Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/97

BEN JONSON name lives not by itself, it will at any rate go down to remote posterity honourably associated with that of Massinger, associated more honourably yet with that of Ben Jonson. So thoroughly, indeed, has he wrought his labour of love that, so far as I am aware, he has left nothing of any importance, as regards either the life or the text, to be done by those who come after him. About four years ago Hotten pub- lished a cheap and handy reprint (why undated?), in three volumes, of Gifford's edition, under the care of that excellent editor, the late Lieut. -Col. Francis Cunningham (son of Allan), who made a few slight corrections, added a very few notes, together with some short pieces discovered since Gifford's time; and included a copy of the complete transcript, also unknown to Gifford, of Drummond of Hawthornden's celebrated notes of Ben Jonson's conversations with him, which was found by Mr. David Laing in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. This latest edition I use for the present article. Benjamin, or (as he usually styled himself) Ben Jonson, was born about a month after his father's death, early in 1573, in the city of Westminster. He told Drummond that "his Grandfather came from Carlisle, and, he thought, from Annandale to it; he served King Henry VHL, and was a gentleman;" whence we may presume that he was one of the Johnstones who abound in Annandale. " His Father losed all his estate under Queen Marie, having been cast in prisson and forfaitted ; at last turned minister : so he was a minister's son," His mother seems soon to have made a second marriage with a master brick- layer. Ben was first sent to a private school in the F