Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/85

Rh Charlotte, a royal death has seldom wrung so sincere a sorrow from the heart of a people as did the premature fate of this best scion of the doomed House of Stuart.

Much as the Court might need such pastime to dissipate the cloud of gloom which hung over it, they would not insult the memory of so lamented a Prince by even the innocent recreation of masque or revelry.

Jonson, doubtless, very deeply felt a loss, which he has commemorated in his poems. He had frequented the Court much of late, and in one of his masques, had paid a loyal tribute of admiration to Prince Henry. He now embraced this opportunity, when there would naturally be but little demand on his time and talents, for European travel. Slow as communication was in those days, and great as the obstacles in the way of travelling then were, Jonson was too well known in his own country not to have gained something like a continental reputation. Ambassadors who visited our Court may have met him there, and carried back some record of the national entertainments, adorned if not created by the genius of the Laureate. Whether he was actuated by a desire to pay homage to, and receive it from, the great men of other countries, or whether he was anxious to visit the scenes of his early campaign, we know not. None of the interest that attaches itself to the travels of other poets, belongs to those of the subject of our memoir. We have no record that, like Milton, he visited Galileo in a dungeon for thinking as Franciscan licensers did not think, or that like Byron, he was wont, in the soft and sunny south—

He was in Paris in 1613, and in the next year we