Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/170

 154 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES It has been justly remarked by Gifford that the two most endearing appellations of our greatest poet, "Gentle Shakespeare" and "Sweet Swan of Avon," are due to that very rival whom the Shakespearian commentators of the last century persistently accused of envying and maligning him. It may also be observed, as a proof of Jonson's sound judgment, that the two men whom he, with all his profound classical knowledge and sympathies, put forward as our champions, in prose and verse respectively, against the mightiest of " insolent Greece or haughty Rome " (he uses the identical terms in both cases) were Bacon and Shakespeare. We now come to the parenthetical charge, that "drink is one of the elements in which he liveth." That Ben in his forty-seventh year, robust in body and mind, and in full enjoyment of a long holiday, drank enough to astound and terrify Drummond, may be freely admitted ; but was the jolly guest a sot because the host was a prim valetudinarian ? They were an ill-assorted couple, and the strong man, as usual, was not aware how he overbore the weak ; and the weak man, also as usual, pretended to enjoy it, and took a covert revenge. If, in place of the laird of Hawthornden, the recording host had been such an one as the Ettrick Shepherd celebrates, we should have had something like a true, because sympathetic, character of Westminster's first Big Ben : — " Canty war ye o'er your kale, Toddy jugs, an' caups o' ale ; Heart aye kind, an' leal, an' hale, — Honest Laird o' Lamington !