you into a state secret, the Emperor had ordered that you should be sent to Rome. Florus menaced, only to extort money. He now knows you better, and would gladly enlist you in the Roman cause. This I know to be hopeless. But I dread his caprice, and shall rejoice to see the sails hoisted that are to carry you to Rome. Farewell: your family shall have due intelligence.' He was at the door of the chamber, but suddenly returned, and pressing my hand, said again, Farewell, and remember that neither all Romans, nor even all Greeks, may be alike!' then with a graceful obeisance left the room. He Fatigue hung with a leaden weight upon my eyelids. I tried vain expedients to keep myself from slumber in this perilous vicinage. The huge silver chandelier, that threw a blaze over the fretted roof, began to twinkle before me; the busts and statues gradually mingled, and I was once more in the land of visions. Home was before my eyes. I was suddenly tossed upon the ocean. I stood before Nero, and was addressing him with a formal harangue, when the whole tissue was broken up, by a sullen voice commanding me to rise. A soldier, sword in hand, was by the couch; he pointed to the door, where an armed party were in attendance, and informed me that I was ordered for immediate embarkation. It was scarcely past midnight; the stars were still in their glory; the pharos threw a long line of flame on the waters; the city sounds were hushed; and silent as a procession to the grave, we moved down to where the tall vessel lay rocking with the breeze. At her side a Nubian slave put a note into my hand; it was from the young Roman, requesting my acceptance of wine and fruits from the palace, and wishing me a prosperous result to my voyage. The sails were hoisted; the stately mole, that even in the night looked a mount of marble, was cleared; the libation was poured to the Tritons for our speedy passage, and the blazing pharos was rapidly seen but as a twinkling star." We'll choose among the blooms, love, The pink's alluring wile; Oh! these we'll blend, nor speed away Till blest with Cupid's full nosegay. Oh! look on yonder bed, love; What lovely flowers grow! No earthly flowers, shed, love, So beauteous a glow; But fairer than the rest, love, Two peerless blossoms see; These must be ours, nor need we stay, These flowers are not like those, love, But live through Death's cold strife,love, Oh! heavenly gift! oh! happy day, THE FISHERMAN'S DEPARTURE. (For the Olio.) Beneath the dark headland of hilly St. Paul, He loved, and was dearly beloved, when he took Fairest Anna, and made her his bride; There was lightness and health, there was love in her look, And a sweet infant boy was their pride. The sunset has gilt the bold hills of the west, The breeze lightly curls round the steep; The sea-bird in cavern and cairn seeks her nest, And fishing-boats glide o'er the deep. His boat from her moorings he draws to the land; Now Allan the tackle prepare ; Fix the mast, loose the mainsail, quick lad, bear a hand! The pennant soon streams in the air. On his sight fades the cot and the tree, As wafted along by the fresh springing gale, He skims o'er the silvery sea.. C. P. C ecollections of Books and their Authors.—No. 3. BEN JONSON Was born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, June 23rd, (11th (). S.) 1574. He was the son of a clergyman, and was sent to Westminster School, from which his mother removed him on her second marriage with a bricklayer, whose busi ness it was intended he should follow. He threw aside the trowel, however; went to Cambridge; was obliged to return and take it up again; again left it to enlist as a common soldier, and had the honour, in that capacity, of perform ing an achievement, which must have been much to his taste. He killed an enemy in single combat, in sight of the English and Spanish armies in the Low Countries; and thus obtained the old spolia opima.-On his return, he resumed his studies in St. John's College, Cambridge; after which he joined a company of players, who exhibited at Shoreditch and finally settled for life as an actor and dramatist, under the auspices of Shakpeare; who, with the generosity natural to great talents, discerned, and recommended his future rival. vided." He was, at one time, instructor to the son of Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been packed up in a basket, when drunk, and sent, like some fish or game, to Sir Walter, as the tutor he had proHe certainly lived in the alternate jollity and ill-humour of a boon companion, heaping up to himself dropsy and dissatisfaction, and being obliged to renew his powers with the excitements that weakened them. But his natural temper seems to have been excellent, and he had the wisdom to get above the jealousies that probably beset his diseased and critical temperament. It is remarkable, that the man who was unquestionably proclaimed by his contemporaries as the vainest and most envious of writers, and who indeed, in his epistle to Drayton, confesses his ill reputation in those points, was more lavish of praise to his contemporaries, than any genius of the age. His moral theory, whatever his practice might be, seems to have been rather religious than otherwise. There is a very curious set of lines written by him in sickness, which serves to show this, and at the same time to corroborate the strong suspicions entertained of the scepticism of that age. It begins Good and great God! can I not think of thee, But strait it must my melancholy be ! Ben Jonson was undoubtedly a man of genius, perhaps a greater than appears on the face of his works. But whether despair of being as great as some others, or impatience of his fortunes, or coarse habits of living, to which he never became superior, tended to diminish his readiness of invention and delicacy of tact, it is equally certain, that art in him overloaded nature; and that he entrenched himself in learning and criticism, and a certain royalty of low humour, as he did in his great straw-chair. He dogmatizes in his very familiarity; and seems to think that he has only to repeat the merest babbling of fairs and ale-houses, to make it be swallowed as wit. Some of his plays, for this reason, will never be read with any zest, unless it is out of the extremest sympathy with humanity in its commonplaces, or out of the dotage of half-witted commentators, who secretly fancy that he was as disagreeable as themselves, and take the worst steps to prove him otherwise. But his most popular comedies are worthy of their reputation, especially where he seems to have been warmed into a character by his own dominant humour. 66 His classical dramas are high imitations of history and ancient manners; and among the grotesque work of his masques are fancies and graces which forerun the " fair loves" of Fletcher and Milton " strewing the way with flowers." His Leges Convivales, and his lines inviting a friend to supper, afford pleasant specimens of his poetical and personal character. During his early engagements on the stage, he had the misfortune to kill one of his brother players in a duel, for which he was thrown into prison, and "brought near the gallows," but was afterwards pardoned. On his release, he married, to use his own expression," a wife who was a shrew, yet honest to him," and endeavoured to provide for his family by his pen. It was about this period, that Jonson, who, says Rowe, was then altogether unknown to the world, offered one of his plays to the comedians, to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were about to return it with an ill-natured answer, when Shakspeare luckily cast his eyes upon it, and found something so good in it, as to induce him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend him and his productions to the public. From this time, his talents as a writer were acknowledged, and although he had offended king James, and had been thrown a second time into prison for a satire on the Scotch, which much offended royal Jamie, yet he was appointed poetlaureate by that humorous monarch, with an annuity of one hundred marks during his life. Charles the First afterwards continued the same office to him, "in consideration of the good and acceptable service done unto us and our father, (so says the patent,) by the said Ben Jonson, and especially to encourage him to proceed in those services of his wit and pen which we have enjoined unto him, and which we expect from him," and was graciously pleased to increase his salary to £100, during his life, with the pleasant addition to the grant, to so jolly and wine-loving a poet, of a tierce of that choice canary which he so much loved, from the royal cellar at Whitehall. In super-addition to these rare gifts, he had a pension from the city, which he somehow afterwards lost. Charles too, in one of his pecuniary emergencies, made him a present of a hundred pounds; yet with all, the was poor and embarrassed. He wanted one thing still-economy, that light feather in the scale of wit, which yet too often turns the balance the wrong way. Ancient Aubrey, describing his habits, says, "he would many times exceed in drinke; canarie was his beloved liquor; he then would tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to study." Ben was, it must be told, a little too fond of the Mermaid, and no wonder!-for under the auspices of that fishand flesh landlady, met a greater combination of men of talent and genius than ever mingled together before or since. The celebrated club held at that equally celebrated tavern, originated with Sir Walter Raleigh; and there, for many a year, Ben Jonson repaired with Shakspeare, the inseparable pair Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, Robert Herrick, Alleyne the player, and many others, whose names, even at this distant period, call up a mingled feeling of reverence and regret. Here the "witcombats," which Fuller speaks of in his book of "Worthies," took place. Describing these, he says, Many were the wit-combats between Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. I behold them like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning-solid, but slow in his performances; Shakspeare, like the latter, less in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Who that now sips his Noyau at White's, but would prefer to have dropt in at the Mermaid in Cornhill, where these brave 66 battles of the brain were fought, and where the quaint and humourous old Ben, forgetting all rivalry with the simplehearted and unambitious Shakspeare, kept his table-roarers about him, as long as canary-butts would flow, and life would suffer him, trolling his fine old rough-flavoured songs, with a tongue sweet and smooth with sherrie ? · Herrick, who was of a kindred spirit, and loved sack as affectionately as "Saint Ben," as he, in the devotion of good-fellowship, canonizes Jonson, makes us acquaintad with some other tavernhaunts of canary-bibbing Ben. Here is an Ode to him, which is at once lyrickal and Herrickal : Ah! Ben, The Dog, the Triple Tunt; As made us nobly wild, not mad? Out-did the meat-out-did the frolick wine! My Ben! O come agen, Thy wit's great overplus: Wisely to husband it And, having once brought to an end No wonder that with these taverning habits, he lived poor and died no richer. He ceased to swallow sherrie and chirp over canary, on the 16th August, (28th Herrick's epitaph upon N. S.) 1637. him would not be unworthy of his monu Lord Craven was very desirous to see Ben Jonson, which being told to Ben, he went to my Lord's house, but being in a very tattered and poet-like condition, the porter refused him admission, with some very saucy language, which the other did not fail to return. My lord, happening to come out while they were wrangling, asked the occasion of it. Ben, who stood in need of nobody to speak for him, said, "He understood his lordship desired to see him." "You, friend!" said my Lord," who are you?"." Ben Jonson,' replied the poet. No, no," quoth the peer, you cannot be the Ben Jonson who wrote the Silent Woman; you look as if you could not say bo to a goose." Bo," cried Ben, on the instant. His lordship was better pleased at the joke, than offended at the affront, and said, "I am now convinced you are Ben Jonson." 66 66 66 Jonson seems to have reigned, like his learned namesake after him, first professor of dogmatism in the literary circle of his day. He was, however, looked up to with more of good-humoured reverence than his successor in the critical chair; indeed his contemporaries appear to have tendered a sort of filial and affectionate obedience to him, which the latter never won from any of his scared and timid worshippers: the one ruled over his literary subjects like a beneficent Bacchus ; whilst the other rode over his slaves like a Vishnu, crushing and grinding them to dust with the ponderous wheels of the car wherein he sat enshrined. From the following quaint letter by Howel, the celebrated epistolary writer, we learn, first, that Ben was considered as a sort of literary father among the wits who looked up to him; secondly, that Ben was a great collector of grammars, which throws a confirming light on his reputed love of the erudite and the verbal ; and, thirdly, which illustrates an unnoticed chapter in his domestic history, that either his chimney or his house had once or twice nearly served him up as a burnt-offering to the domestic lares. But to the letter here it is : "To my Father, Mr. Ben Jonson. "FATHER BEN. mixtura dementiæ,' there's no great wit "Nullum fit magnum ingenium sine without some mixture of madness, so saith the philosopher, nor was he a fool who answered, Nec parvum, sine mixtura stultitiæ,' nor small wit without some alloy of foolishness. Touching the first, it is verified in you, for I find that you have been oftentimes mad; you were mad when you writ your Fox; and madder when you writ your Alchymist; you were mad when you first writ Cataline, and stark mad when you writ Sejanus; but when you writ your Epigrams, and the Magnetic Lady, you were not so mad : insomuch that I perceive there be degrees of madness in you. Excuse me that I am so free with you. The madness I mean, is that divine fury, that heating and heightening spirit which Ovid speaks of: Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo' that true enthusiasm which transports and elevates the souls of poets above the middle region of vulgar conceptions, and makes them soar up to heaven, to touch the stars with their laurelled heads, to walk in the zodiac with Apollo himself, and command Mercury upon their errands. "I cannot yet light upon Dr. Davies his Welsh Grammar: before Christmas I am promised one: so desiring you to look better hereafter to your charcoal fire and chimney, which I am glad to be one that preserved from burning, this being the second time that Vulcan hath threatened you, may be because you have spoken ill of his wife, and been too busy with his horns; I rest it Your, Son, and contiguous neighbour, "JAMES HOWEL." "Westminster, 27th June, 1629." In a second letter to father Ben, Howel informs him that he has at last procured him" Dr. Davies his Welsh Grammar," and accompanies the present to his poetical parent with some splay-footed verses, which in thought, and sometimes in the turn of the verse, shew Howel to have been not unworthy such a "right merrie and conceitede" old father. În a third letter to Ben, which contains a French version of the old story, of a lady eating her lover's heart, served up to her by a jealous husband, and which he recommends to Jonson as choice and rich stuff" to put upon his loom, and make a web of;" he tells him that he had been much censured at court" for falling foul upon Sir Inigo Jones, and that he had written against the great architect " with a porcupine's quill, dipped in gall." What an age must that have been, in which such men as Bacon, Lopez de Vega, Calderon, Drayton, Shakspeare, Galileo, Quevedo, Jonson, Inigo Jones, John Fletcher, Rubens, &c. &c. were contemporaries! To conclude it is worthy of remark, that Howel, who names in the long series of his letters almost all the men of celebrity in that period, never once alludes to Shakspeare, or quotes a line of his immortal productions! Was this intended as homage to his father Ben, or was it ignorance? One can hardly think it was the latter it is, however, curious. ILUSCENOR. The Cockpit Chronicle. IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT. Mutiny v. Law; or, Rebellion in the Mess. The caterer accused, tried, and deposed.--Revolution and Republican Government established. The Members of the Orlopean Imperial Parliament had scarcely taken their seats, when Muzzy opened the proceedings with a violent attack upon Peter, whom he denominated "the poor, miserable, little, impotent Caterer." So far as we can remember, we understood him to say: "We have long suffered under the domineering spirit of the person placed in authority to regulate our financial department; but his pecuniary arrangement; and his peculiar economy have disgusted us all. The abandoned spendthrift and the sneaking miser view him with the same disgust, and I propose that he be now deposed, as a person altogether unfit for office. He has, I am grieved to say, no resources in his head, none in his heart; and, what is worse, none in his pocket, (a laugh). He has expended his last talent along with his dernier sou (hear!); he has nothing left but diminutive corpulency (order! order!) his spirit, like his little body, is small, impotent, and-and-and-(order!) and I move that the said crabbed, little personage be removed from the office of Caterer, being utterly unfit to hold the keys, for never Peter was like unto him." Muzzy sat down amidst loud cheers. The Caterer, who had been looking defiance at Muzzy, now attempted to speak, and swore at considerable length; but he was not listened to, and Gliff rose on his behalf. "There never was a speech," said Gliff, "more replete with tergiversation, vituperation, and discrepances ( Bravo!' shouted Gruff," how many more fivedeckers have you to launch ?") thau that of the violent mountebank member who has just sat down. He has described Peter as unfit for office, because he has no beauty in his body, poetry in his head, or pathos in his heart. (No! no!) Well, then, what resources are to be expected from him? When gentlemen are taxed, in order to supply the public exigencies, they cry, Peter is robbing us." When taxation is diminished, they whoop • Our equipments are incomplete, and Peter is a fool! Instead of calling fairly for the public accounts, and patiently examining them, they rake up all the opprobious epithets of the language, of which it must be allowed they are perfect masters, (order, order, order!) and lavish them out of their purse of sedition with a liberality altogether inconsistent with the narrow and beggarly disbursement of their own property (much confusion.) "While they are patriots abroad, they are tyrants at home. (Order!) While they preach liberty, they practice depotism, (Order !) While their mouths are filled with liberality, their hearts are eaten up with selfishness. (Chair! Chair!).-A Member. "We have none in the Mess.' (A laugh!)-While they cry down distinctions in public, they require to be worshipped in private. They aim not at public good, but at personal slander. (Order, order!) Their mint is full of spurious coin. Peter's will be found to be real. Let his accounts be fairly examined, and they will speak in numbers more harmonious and convincing than any verse yet known-of his purity, integrity, and justice, and will put his angry columniators to shame." (Hear hear, hear!) Peter smiled, and Gliff sat down. Smudge, whom we have before noticed as a keen reckoner, now stepped forward." It is with astonishment,” said he, " that I have heard of the convincing and harmonious numbers which the last speaker would palm upon us as the new English kind of nasty subject matter of fact. To my mind these numbers have no harmony, except in convincing me of the caterer's delinquency. I have, gentlemen, (for I speak to you all) taken the |