in mind that most of the supremely great men whom we are wont to think of as Jonson's contemporaries, the " Elizabethans " and their juniors associated with his prime, died before him), including Lord Falkland, who is said to have given the title, Jonsonus Virbius ; Sir John Beau- mont, son of the author of "Bosworth Field," and nephew of the dramatist; the good Henry King, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, a genuine, though a minor poet ; Thomas May, translator of I.ucan, and historian of the Parliament; William Habington, Edmund Waller, John Cleveland, Jasper Mayne, William Cartwright, Owen Feltham of the "Resolves," James Howell of the "Familiar Epistles," Shackerley Marmion, Ralph Brideoake (Bishop of Chichester after King), and John Ford the dramatist. I have already quoted some lines from Falkland's "Eglogue;" but a few more may here be given : — "Alas ! that bard, that glorious bard is dead, Who, when I wliilom cities visited, Hath made them seem but hours which were full days, Whilst he vouchsafed me his harmonious lays.