XCIV. THE HUMBLE PETITION OF POOR BEN; TO THE BEST OF MONARCHS, MASTERS, MEN, To KING CHARLES. Doth most humbly show it, HAT whereas your royal father, To make all the Muses debtors When their pot-guns aim to hit, Please your majesty to make 4 Those your father's marks, your pounds.] The petition succeeded; the reader has, annexed to our poet's life, a copy of the Then go on, and do its worst; XCV. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD TREASURER OF ENGLAND. AN EPIGRAM. F to my mind, great lord, I had a state," The old Greek hands in picture, or in stone. Catch'd with these arts, wherein the judge is wise warrant creating him poet laureat, with a salary of £100 per annum. WHAL. The warrant is dated March 1630, the Petition must therefore be referred to the beginning of that year. If to my mind, great lord, I had a state.] The learned reader may compare this with the 8th ode of the fourth book of Horace, as it seems to be copied from it. Our poet, as we find by some verses wrote by no well-wisher to him, received forty pounds for this Epigram. Let the reader judge which was greatest, the generosity of the treasurer, or the genius and address of Jonson. WHAL. Whalley has strange notions of copying. Jonson has taken a hint from the opening of the Ode to Censorinus, and that is all. The verses to which Whalley alludes are in the 4to. and 12mo. But you, I know, my lord, and know you can editions, 1640, in which this Epigram also appears; in Eliot's Poems, they are thus prefixed. "To Ben Jonson, upon his verses to the earl of Portland, "Your verses are commended, and 'tis true, His lordship, not Ben Jonson, made them good." p. 27. This poor simpleton, who appears to have earned a wretched subsistence by harassing the charitable with doggrel petitions for meat and clothes, was answered (according to his folly) by some one in Jonson's name; for the lines, though published in the small edition so often quoted, were not written by him. TO MY DETRACTOR. 'My verses were commended, thou dost say, Th' envy'd return of forty pound in gold. Fool, do not rate my rhymes; I have found thy vice That thou shouldst lose thy noise, thy foam, thy stur, But writing against me, thou thinkst at least I now would write on thee; no, wretch, thy name Cannot work out unto it such a fame: No man will tarry by thee, as he goes, To ask thy name, if he have half a nose, But flee thee like the pest. Walk not the street Out in the dog-days, lest the killer meet Thy noddle with his club, and dashing forth Thy dirty brains, men see thy want of worth." p. 119. The question proposed by Whalley for the exercise of the reader's judgment seems very unnecessary. Forty pounds was a very considerable present in those days, and whether bestowed on want or worth, or both, argues a liberal and a noble spirit. The "Epigram was probably written in 1632. Can do the things that statues do deserve, XCVI. AN EPIGRAM TO MY MUSE, THE LADY DIGBY, ON HER HUSBAND, SIR KENELM DIGBY. HOUGH, happy Muse, thou know my Digby well, Yet read him in these lines: He doth excel In honour, courtesy, and all the parts Court can call hers, or man could call his arts. He's prudent, valiant, just and temperate : In him all virtue is beheld in state; And he is built like some imperial room For that to dwell in, and be still at home. His breast is a brave palace, a broad street, Where all heroic ample thoughts do meet : Where nature such a large survey hath ta'en, As other souls, to his, dwelt in a lane : Witness his action done at Scanderoon, 6 Witness his action done at Scanderoon, Upon his birth-day, the eleventh of June.] This refers to an action in the bay of Scanderoon in 1628, wherein he beat certain vessels belonging to the states of Venice. "This onset was made,” says Antony Wood, "as 'tis reported on the eleventh of June, (his birth day as Ben Jonson will have it,) yet a pamphlet that was published the same year, giving an account of all the transactions of that fight, tells us, it was on the 16th of the same month; which, if true, then the fortune of that day is again marred." To all which we must answer, that this same pamphlet or letter, which gives the relation of this action, was dated indeed on the 16th of June, but it expressly says that the action happened on the 11th of the same month; and this is confirmed likewise by Mr. Ferrar's Epitaph on the death of sir Kenelm Digby, which makes the 11th of June memorable for his birth-day, the day of his victory, and the day of his death. The epitaph is as follows: "Under this stone the matchless Digby lies, Skill'd in six tongues, and learn'd in all the arts: It is remarkable that Antony Wood refers us to this epitaph, and quotes two verses from it, and yet disputes the authority of our poet for the time of his birth. WHAL. Wood was probably influenced by Aubrey, who observes on the couplet quoted by Whalley, "Mr. Elias Ashmole assures me from two or three nativities by Dr. Napier, that Ben Jonson was mistaken, and did it for the rhyme sake." We have here a couple of dreamers --but they are not worth an argument: it is more to the purpose to observe from the latter, that "sir Kenelm Digby was held to be the most accomplished cavalier of his time, the Mirandola of his age, that he understood ten or twelve languages, and was well versed in all kinds of learning, very generous and liberal to deserving persons, and a great patron to Ben Jonson, who has some excellent verses on him," &c. Letters by Eminent Persons, vol. ii. p. 326. Sir Kenelm Digby was one of our poet's adopted sons: he is now more remembered for his chemical reveries, his sympathetic powder, &c., than for his talents, and accomplishments. He was, however, an eminent man, and a benefactor to the literature of his country. He died in 1665. |