Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/95

Rh the lone old man upon his dying pillow. He was constantly visited by Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Winchester; and as we have before expressed our belief in the sincerity of his religious convictions, we may add as a farther proof of it, that he expressed on his death-bed deep penitence for the oaths and irreverent expressions which, according to the manners of his times, he had introduced into his dramatic writings.

Three days after his decease, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Near the scene of his boyish sports, hard by the school-room where so many years ago he had listened to the words of Camden, he came home to his last long rest. In those holy aisles where sleep so many of the wits and the worthies of England, lie the ashes of one who was both. There may we read the simple epitaph that marks the spot—"O rare Ben Jonson!"

Malicious dulness has arraigned this short epiphonema as blasphemous. Such a charge is little worthy of remembrance except to show the malignity with which our poet, whether living or dead, was assailed. An anecdote is told of the origin of the laconic inscription. Sir J. Young, of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, was passing through the Abbey, and stopped and gave one of the workmen eighteen-pence to carve the words on the stone. A subscription for a monument was immediately set on foot, and was very successful; but the dark days of civil discord were close at hand, and the tomb of a poet who had adorned the courts of three English Sovereigns by his genius, was forgotten amid the gathering murmurs of the storm which shook down throne and temple.

Jonson's personal appearances were singular, and in youth prepossessing. His intense application, sedentary habits, and convivial tastes, afterwards impaired his good looks. His "dark pale face" was affected by a scorbutic humour, and he became large and corpulent. Dekker has represented G