sive against such jealousy, a passion of which there is elsewhere no trace in Jonson. At the same time, their bent of mind, acquirements, and conceptions of dramatic art were profoundly unlike. It is significant that both in the ‘Conversations’ and the ‘Discoveries,’ where high praise is given to others, Jonson only notes in the case of Shakespeare his deficiency in qualities on which he himself set a very high value (Conv. §§ 3, 12; Discov. § ‘De Shakspeare nostrat.’). Among the younger writers Jonson enjoyed, during the latter half of his life, a position of unique authority. Beaumont, though Jonson declared him ‘too fond of himself and his own verses,’ was the most ardent of disciples, and was well loved in return (Epig. 55; Beaumont's letter to Jonson). An idle tradition, reported by Dryden (Essay on Dramatic Poesy), asserts that Jonson ‘submitted all his plays to his judgment.’ In later days the young poets who thus gathered round him were known as his ‘sons;’ his epistle to ‘one who asked to be sealed of the Tribe of Ben’ (Underwoods, No. 66; cf. Epig. 86, ‘To a Friend and Son’) attests the high standard of friendship, ‘square, well-tagg'd, and permanent,’ which he demanded from them. Among these were the dramatists Randolph, Shakerley Marmion, Nathaniel Field, who as one of the children of the queen's chapel had acted in ‘Cynthia's Revels,’ and R. Brome his servant (cf. Underwoods, No. 28; and, for his accomplishments, Epig. 101), who in some sort form the ‘Jonsonian school’ in drama; the lyric poets Herrick, Suckling, Cleveland, Cartwright, Joseph Rutter (Underwoods, No. 22); James Howell, of the ‘Letters;’ Thomas May, the translator of Lucan (ib. No. 21); J. Wilson; and several men of rank, Lord Falkland and his friend Sir H. Morison (ib. No. 88), Bishop Morley and Sir Kenelm Digby (ib. No. 97). Numerous contemporary allusions enable us to realise with great vividness the life of this inner circle of Jonson's friends. For the Shakespearean period, when the Mermaid tavern was his habitual haunt, the locus classicus is Beaumont's ‘Letter;’ to which may be added Fuller's imaginary picture, doubtless based on tradition, of Jonson's disputations with Shakespeare. For the later period, when he presided among his sons at the Dog, the Sun, the Triple Tun, and the Devil, we have Herrick's ‘An Ode for Ben Jonson’ (Hesperides) and Jonson's own ‘Leges Conviviales.’ The tradition of these gatherings was still vigorous a century after his death, and was prolonged by apocryphal collections of anecdotes such as Penkethman's (1721) and ‘Ben Jonson's Jests’ (1760).
Among the cultivated aristocracy Jonson had a large number of friends with whom, as his ‘Epigrams’ and ‘Forest’ show, he lived on terms of frank intimacy. Conspicuous among these were the Sidneys and their kindred and connections; Sir Robert Sidney of Penshurst, where Jonson was a frequent guest (it is felicitously described in For. 2); Sir William Sidney (Sir Philip Sidney's nephew), whom he addressed in ‘For.’ 14; Lady Mary Wroth, his niece (Epig. 103, 105; Underwoods, No. 47), whose seat of Durance he celebrates in ‘For.’ 3, and to whom he dedicated the ‘Alchemist;’ the Countess of Rutland, Sidney's daughter (Epig. 79; For. 12); the Earl of Pembroke, who presented him annually with 20l. to buy books with (Discov. § 13), and who was indirectly the occasion of the graceful song, ‘For.’ 7 (cf. ib. § 14). Of the rest it is sufficient to mention the Countess of Bedford, ‘Lucy the bright,’ whom he thrice addresses in his choicest and most delicate vein (Epig. 76, 84, 94), Lord D'Aubigny (ib. 127; For. 13), for whose daughter he in his last years wrote an epithalamium (Underwoods, No. 94), and the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle (ib. Nos. 72, 89).
Jonson's literary position among his fellow-dramatists is quite unique. In passion, in buoyant humour, in spontaneous felicity of touch, he was inferior to most of them; but he had constructive imagination in an extraordinary degree, a force of intellect and memory which supplied it at every point with profuse material, and a personality which stamped with distinction every line he wrote. He lacked charm, and he failed altogether in drawing fresh and native forms of character; but no one equalled him in presenting the class-types of a highly organised or decadent society, with all their elaborate vesture of custom, manner, and phrase. While most of his fellow-dramatists, moreover, worked on the basis of existing stories, Jonson's plots, though full of traces of his curious reading, are as wholes essentially his own. As a masque-writer he gave lasting worth by sheer poetic force to an unreal and artificial genre. As a literary critic he had no rival.
Jonson's voluminous writings fall under the four heads of dramas, masques, poems, and miscellaneous prose. Works in which he collaborated with others are included with his own in the following list:—
I. Dramas. The following are extant in print: 1. ‘Every Man in his Humour, a Comœdie,’ acted in 1598, 4to, 1601; fol. 1616. Stated by Jonson to have been first acted in 1598. A ‘Comodey of Umers’ had been acted at the Rose since 11 May 1597, but there is no
