Volpone; Or, The Fox
he had been some time gathering, was printed in 1640, bearing in its
various parts dates ranging from 1630 to 1642. It included all the plays
mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs, excepting "The Case is Altered;"
the masques, some fifteen, that date between 1617 and 1630; another
collection of lyrics and occasional poetry called "Underwoods", including
some further entertainments; a translation of "Horace's Art of Poetry"
(also published in a vicesimo quarto in 1640), and certain fragments and
ingatherings which the poet would hardly have included himself. These
last comprise the fragment (less than seventy lines) of a tragedy called
"Mortimer his Fall," and three acts of a pastoral drama of much beauty
and poetic spirit, "The Sad Shepherd." There is also the exceedingly
interesting "English Grammar" "made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of all
strangers out of his observation of the English language now spoken and
in use," in Latin and English; and "Timber, or Discoveries" "made upon
men and matter as they have flowed out of his daily reading, or had
their reflux to his peculiar notion of the times." The "Discoveries,"
as it is usually called, is a commonplace book such as many literary
men have kept, in which their reading was chronicled, passages that took
their fancy translated or transcribed, and their passing opinions noted.
Many passages of Jonson's "Discoveries" are literal translations from
the authors he chanced to be reading, with the reference, noted or not,
as the accident of the moment prescribed. At times he follows the line
of Macchiavelli's argument as to the nature and conduct of princes; at
others he clarifies his own conception of poetry and poets by recourse
to Aristotle. He finds a choice paragraph on eloquence in Seneca the
elder and applies it to his own recollection of Bacon's power as an
orator; and another on facile and ready genius, and translates it,
adapting it to his recollection of his fellow-playwright,
Shakespeare. To call such passages--which Jonson never intended for
publication--plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words.
To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of
scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive
comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by
clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of
form or in the subtler graces of diction.
When Jonson died there was a project for a handsome monument to his
memory. But the Civil War was at hand, and the project failed. A
memorial, not insufficient, was carved on the stone covering his grave
in one of the aisles of Westminster Abbey:
"O rare Ben Jonson."
FELIX E. SCHELLING.
THE COLLEGE,
PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
The following is a complete list of his published works:--
DRAMAS:
Every Man in his Humour, 4to, 1601;
The Case is Altered, 4to, 1609;
Every Man out of his Humour, 4to, 1600;
Cynthia's Revels, 4to, 1601;
Poetaster, 4to, 1602;
Sejanus, 4to, 1605;
Eastward Ho (with Chapman and Marston), 4to, 1605;
Volpone, 4to, 1607;
Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, 4to, 1609 (?), fol., 1616;
The Alchemist, 4to, 1612;
Catiline, his Conspiracy, 4to, 1611;
Bartholomew Fayre, 4to, 1614 (?), fol., 1631;
The Divell is an Asse, fol., 1631;
The Staple of Newes, fol., 1631;
The New Sun, 8vo, 1631, fol., 1692;
The Magnetic Lady, or Humours Reconcild, fol., 1640;
A Tale of a Tub, fol., 1640;
The Sad Shepherd, or a Tale of Robin Hood, fol., 1641;
Mortimer his Fall (fragment), fol., 1640.
To Jonson have also been attributed additions to Kyd's Jeronymo,
and collaboration in The Widow with Fletcher and Middleton, and
in the Bloody Brother with Fletcher.
POEMS:
Epigrams, The Forrest, Underwoods, published in fols., 1616, 1640;
Selections: Execration against Vulcan, and Epigrams, 1640;
G. Hor. Flaccus his art of Poetry, Englished by Ben Jonson, 1640;
Leges Convivialis, fol., 1692.
Other minor poems first appeared in Gifford's edition of Works.
PROSE:
Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, fol., 1641;
The English Grammar, made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of
Strangers, fol., 1640.
Masques and Entertainments were published in the early folios.
WORKS:
Fol., 1616, volume. 2, 1640 (1631-41);
fol., 1692, 1716-19, 1729;
edited by P. Whalley, 7 volumes., 1756;
by Gifford (with Memoir), 9 volumes., 1816, 1846;
re-edited by F. Cunningham, 3 volumes., 1871;
in 9 volumes., 1875;
by Barry Cornwall (with Memoir), 1838;
by B. Nicholson (Mermaid Series), with Introduction by
C. H. Herford, 1893, etc.;
Nine Plays, 1904;
ed. H. C. Hart (Standard Library), 1906, etc;
Plays and Poems, with Introduction by H. Morley (Universal
Library), 1885;
Plays (7) and Poems (Newnes), 1905;
Poems, with Memoir by H. Bennett (Carlton Classics), 1907;
Masques and Entertainments, ed. by H. Morley, 1890.
SELECTIONS:
J. A. Symonds, with Biographical and Critical Essay,
(Canterbury Poets), 1886;
Grosart, Brave Translunary Things, 1895;
Arber, Jonson Anthology, 1901;
Underwoods, Cambridge University Press, 1905;
Lyrics (Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher), the Chap Books,
No. 4, 1906;
Songs (from Plays, Masques, etc.), with earliest known
setting, Eragny Press, 1906.
LIFE:
See Memoirs affixed to Works;
J. A. Symonds (English Worthies), 1886;
Notes of Ben Jonson Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden;
Shakespeare Society, 1842;
ed. with Introduction and Notes by P. Sidney, 1906;
Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson, 1889.
VOLPONE; OR, THE FOX
By Ben Jonson
TO THE MOST NOBLE AND MOST EQUAL SISTERS,
THE TWO FAMOUS UNIVERSITIES,
FOR THEIR LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE SHEWN TO HIS POEM IN THE PRESENTATION,
BEN JONSON,
THE GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGER,
DEDICATES BOTH IT AND HIMSELF.
Never, most equal Sisters, had any man a wit so presently excellent, as
that it could raise itself; but there must come both matter, occasion,
commenders, and favourers to it. If this be true, and that the fortune
of all writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the careful to provide
well towards these accidents; and, having acquired them, to preserve
that part of reputation most tenderly, wherein the benefit of a friend
is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render myself grateful, and am
studious to justify the bounty of your act; to which, though your mere
authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein poetry and the
professors of it hear so ill on all sides, there will a reason be looked
for in the subject. It is certain, nor can it with any forehead be
opposed, that the too much license of poetasters in this time, hath much
deformed their mistress; that, every day, their manifold and manifest
ignorance doth stick unnatural reproaches upon her: but for their
petulancy, it were an act of the greatest injustice, either to let
the learned suffer, or so divine a skill (which indeed should not be
attempted with unclean hands) to fall under the least contempt. For,
if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices
and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the
impossibility of any man's being the good poet, without first being a
good man. He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good
disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in
their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover
them to their first strength; that comes forth the interpreter and
arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a
master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the business
of mankind: this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance
to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But it will here be hastily
answered, that the writers of these days are other things; that not only
their manners, but their natures, are inverted, and nothing remaining
with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name, which every
scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it,
stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license
of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of
this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features
(and would they had never boasted the light) it is over-true; but that
all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable
thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I
can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that I have ever trembled
to think toward the least profaneness; have loathed the use of such
foul and unwashed bawdry, as is now made the food of the scene: and,
howsoever I cannot escape from some, the imputation of sharpness, but
that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not
my youngest infant but hath come into the world with all his teeth;
I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or
general order or state, I have provoked? What public person? Whether I
have not in all these preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe?
My works are read, allowed, (I speak of those that are intirely mine,)
look into them, what broad reproofs have I used? where have I been
particular? where personal? except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or
buffoon, creatures, for their insolencies, worthy to be taxed? yet to
which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have
confest, or wisely dissembled his disease? But it is not rumour can make
men guilty, much less entitle me to other men's crimes. I know, that
nothing can be so innocently writ or carried, but may be made obnoxious
to construction; marry, whilst I bear mine innocence about me, I fear
it not. Application is now grown a trade with many; and there are that
profess to have a key for the decyphering of every thing: but let wise
and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to
these invading interpreters to be over-familiar with their fames, who
cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men's
simplest meanings. As for those that will (by faults which charity hath
raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name with the
multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose
living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it
without a rival, for me! I choose rather to live graved in obscurity,
than share with them in so preposterous a fame. Nor can I blame the
wishes of those severe and wise patriots, who providing the hurts these
licentious spirits may do in a state, desire rather to see fools and
devils, and those antique relics of barbarism retrieved, with all other
ridiculous and exploded follies, than behold the wounds of private
men, of princes and nations: for, as Horace makes Trebatius speak among
these,
"Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, et odit."
And men may justly impute such rages, if continued, to the writer, as
his sports. The increase of which lust in liberty, together with the
present trade of the stage, in all their miscelline interludes, what
learned or liberal soul doth not already abhor? where nothing but the
filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such
plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked
metaphors, with brothelry, able to violate the ear of a pagan, and
blasphemy, to turn the blood of a Christian to water. I cannot but be
serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame, and the reputation
of divers honest and learned are the question; when a name so full of
authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence,