Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/119

Rh We now come to a circumstance in the life of our poet which was destined, in its consequences, to interrupt the quiet course in which his existence had hitherto flowed, and to exercise over his mind and future happiness a deep and lasting influence. This was the attachment which he formed for a young and and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination!' Yet it is presented to us in an isolated paragraph, as if the two bards had spent a whole evening together, and that was the only thing that passed between them. Again, we have Jonson making the startling declaration, 'that he wrote all his verses first in prose, as his master Camden taught him,' and adding, 'that verses stood by sense, without either colours or accent;' and we may be sure these annunciations did not fall upon the ear of Drummond like the sound of a clock striking the hour of midnight: but he tells us nothing to the contrary. Lastly, we know that Drummond had weighed well the subject of astrology, and arrived at very rational conclusions concerning the predictions pretended to be derived from it,—namely, that they were aimed 'by the sagacity of the astrologer at the blockishness of the consulter;' we might therefore have expected from him something pertinent in relation to other occult matters: but no; he gives without a word of comment the following story: 'when the king came to England, about the time the plague was in London, he (Ben Jonson) being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton's house, with old Camden, he saw in a vision his eldest son, then a young child, and at London, appear unto him, with the mark of a bloody cross on its forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword; at which amazed, he prayed to God, and in the morning came to Mr Camden's chamber to tell him; who persuaded him it was but an apprehension at which he should not be dejected. In the meantime there come letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him, he said, of a manly shape, and of that growth he shall be at the resurrection.' Whether Drummond suspected that Ben exercised his invention upon this occasion cannot be discovered; but such is the solution which he applies, in his History of the Five Jameses, to two similar tales current regarding James V.: 'both seem,' he says, 'to have been forged by the men of those times, and may challenge a place in the poetical part of history.' But though thus provokingly silent concerning his own views of the greater number of the subjects touched upon by his friend, some of the doctrines of the latter seemed to Hawthornden too preposterous to be recorded without some mark of disapprobation. It is amusing to find him expressing his displeasure at the innovation which Jonson did not scruple to make upon the classical model for the composition of pastorals. 'He bringeth in clowns,' says Drummond, 'making mirth and foolish sports, contrary to all other pastorals.' The decorous Scotsman would no doubt have had him to continue to show on "the stiff swain of antiquity, constructed with his pipe in the accustomed mould,—thus precluding the poet not only from the imitation of nature, but even from displaying any ingenuity of art in the contrivance of new characters, just as if we should insist that the sculptor's skill ought not the world may for the time have agreed to call classical.

"Jonson's unbridled exuberance of fancy, bordering occasionally upon irreverence, appears to have been a flight beyond what was calculated to please the pure mind of the retired and philosophic Drummond; and his friend's visit probably opened to him a view of the jealousies of the poetical tribe, when assembled in one place, and all struggling for preminence, which made him still more content with his own seclusion. The frankness with which Jonson criticised the verses of Drummond,—telling him 'that they were all good, especially his epitaph on prince Henry, save that they smelled too much of the schools, and were not after the fancy of the times, for that a child might write after the fashion of the Greek and Latin verses in running,' may have piqued the author a little; and Ben's boisterous and jovial character may also have been offensive to the sedate and contemplative solitary of Hawthornden. It is farther to be remembered, that Drummond employed a severity in judging, the edge of which, a little more intercourse with the world might have blunted. But with all these allowances, the character he has drawn of his visitor is probably very little if at all overcharged. 'Ben Jonson,' says he, ' was a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the great parts which reign in him; a bragger of some good that he wanted; thinketh nothing well done but what either he himself or some of his friends hath said or done,' he is passionately kind and angry, careless either to gain or keep; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself; interprets best sayings and deeds often to to the worst. He was for any religion, as being versed in both; oppressed with fancy, which hath overmastered his reason,—a general disease in many poets. His inventions are smooth and easy; but above all he excelleth in a translation. When his play of The Silent Woman was first acted, there were found verses after on the stage against him; concluding that that play was well named The Silent Woman, because there was never one man to say Plaudite to it.

"Drummond has been much blamed by some for leaving behind him these notes of the conversation, and remarks on the character, of 'his worthy friend Master Benjamin Jonson;' as if all the while that he entertained his guests, he had been upon the watch for mat-