Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/93

Rh your Lordship's bounty to succour my present necessities this good time of Easter, and it shall conclude all begging requests hereafter, on behalf of your truest beadsman and most thankful servant, "B. J."

This appeal was liberally responded to.

We know now but little more of him and that little is sad. The latter portion of his life is as free from incident as it was full of suffering. His whole career, save the few points in his earlier days, which we have attempted to seize on, is much like the toilsome and monotonous existence of the workers of the pen. They do not attract applause on the high places of the world. Their pains and troubles are in the smaller sphere of the library and the study. It is there that, unseen by their fellow-men, they are torn by the intellectual agony in the struggle for subsistence or the pursuit of fame. We must read them in their works, and think of the thousands of hours of careful study and patient thought in which those stately volumes were elaborated which have outlived envy and anger, and taken their place in the literature of England. And viewed in this light, even if it lack event and excitement, Jonson's life is not devoid of noble moral, and heroic example. For it was one long, honest, patient labour, to earn the bread of independence by the sweat of his brain, and to win the applause of the good and great of his own and of all time.

In his career, undiversified though it be, he was ever toiling; he came frequently before the public, had his brilliant successes and signal failures, encountered fierce assaults from envious enemies, and was cheered by warm tributes of admiration from friends, was driven by a too lavish expenditure and a too munificent hospitality into dependence upon the rich and great, and ended his days in