Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/128

 112 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES scorn, contempt, ridicule, mistrust, boasting, love of country and friends, passionate kindness, regardless- ness of money and gain, eagerness to conquer, and readiness to own himself vanquished ? Had Drum- mond waited till time and distance had mellowed his feelings, he would, I am persuaded, have employed some such terms as I have here substituted for the harsher sounding synonyms actually recorded." The explanation is plausible ; but, in answer to the kindly- meant palliation, we are constrained to ask the simple question : Why, then, did Drummond preserve un- altered this "portrait composed almost entirely of shadows," to be found at his death, thirty years after- wards, and when Jonson had been long dead, among his papers, and exhibited to the world as the true likeness of the great man to whom he signed him- self, " Your loving friend ? " To myself the conduct of Drummond in this instance appears marked by meanness and tainted with duplicity ; and open- hearted Ben seems to have fared about as badly at his hands as Blake would have fared at the hands of Hayley, had the latter noted down his conversa- tions and drawn his portrait after his residence at Felpham. The portrait itself will find its fitting place when I come to discuss the character of Jonson ; here it will be sufficient to give a few of the more interest- ing notes not already cited : " He had ane intention to perfect ane Epick Poeme intitled 'Heroologia, or the Worthies of this Country rowsed by Fame ; ' and was to dedicate it to his Country : it is all in couplets, for he detesteth all other rimes. For a Heroik poeme, he said, ther was no such ground as King Arthur's fiction " — a judgment in which he was followed by