Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/97

Rh was one of a small class which we find sometimes in history, and which we occasionally see among contemporaries, who, while they merit and enjoy the strong love of friends and family, are, if not generally unpopular, frequently involved in controversy and quarrel. They are not good, easy men—they have no hypocritical reticence, no diplomatic dissembling, no tender compassion for vices and follies. When anything that is wrong or mean offends their moral sense, they use hard names unsparingly; and when themselves assailed, they are not content to diminish or destroy opposition by the silent eloquence of an honourable career, but they strive to write it down and talk it down as well. Such was Ben Jonson. It may be enough to say of him that, whatever his faults and weaknesses, he lived on terms of intimacy and affection with the best and greatest men of his day; that there are numerous testimonies to his worth as a man, and his ability and wit as a conversationalist; that his letters breathe a spirit of good feeling and kindness; that, to sum up his character, he was, in the highest sense of the words, laborious, brave, and noble.

He has been compared to many great men—to Shakespeare, to Milton, and others. As no two cases are exactly alike, and no two faces possess the same expression, so such comparisons are usually unsatisfactory, if not false and fruitless. But we cannot pass by a parallel not suggested, but yet rendered stranger by the identity of name between the Poet-Laureate and our great Lexicographer. Both were hard-working, strong-minded men, who, by dint of incessant exertion, merited an immortal fame. Both, in parts of their life, endured neglect and want; both died, and left no children to perpetuate a name they had made honourable; both found a home in clubs and coffee-houses in the society of intellectual friends; both were self-confident and self-opinionated, full of G 2