Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/191

 abusive verses. The actors, moreover, interpolated certain offensive passages, for which they received an official reprimand. But it was fairly well received by the audience at large, and was in Langbaine's day ‘generally esteemed an excellent play.’ It was followed, after an unusually short interval, by Jonson's last complete comedy, the ‘Tale of a Tub,’ 1633. How it was received on the popular stage we do not know; it was, however, repeated at court in 1634, where it was ‘not likte.’ In its original form the play contained a fierce attack on Jones under the name of Vitruvius Hoop. Jones used his influence, however, and the part was ‘wholly struck out by command of my lord chamberlain’ (Office Book of Master of Revels). The name occurs a few times in the text, and Jones was likewise derided, less ostensibly, in the character of In-and-In Medlay—a reserve shaft, it would seem, provided in view of the emergency which actually occurred. The ‘Expostulation with Inigo Jones,’ which roused resentment at court, and was, at the entreaty of his friend Howell, suppressed by the poet, closed this, the most barren of his quarrels.

Jonson did not, however, lack friends, and one of these, the Duke of Newcastle, contributed generously to his support. To Easter 1632 probably belongs the letter in which Jonson writes, not to borrow, ‘for I have neither fortune to repay nor security to engage that will be taken,’ but to entreat him ‘to succour my present necessities.’ To him we owe the two last of Jonson's masques: ‘Love's Welcome’ at Welbeck and at Bolsover, performed before the king, the former in 1633, on his way to Scotland, the latter in July 1634. A few verses followed for the king's birthday and like occasions. The New-year's and birthday odes of 1635 (Underwoods, Nos. 98, 99)—the former recalling the masque in form—were apparently the last of the series. In Sept. 1634 the king induced the city to resume payment of Jonson's salary as chronologer. For three years Jonson lingered; among his last occupations was to prepare for the stage, perhaps to write, the fragmentary ‘Sad Shepherd’ found among his papers. His last laureate verses were written on 1 Jan. 1635 (, English Drama, i. 356). He died 6 Aug. 1637, and was buried three days later in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. Early in 1638 a collection of some thirty elegies was published under the title ‘Jonsonus Virbius,’ edited by his friend Brian Duppa [q. v.], in which nearly all the leading poets of the day, except Milton, took part. Preparations were also made for an elaborate tomb in Westminster Abbey, but the political crisis interrupted its execution, and a casual visitor, Sir John Young, caused ‘O rare Ben Jonson’ to be cut in the slab which remains his only monument.

None of Jonson's contemporaries lived more completely in the heart of English life. ‘His conversation,’ says Clarendon, who knew him in his old age, ‘was very good and with men of most note.’ He was acquainted with nearly all the remarkable men of his time. His most cordial friends were men who, like himself, combined genius and learning—his master, Camden (Epig. 14), Selden, ‘the bravest man in all languages’ (Underwoods, No. 31; Conv. § 18), Chapman, the most scholarly next to himself among the dramatists. With Bacon, whom he finally regarded as the culminating glory of his generation in letters (Discov. § ‘Dom. Verulamius,’ sqq.), he had much familiar intercourse (Conv. § 13; Underwoods, No. 70). With his fellow-poets his relations were, as has been seen, not uniformly friendly. It is plain from his disparaging references to Marston and Dekker (Conv. §§ 3, 12, 13) that he had admitted neither to his intimacy, in spite of the complete capitulation of the former. Drayton, on the other hand, he claimed as his friend; but the friendship was on both sides rather candid than hearty, and struck the world as yet more distant than it was. The disparaging remark on Drayton in the ‘Conversations’ (§ 11) is of less weight than Jonson's manly and dignified ‘Vision on the Muses of his Friend Michael Drayton’ (Underwoods, No. 16), which he prefixed to Drayton's ‘Works’ (vol. ii.) in 1627. He was also very intimate with John Donne [q. v.], whom he thought ‘the best poet in the world in some things’ (Conv. § 7; cf. Epig. 96), while he freely taxed him with his faults (Conv. § 3). His best friends among the dramatists were probably Chapman and Fletcher. Both were ‘loved of him’ (ib. § 11); with both he occasionally collaborated in dramatic work; and ‘next himself’ he held that only they could ‘make a mask’ (ib. § 3). Chapman's method as a translator was antithetically opposed to his own rigid fidelity, and he thought Chapman's long Alexandrines ‘but prose’ (ib.); but he considered parts of his work well done, and ‘had a piece of his 13th Iliad by heart’ (ib. § 7). His relation to Shakespeare was probably less intimate. The theory of his ‘jealousy,’ sedulously evolved by the Shakespearean scholars of the last century, was exploded, with unnecessary violence, by Gifford. His glowing verses prefixed to the ‘First Folio’ (Underwoods, No. 12) are fairly