Chapter XII (3)

[Footnote 193: Jonson died on the 6th of August, 1637, at the age of sixty-three. He survived both wife and children. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. A common slab laid over his grave bears the inscription, "O Rare Ben Jo_h_nson!"--not Jonson, as it is always printed. Jonson was a heavy drinker, and it has been said that every line of his poetry cost him a cup of sack. Canary was his favorite drink; of which he partook so immoderately that his friends called him familiarly the Canary Bird.]

[Footnote 194: Coleridge says sadly in his "Literary Life," "I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part, indeed, have been trodden under foot and are forgotten. But yet no small number have crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quiver of my enemies,--of them that, unprovoked, have lain in wait against my soul."]

[Footnote 195: So disgusted was the paternal upholsterer, Pocquelin, at his son's choice of the stage for a profession, that he virtually disowned him. Molière was an assumed name, to save the family honor; but how rapidly that name became famous.]

[Footnote 196: Molière was fascinated by his young wife; her lighter follies charmed him. He was a husband who was always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme." With what a fervor the poet feels her neglect! with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the spell!--_Disraeli._]

[Footnote 197: Campbell the poet and Turner the artist were dining together on a certain occasion with a large party. The poet was called upon for a toast, and by way of a joke on the great professor of the "sister art" gave, "The Painters and Glaziers." After the laughter had subsided, the artist was of course summoned to propose a toast also. He rose, and with admirable tact and ready wit responded to the author of "Pleasures of Memory" by giving "The Paper-stainers."]

[Footnote 198: Sir Joshua Reynolds was inclined to tell stories about Goldsmith's negligence in his habits, his want of neatness in dress, his unkempt appearance at all times, and his absolute want of cleanliness. No doubt the reflection was merited by the careless author; but the famous artist was himself such a gross consumer of snuff that his shirt-bosom, collars, and vest were never in a respectable condition.]

[Footnote 199: Milton was a London boy in his eighth year when Shakespeare died (1616); he was seventeen years old when Fletcher died (in 1625); and twenty-nine when Ben Jonson died (in 1637).]

[Footnote 200: Paul Jovius was from an ancient Italian family. He wrote altogether in Latin. Clement VII. made him a bishop, and he enjoyed the favor of Charles V. and Francis I., which enabled him to amass great wealth. He died at Florence in 1552.]

[Footnote 201: "Pope died in 1744," says Lowell, "at the height of his renown, the acknowledged monarch of letters, as supreme as Voltaire when the excitement and exposure of his coronation-ceremonies at Paris hastened his end, a generation later."]

[Footnote 202: No other man presented within himself such a bundle of contradictions. "He seems an embodied antithesis," says Whipple,--"a mass of contradictions, a collection of opposite frailties and powers. Such was the versatility of his mind and morals, that it is hardly possible to discern the connection between the giddy goodness and the brilliant wickedness which he delighted to exhibit." In all his relations he was consistently inconsistent.]