Chapter XXX (1)

MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CALLS ON MISS CYNTHIA BADLAM.

Miss Cynthia Badlam was seated in a small parlor which she was accustomed to consider her own during her long residences at The Poplars. The entry stove warmed it but imperfectly, and she looked pinched and cold, for the evenings were still pretty sharp, and the old house let in the chill blasts, as old houses are in the habit of doing. She was sitting at her table with a little trunk open before her. She had taken some papers from it, which she was looking over, when a knock at her door announced a visitor, and Master Byles Gridley entered the parlor.

As he came into the room, she gathered the papers together and replaced them in the trunk, which she locked, throwing an unfinished piece of needlework over it, putting the key in her pocket, and gathering herself up for company. Something of all this Master Gridley saw through his round spectacles, but seemed not to see, and took his seat like a visitor making a call of politeness.

A visitor at such an hour, of the male sex, without special provocation, without social pretext, was an event in the life of the desolate spinster. Could it be--No, it could not--and yet--and yet! Miss Cynthia threw back the rather common-looking but comfortable shawl which covered her shoulders, and showed her quite presentable figure, arrayed with a still lingering thought of that remote contingency which might yet offer itself at some unexpected moment; she adjusted the carefully plaited cap, which was not yet of the _lasciate ogni speranza_ pattern, and as she obeyed these instincts of her sex, she smiled a welcome to the respectable, learned, and independent bachelor. Mr. Gridley had a frosty but kindly age before him, with a score or so of years to run, which it was after all not strange to fancy might be rendered more cheerful by the companionship of a well-conserved and amiably disposed woman,--if any such should happen to fall in his way.

That smile came very near disconcerting the plot of Master Byles Gridley. He had come on an inquisitor's errand, his heart secure, as he thought, against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all resistance. He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than the thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals brought close to the naked soles of the feet,--an instrument which, instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-_centres_ and the heart itself in its gripe, and hold them until it got its answer, if the white lips had life enough left to shape one. And here was this unfortunate maiden lady smiling at him, setting her limited attractions in their best light, pleading with him in that natural language which makes any contumacious bachelor feel as guilty as Cain before any single woman. If Mr. Gridley had been alone, he would have taken a good sniff at his own bottle of _sal volatile_; for his kind heart sunk within him as he thought of the errand upon which he had come. It would not do to leave the subject of his vivisection under any illusion as to the nature of his designs.

"Good evening, Miss Badlam," he said, "I have come to visit you on a matter of business."

What was the internal panorama which had unrolled itself at the instant of his entrance, and which rolled up as suddenly at the sound of his serious voice and the look of his grave features? It cannot be reproduced, though pages were given to it; for some of the pictures were near, and some were distant; some were clearly seen, and some were only hinted; some were not recognized in the intellect at all, and yet they were implied, as it were, behind the others. Many times we have all found ourselves glad or sorry, and yet we could not tell what thought it was that reflected the sunbeam or cast the shadow. Look into Cynthia's suddenly exalted consciousness and see the picture, actual and potential, unroll itself in all its details of the natural, the ridiculous, the selfish, the pitiful, the human. Glimpses, hints, echoes, suggestions, involving tender sentiments hitherto unknown, we may suppose, to that unclaimed sister's breast,--pleasant excitement of receiving congratulations from suddenly cordial friends; the fussy delights of buying furniture and shopping for new dresses,--(it seemed as if she could hear herself saying, "_Heavy_ silks,--_best_ goods, if you please,")--with delectable thumping down of flat-sided pieces of calico, cambric, "rep," and other stuffs, and rhythmic evolution of measured yards, followed by sharp snip of scissors, and that cry of rending tissues dearer to woman's ear than any earthly sound until she hears the voice of her own first-born,--(much of this potentially, remember,)--thoughts of a comfortable settlement, an imposing social condition, a cheerful household, and by and by an Indian summer of serene widowhood,--all these, and infinite other involved possibilities had mapped themselves in one long swift flash before Cynthia's inward eye, and all vanished as the old man spoke those few words. The look on his face, and the tone of his cold speech, had instantly swept them all away, like a tea-set sliding in a single crash from a slippery tray.

What could be the "business" on which he had come to her with that solemn face? she asked herself, as she returned his greeting and offered him a chair. She was conscious of a slight tremor as she put this question to her own intelligence.

"Are we like to be alone and undisturbed?" Mr. Gridley asked. It was a strange question,--men do act strangely sometimes. She hardly knew whether to turn red or white.

"Yes, there is nobody like to come in at present," she answered. She did not know what to make of it. What was coming next,--a declaration, or an accusation of murder?

"My business," Mr. Gridley said, very gravely, "relates to this. I wish to inspect papers which I have reason to believe exist, and which have reference to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers. Can you help me to get sight of any of these papers not to be found at the Registry of Deeds or the Probate Office?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Gridley, but may I ask you what particular concern you have with the affairs of my relative, Cousin Malachi Withers, that's been dead and buried these half-dozen years?"

"Perhaps it would take some time to answer that question fully, Miss Badlam. Some of these affairs do concern those I am interested in, if not myself directly."

"May I ask who the person or persons may be on whose account you wish to look at papers belonging to my late relative, Malachi Withers?"

"You can ask me almost anything, Miss Badlam, but I should really be very much obliged if you would answer my question first. Can you help me to get a sight of any papers relating to the estate of Malachi Withers, not to be found at the Registry of Deeds or the Probate Office,--any of which you may happen to have any private and particular knowledge?"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gridley; but I don't understand why you come to me with such questions. Lawyer Penhallow is the proper person, I should think, to go to. He and his partner that was--Mr. Wibird, you know--settled the estate, and he has got the papers, I suppose, if there are any, that ain't to be found at the offices you mention."

Mr. Gridley moved his chair a little, so as to bring Miss Badlam's face a little more squarely in view.

"Does Mr. William Murray Bradshaw know anything about any papers, such as I am referring to, that may have been sent to the office?"

The lady felt a little moisture stealing through all her pores, and at the same time a certain dryness of the vocal organs, so that her answer came in a slightly altered tone which neither of them could help noticing.

"You had better ask Mr. William Murray Bradshaw yourself about that," she answered. She felt the hook now, and her spines were rising, partly with apprehension, partly with irritation.

"Has that young gentleman ever delivered into your hands any papers relating to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers, for your safe keeping?"

"What do you mean by asking me these questions, Mr. Gridley? I don't choose to be catechised about Murray Bradshaw's business. Go to him, if you please, if you want to find out about it."

"Excuse my persistence, Miss Badlam, but I must prevail upon you to answer my question. Has Mr. William Murray Bradshaw ever delivered into your hands any papers relating to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers, for your safe keeping?"

"Do you suppose I am going to answer such questions as you are putting me because you repeat them over, Mr. Gridley? Indeed I sha' n't. Ask him, if you please, whatever you wish to know about his doings."

She drew herself up and looked savagely at him. She had talked herself into her courage. There was a color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eye; she looked dangerous as a cobra.

"Miss Cynthia Badlam," Master Gridley said, very deliberately, "I am afraid we do not entirely understand each other. You must answer my question precisely, categorically, point-blank, and on the instant. Will you do this at once, or will you compel me to show you the absolute necessity of your doing it, at the expense of pain to both of us? Six words from me will make you answer all my questions."

"You can't say six words, nor sixty, Mr. Gridley, that will make me answer one question I do not choose to. I defy you!"

"I will not _say_ one, Miss Cynthia Badlam. There are some things one does not like to speak in words. But I will show you a scrap of paper, containing just six words and a date,--not one more nor one less. You shall read them. Then I will burn the paper in the flame of your lamp. As soon after that as you feel ready, I will ask the same question again."

Master Gridley took out from his pocket-book a scrap of paper, and handed it to Cynthia Badlam. Her hand shook as she received it, for she was frightened as well as enraged, and she saw that Mr. Gridley was in earnest and knew what he was doing.

She read the six words, he looking at her steadily all the time, and watching her as if he had just given her a drop of prussic acid.

No cry. No sound from her lips. She stared as if half stunned for one moment, then turned her head and glared at Mr. Gridley as if she would have murdered him if she dared. In another instant her face whitened, the scrap of paper fluttered to the floor, and she would have followed it but for the support of both Mr. Gridley's arms. He disengaged one of them presently, and felt in his pocket for the _sal volatile_. It served him excellently well, and stung her back again to her senses very quickly. All her defiant aspect had gone.

"Look!" he said, as he lighted the scrap of paper in the flame. "You understand me, and you see that I must be answered the next time I ask my question."

She opened her lips as if to speak. It was as when a bell is rung in a vacuum,--no words came from them,--only a faint gasping sound, an effort at speech. She was caught tight in the heart-screw.

"Don't hurry yourself, Miss Cynthia," he said, with a certain relenting tenderness of manner. "Here, take another sniff of the smelling-salts. Be calm, be quiet,--I am well disposed towards you,--I don't like to give you trouble. There, now, I must have the answer to that question; but take your time,--take your time."

"Give me some water,--some water!" she said, in a strange hoarse whisper. There was a pitcher of water and a tumbler on an old marble sideboard near by. He filled the tumbler, and Cynthia emptied it as if she had just been taken from the rack, and could have swallowed a bucketful.

"What do you want to know?" she asked.

"I wish to know all that you can tell me about a certain paper, or certain papers, which I have reason to believe Mr. William Murray Bradshaw committed to your keeping."

"There is only one paper of any consequence. Do you want to make him kill me? or do you want to make me kill myself?"

"Neither, Miss Cynthia, neither. I wish to see that paper, but not for any bad purpose. Don't you think, on the whole, you have pretty good reason to trust me? I am a very quiet man, Miss Cynthia. Don't be afraid of me; only do what I ask,--it will be a great deal better for you in the end."

She thrust her trembling hand into her pocket, and took out the key of the little trunk. She drew the trunk towards her, put the key in the lock, and opened it. It seemed like pressing a knife into her own bosom and turning the blade. That little trunk held all the records of her life the forlorn spinster most cherished;--a few letters that came nearer to love-letters than any others she had ever received; an album, with flowers of the summers of 1840 and 1841 fading between its leaves; two papers containing locks of hair, half of a broken ring, and other insignificant mementos which had their meaning, doubtless, to her,--such a collection as is often priceless to one human heart, and passed by as worthless in the auctioneer's inventory. She took the papers out mechanically, and laid them on the table. Among them was an oblong packet, sealed with what appeared to be the office-seal of Messrs. Penhallow and Bradshaw.

"Will you allow me to take that envelope containing papers, Miss Badlam?" Mr. Gridley asked, with a suavity and courtesy in his tone and manner that showed how he felt for her sex and her helpless position.

She seemed to obey his will as if she had none of her own left. She passed the envelope to him, and stared at him vacantly while he examined it. He read on the back of the package: "_Withers Estate_--old papers--of no account apparently. Examine hereafter."

"May I ask when, where, and of whom you obtained these papers, Miss Badlam?"

"Have pity on me, Mr. Gridley,--have pity on me. I am a lost woman if you do not. Spare me! for God's sake, spare me! There will no wrong come of all this, if you will but wait a little while. The paper will come to light when it is wanted, and all will be right. But do not make me answer any more questions, and let me keep this paper. O Mr. Gridley! I am in the power of a dreadful man--"

"You mean Mr. William Murray Bradshaw?"

"I mean him."

"Has there not been some understanding between you that he should become the approved suitor of Miss Myrtle Hazard?"

Cynthia wrung her hands and rocked herself backward and forward in her misery, but answered not a word. What _could_ she answer, if she had plotted with this "dreadful man" against a young and innocent girl, to deliver her over into his hands, at the risk of all her earthly hopes and happiness?

Master Gridley waited long and patiently for any answer she might have the force to make. As she made none, he took upon himself to settle the whole matter without further torture of his helpless victim.

"This package must go into the hands of the parties who had the settlement of the estate of the late Malachi Withers. Mr. Penhallow is the survivor of the two gentlemen to whom that business was intrusted.--How long is Mr. William Murray Bradshaw like to be away?"

"Perhaps a few days,--perhaps weeks,--and then he will come back and kill me,--or--or--worse! Don't take that paper, Mr. Gridley,--he isn't like you; you wouldn't--but he would--he would send me to everlasting misery to gain his own end, or to save himself. And yet he is n't every way bad, and if he did marry Myrtle she 'd think there never was such a man,--for he can talk her heart out of her, and the wicked in him lies very deep and won't ever come out, perhaps, if the world goes right with him." The last part of this sentence showed how Cynthia talked with her own conscience; all her mental and moral machinery lay open before the calm eyes of Master Byles Gridley.

His thoughts wandered a moment from the business before him; he had just got a new study of human nature, which in spite of himself would be shaping itself into an axiom for an imagined new edition of "Thoughts on the Universe,"--something like this,--_The greatest saint may be a sinner that never got down to "hard pan."_--It was not the time to be framing axioms.

"Poh! poh!" he said to himself; "what are you about, making phrases, when you have got a piece of work like this in hand?" Then to Cynthia, with great gentleness and kindness of manner: "Have no fear about any consequences to yourself. Mr. Penhallow must see that paper,--I mean those papers. You shall not be a loser nor a sufferer if you do your duty now in these premises."

Master Gridley, treating her, as far as circumstances permitted, like a gentleman, had shown no intention of taking the papers either stealthily or violently. It must be with her consent. He had laid the package down upon the table, waiting for her to give him leave to take it. But just as he spoke these last words, Cynthia, whose eye had been glancing furtively at it while he was thinking out his axiom, and taking her bearings to it pretty carefully, stretched her hand out, and, seizing the package, thrust it into the sanctuary of her bosom.

"Mr. Penhallow must see those papers, Miss Cynthia Badlam," Mr. Gridley repeated calmly. "If he says they or any of them can be returned to your keeping, well and good. But see them he must, for they have his office seal and belong in his custody, and, as you see by the writing on the back, they have not been examined. Now there may be something among them which is of immediate importance to the relatives of the late deceased Malachi Withers, and therefore they must be forthwith submitted to the inspection of the surviving partner of the firm of Wibird and Penhallow. This I propose to do, with your consent, this evening. It is now twenty-five minutes past eight by the true time, as my watch has it. At half past eight exactly I shall have the honor of bidding you good evening, Miss Cynthia Badlam, whether you give me those papers or not. I shall go to the office of Jacob Penhallow, Esquire, and there make one of two communications to him; to wit, these papers and the facts connected therewith, or another statement, the nature of which you may perhaps conjecture."

There is no need of our speculating as to what Mr. Byles Gridley, an honorable and humane man, would have done, or what would have been the nature of that communication which he offered as an alternative to the perplexed woman. He had not at any rate miscalculated the strength of his appeal, which Cynthia interpreted as he expected. She bore the heart-screw about two minutes. Then she took the package from her bosom, and gave it with averted face to Master Byles Gridley, who, on receiving it, made her a formal but not unkindly bow, and bade her good evening.

"One would think it had been lying out in the dew," he said, as he left the house and walked towards Mr. Penhallow's residence.

THEMISTOCLES.

So! Ye drag me, men of Athens,
Hither to your council-hall,
Armed with judges and informers,
That your doom on me may fall,--
Doom that Athens oft hath levelled
On her noblest sons of yore,--
Doom that made her foes triumphant,
And each heart that loved her sore.
Oft, as I have seen her heroes
Brought to this ignoble end,
Have I pondered,--when should Fortune
To my lips the cup commend?

Read the foul indictment, falsehood
After falsehood rolling on;
Far away my thoughts shall wander,
Thinking of the moments gone,
When with tears and prayers ye dragged me
Hither to your council-hall,
Young and old, and wives and children,
Echoing one despairing call,--
"Speak some word of comfort, Archon,
Ere the Persian dig our grave!
Speak, Themistocles, and save us,--
Thou alone hast power to save!"

Is it over? Let me hear it,--
Let me hear once more the end,--
"For Themistocles betrays us,
And is sworn the Persian's friend--"
No, not that! Take back the falsehood!
Curse the hand that wrote the lie;
Charge what deadly crime it lists you,
'Tis no dreadful thing to die.
But shall all my free devotion,
All my care for Athens' weal,
Turn to treason and corruption,
Stamped with such a lying seal?
Was 't for Persia then I led you
Up to proud Athena's height,--
Bade you view this barren country,
And the sea to left and right,--
Bade you leave your plain and mountain,--
Save to dig their shining ore,--
Bade you grasp the ocean's sceptre,
Spoil the wealth of every shore,
Spread your white sails to the breezes,
Unrestrained like them and free,
Lords of no contracted city,
But the monarchs of the sea!

Persia's friend! Have ye forgotten
How the lord of Persia came,
Bridging seas, and cleaving mountains,
With the terrors of his name,--
How he burst through Tempe's portal,
Trod the dauntless Spartan down,
Dragged the vile Boeotian captive,
Dared e'en Delphi's sacred crown?
And the craven wail of terror
Rang through Athens' every street;
Then ye came and begged for counsel,
Kneeling, clinging to my feet.
Then I bade you leave your city,
Leave your temples and your halls,
Trusting, as the god gave answer,
To your country's wooden walls.
And the Persian, entering proudly,
Found a city of the dead;
Athens' corpse his only victim,
Her immortal soul had fled!

Was 't for Persia in the council
With your false allies I toiled,
Bade the Spartan, "Strike, but hear me,"
Ere my country should be spoiled?
Or that all that night their galleys
In the narrow strait I kept?
For we felt the Persian closing,
And no son of Athens slept.
But when broke the golden dawning
O'er Pentelicus afar,
Rose the glad Hellenic paean,
Bursting with the morning star.
For we saw the Persian squadrons
Ship on ship in thousands pour,
And we knew the pass was narrow
'Twixt the island and the shore.
Calmly, as no foe were near us,
All our morning tasks we wrought,
Lying there in silent order,
As though fight we never fought.
But we grasped our oars all eager
Till the tough pine burned each hand,
Watching till the steersman's signal
For the onset gave command.
Then we smote the sea together,
And our galleys onward flew,
While from all the Hellenic navy,
As we dashed along the blue,
Pealed one loud, triumphant war-cry,--
"Now, ye sons of Hellas, come,
Conquer freedom for your country,
Freedom each one for his home,
Freedom for your wives and children,
For the altars where ye bow,
For your fathers' honored ashes,
For them all ye 're fighting now!"[1]

On the mountain height the tyrant
Bade them set his golden throne,
And in pitch of pride surveyed them,--
All the fleet he called his own,--
Heard the war-cry far resounding,
Heard the oars' responsive dash,
And the shock of squadrons smiting
Beak to beak with sudden clash,--
Saw them locked in wild confusion,
Prow on prow and keel on keel,--
Heard the thundering crash of timbers,
And the ring of clanging steel,--
Saw his ponderous ships entangled
In the close and narrow strait,
And our light-winged galleys darting
Boldly in the jaws of fate,--
Saw the mad disorder seize them,
As we grappled fast each prow,
Leaped like tigers on the bulwarks,
Hurled them to the depths below,--
Saw his bravest on the island
Slaughtered down in deadly fight,
Whom he fondly placed to crush us,
If perchance we turned to flight,--
Saw one last despairing struggle,--
Then the shout that all was lost,
And his matchless navy turning,
Fleeing from the hated coast,--
Saw them stranded on the island,
Rent and shattered on the main,--
Heard the shrieks of myriads wounded,
Saw the heaps of thousands slain,
While the sea was red with carnage,
And the air with shouts was wild,
"Woe to Persia's slaves and tyrant!
Hail to Athens, ocean's child!"

No, ye have not all forgotten,
All your hearts have not grown cold,
When of Athens' countless triumphs,
This, the noblest tale, is told.

Oft perchance my acts have wronged you,
But ye dare not charge me this,
That the Persian is my master,
When ye think of Salamis.
More I might; but it sufficeth,--
Here I wait the word of doom;
Strike! But think that I, the culprit,
Raised your city from the tomb.

*....*....*....*

Guilty! Well! The fate of others
Now at length descends on me;
Envy strikes the loftiest ever,
As the lightning on the tree.
Banished! Athens aye hath willed it
For her truest souls of yore;
Now I know thee, Aristides,
As I never knew before.
O forgive me, gallant rival,
If I e'er have wrought thee ill;
Think but of the glorious morning
When we stood on yonder hill,
When Miltiades arrayed us
In the central ranks to stand,
When we charged adown the mountain
On the motley Persian band,
When the shouting wings swept forward,
And we stood, like sea-cliffs fast,
Smiling to behold the nations
Break in foam upon us cast;
When we chased them to the galleys,
Slaughtered thousands by the wave,
Sent them back in rout to Susa,
Heaped the mound above our brave,
And forever through the ages
Sounds our glory, rolling on,
For Miltiades and Athens,
For ourselves and Marathon.

Men of Athens! By your sentence
I am banished from your state;
Humbly to that doom I bow me,
And I leave you to your fate.
Not to me thine awful ending,
Athens, shall the years unfold;
Long shall night have closed these eyelids
Ere that ruin men behold.
Still, when I am long forgotten,
Shall thy haughty sway extend,
Isles and cities, lords and kingdoms,
Forced to court, to sue, to bend,
As, from year to year increasing,
Still thy marts new wealth enclose,
And thy far-resplendent treasures
Dazzle e'en thy fiercest foes.
Wider ports and swifter navies,
Broader fields and richer mines,
Deadlier fights and braver armies,
Statelier halls and fairer shrines,
Loftier accents poured in council,
Nobler thoughts in sweeter song,
Loud proclaim the crown of Hellas
Doth of right to thee belong;
Till thy heart be drunk with glory,
And thy brain be crazed with power,
And the gods o'erhear thy boasting
In some mad, triumphant hour.

Then, when one by one thy subjects
Turn and beard thee in despair,
Calling Sparta to the rescue,
In thy death and spoil to share,--
When thy vines and groves lie desert,
And within thy crowded wall
Pest and famine slay thy chosen,
Slay the foremost chief of all,--
When thy armies throng the dungeons,
And thy shipwrecks heap the strand,--
When thine ancient strain of heroes
Gives no more the proud command,
But thy wisest heads turn faithless,
And thy truest hearts grow dull,
Making all thy counsel folly,
All thy desperate valor null,--
When each fond and mad endeavor,
Clutching at thy fallen crown,
Deeper in the roaring whirlpool
Of perdition sucks thee down,
When at last thy foes surround thee,
Dig the trench, and hem thee in,--
When the dreadful word is spoken,
Which to whisper were a sin,--
When at length, in vile subjection,
Unto Sparta thou shalt sue,
Swearing thou wilt humbly serve her,
Will she but thy life renew,--
In that hour of keenest torture,
When thy star is sunk in night,
Think!--but not of me, whose valor
Thou so foully didst requite;--
Think not of thine outraged heroes,
But of her who banished these,
Think of Athens, false and fickle,
Think not of Themistocles.

But if e'er, in after ages,
Once again thy star _should_ rise,--
If some noble son _should_ save thee,
Like a god that left the skies,
If thy shackles should be broken,
And thou leap to new renown,
Then remember me, my darling,
City of the violet crown!
Then shall endless shouts of triumph
Sound the glories of thy name,
And the songs of generations
All thy matchless gifts proclaim;
Then be every wrong forgotten,
Then be every debt repaid,
And the wreath of every hero
On Athena's altar laid.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The foregoing description is nearly a translation from the _Persae_ of AEschylus.

BEN JONSON.

Authors are apt to be popularly considered as physically a feeble folk,--as timid, nervous, dyspeptic rhymers or prosers, unfitted to grapple with the rough realities of life. We shall endeavor, in the following pages, to present our readers with the image of one calculated to reverse this impression,--the image of a stalwart man of letters, who lived two centuries and a half ago, in the greatest age of English literature,--who undeniably had brawny fists as well as forgetive faculties,--one who could handle a club as readily as a pen, hit his mark with a bullet as surely as with a word, and, a sort of cross between the bully and the bard, could shoulder his way through a crowd of prize-fighters to take his seat among the tuneful company of immortal poets. This man, Ben Jonson, commonly stands next to Shakespeare in a consideration of the dramatic literature of the age of Elizabeth; and certainly, if the "thousand-souled" Shakespeare may be said to represent mankind, Ben as unmistakably stands for English-kind. He is "Saxon" England in epitome,--John Bull passing from a name into a man,--a proud, strong, tough, solid, domineering individual, whose intellect and personality cannot be severed, even in thought, from his body and personal appearance. Ben's mind, indeed, was rooted in Ben's character; and his character took symbolic form in his physical frame. He seemed built up, mentally as well as bodily, out of beef and sack, mutton and Canary; or, to say the least, was a joint product of the English mind and the English larder, of the fat as well as the thought of the land, of the soil as well as the soul of England. The moment we attempt to estimate his eminence as a dramatist, he disturbs the equanimity of our judgment by tumbling head-foremost into the imagination as a big, bluff, burly, and quarrelsome man, with "a mountain belly and a rocky face." He is a very pleasant boon companion as long as we make our idea of his importance agree with his own; but the instant we attempt to dissect his intellectual pretensions, the living animal becomes a dangerous subject,--his countenance flames, his great hands double up, his thick lips begin to twitch with impending invective; and while the critic's impression of him is thus all the more vivid, he is checked in its expression by a very natural fear of the consequences. There is no safety but in taking this rowdy leviathan of letters at his own valuation; and the relation of critics towards him is as perilous as that of the juries towards the Irish advocate, who had an unpleasant habit of challenging them to personal combat whenever they brought in a verdict against any of his clients. There is, in fact, such a vast animal force in old Ben's self-assertion, that he bullies posterity as he bullied his contemporaries; and while we admit his claims to rank next to Shakespeare among the dramatists of his age, we beg our readers to understand that we do it under intimidation.

The qualities of this bold, racy, and brawny egotist can be best conveyed in a biographical form. He was born in 1574, the grandson of a gentleman who, for his religion, lost his estate, and for a time his liberty, in Queen Mary's time, and the son of a clergyman in humble circumstances, who died about a month before his "rare" offspring was born. His mother, shortly after the death of her husband, married a master-bricklayer. Ben, who as a boy doubtless exhibited brightness of intellect and audacity of spirit, seems to have attracted the attention of Camden, who placed him in Westminster School, of which he was master. Ben there displayed so warm a love of learning, and so much capacity in rapidly acquiring it, that, at the age of sixteen, he is said to have been removed to the University of Cambridge, though he stated to Drummond, long afterwards, that he was "master of arts in both the Universities, by their favor, not his studie." His ambition at this time, if we may believe some of his biographers, was to be a clergyman; and had it been gratified, he would probably have blustered his way to a bishopric, and proved himself one of the most arrogant, learned, and pugnacious disputants of the English Church Militant,--perhaps have furnished the type of that peculiar religionist compounded of bully, pedant, and bigot which Warburton was afterwards, from the lack of models, compelled to originate. But after residing a few months at the University, Ben, deserted by his friends and destitute of money, found it impossible to carry out his design; and he returned disappointed to his mother's house. As she could not support him in idleness, the stout-hearted student adopted the most obvious means of earning his daily bread, and for a short time followed the occupation of his father-in-law, going to the work of bricklaying, according to the tradition, with a trowel in one hand, but with a Horace in the other. His enemies among the dramatists did not forget this when he became famous, but meanly sneered at him as "the lime-and-mortar poet." When we reflect that in the aristocratic age of good Queen Bess, play-writing, even the writing of Hamlets and Alchymists, was, if we may trust Dr. Farmer, hardly considered "a creditable employ," we may form some judgment of the position of the working classes, when a mechanic was thus deemed to have no rights which a playwright "was bound to respect."

We have no means of deciding whether or not Ben was foolish enough to look upon his trade as degrading; that it was distasteful we know from the fact that he soon exchanged the trowel for the sword; and we hear no more of his dealing with bricks, if we may except his questionable habit of sometimes carrying too many of them in his hat. At the age of eighteen he ran away to the Continent, and enlisted as a volunteer in the English army in Flanders, fully intending, doubtless, that, as fate seemed against his being a Homer or an Aristotle, to try if fortune would not make him an Alexander or a Hannibal. As ill-luck would have it, however, his abundant vitality had little scope in martial exercise. He does not appear to have been in any general engagement, though he signalized his personal prowess in a manner which he was determined should not be forgotten through any diffidence of his own. Boastful as he was brave, he was never weary of bragging how he had encountered one of the enemy, fought with him in presence of both armies, killed him, and triumphantly "taken _opima spolia_ from him."

After serving one campaign, our Ajax-Thersites returned, at the age of nineteen, to England, bringing with him, according to Gifford, "the reputation of a brave man, a smattering of Dutch, and an empty purse." To these accomplishments he probably added that of drinking; for, as "our army in Flanders" ever drank terribly as well as "swore terribly," it may be supposed that Ben there laid, deep and wide, the foundation of his bacchanalian habits. Arrived in London, and thrown on his own resources for support, he turned naturally to the stage, and became an actor in a minor play-house, called the Green Curtain. Though he was through life a good reader, and though at this time he was not afflicted with the scurvy, which eventually so punched his face as to make one of his satirists compare it, with witty malice, to the cover of a warming-pan, he still never rose to any eminence as an actor. He had not been long at the Green Curtain when a quarrel with one of his fellow performers led to a duel, in which Jonson killed his antagonist, was arrested on a charge of murder, and, in his own phrase, was brought "almost at the gallowes,"--an unpleasant proximity which he hastened to increase by relieving the weariness of imprisonment in discussions on religion with a Popish priest, also a prisoner, and by being converted to Romanism. As the zealous professors of the old faith had passed, in Elizabeth's time, from persecutors into martyrs, Ben, the descendant of one of Queen Mary's victims, evinced more than his usual worldly prudence in seizing this occasion to join their company, as he could reasonably hope that, if he escaped hanging on the charge of homicide, he still might contrive to be beheaded on a charge of treason. In regard, however, to the original cause of his imprisonment, it would seem that, on investigation, it was found the duel had been forced upon him, that his antagonist had taken the precaution of bringing into the field a sword ten inches longer than his own, and thus, far from intending to be the victim of murder, had not unsagaciously counted on committing it. Jonson was released; but, apparently vexed at this propitious turn to his fortunes, instead of casting about for some means of subsistence, he almost immediately married a woman as poor as himself,--a wife whom he afterwards curtly described as "a shrew, yet honest." A shrew, indeed! As if Mrs. Jonson must not often have had just occasion to use her tongue tartly!--as if her redoubtable Ben did not often need its acrid admonitions! They seem to have lived together until 1613, when they separated.

Absolute necessity now drove Jonson again to the stage, probably both as actor and writer. He began his dramatic career, as Shakespeare began his, by doing job-work for the managers; that is, by altering, recasting, and making additions to old plays. At last, in 1596, in his twenty-second year, he placed himself at a bound among the famous dramatists of the time, by the production, at the Rose Theatre, of his comedy of "Every Man in his Humor." Two years afterwards, having in the mean time been altered and improved, it was, through the influence of Shakespeare, accepted by the players of the Blackfriars' Theatre, Shakespeare himself acting the characterless part of the Elder Knowell.

Among the writers of the Elizabethan age, an age in which, for a wonder, there seemed to be a glut of genius, Ben is prominent more for racy originality of personal character, weight or understanding, and quickness of fancy, than for creativeness of imagination. His first play, "Every Man in his Humor," indicates to a great extent the quality and the kind of power with which he was endowed. His prominent characteristic was will,--will carried to self-will, and sometimes to self-exaggeration almost furious. His understanding was solid, strong, penetrating, even broad, and it was well furnished with matter derived both from experience and books; but, dominated by a personality so fretful and fierce, it was impelled to look at men and things, not in their relations to each other, but in their relations to Ben. He had reached that ideal of stormy conceit in which, according to Emerson, the egotist declares, "Difference from me is the measure of absurdity." Even the imaginary characters he delineated as a dramatist were all bound, as by tough cords, to the will that gave them being, lacked that joyous freedom and careless grace of movement which rightfully belonged to them as denizens of an ideal world, and had to obey their master Ben, as puppets obey the show-man. His power of external observation was pitilessly keen and searching, and it was accompanied by a rich, though somewhat coarse and insolent vein of humor; but his egotism commonly directed his observation to what was below, rather than above himself, and gave to his humor a scornful, rather than a genial tone. He huffs even in his hilarity; his fun is never infectious; and his very laughter is an assertion of superior wisdom. He has none of that humanizing humor which, in Shakespeare, makes us like the vagabonds we laugh at, and which insures for Dogberry and Nick Bottom, Autolychus and Falstaff, warmer friends among readers than many great historic dignities of the state and the camp can command.

In regard to the materials of the dramatist, Jonson, in his vagrant career, had seen human nature under many aspects; but he had surveyed it neither with the eye of reason, nor the eye of imagination. His mind fastened on the hard actualities of observation, without passing to what they implied or suggested. Deficient thus in philosophic insight and poetic insight, his shrewd, contemptuous glance rarely penetrated beneath the manners and eccentricities of men. His attention was arrested, not by character, but by prominent peculiarities of character,--peculiarities which almost transformed character into caricature. To use his own phrase, he delineated humors rather than persons, that is, individuals under the influence of some dominant affectation, or whim, or conceit, or passion, that drew into itself, colored, and mastered the whole nature,--"an acorn," as Sir Thomas Browne phrases it, "in their young brows, which grew to an oak in their old heads." He thus inverts the true process of characterization. Instead of seeing the trait as an offshoot of the individual, he individualizes the trait. Every man is _in_ his humor, instead of every humor being in its man. In order that there should be no misconception of his purpose, he named his chief characters after their predominant qualities, as Morose, Surly, Sir Amorous La Fool, Sir Politic Would Be, Sir Epicure Mammon, and the like; and, apprehensive even then that his whole precious meaning would not be taken in, he appended to his _dramatis personae_ further explanations of their respective natures.

This distrust of the power of language to lodge a notion in another brain is especially English; but Ben, of all writers, seems to have been most impressed with the necessity of pounding an idea into the perceptions of his countrymen. His mode resembles the attempt of that honest Briton, who thus delivered his judgment on the French nation: "I hate a Frenchman, sir. Every Frenchman is either a puppy or a rascal, sir." And then, fearful that he had not been sufficiently explicit, he added, "Do you take my idea?"

With all abatements, however, the comedy of "Every Man in his Humor" is a remarkable effort, considered as the production of a young man of twenty-three. The two most striking characters are Kitely and Captain Bobadil. Give Jonson, indeed, a peculiarity to start with, and he worked it out with logical exactness. So intense was his conception of it, that he clothed it in flesh and blood, gave it a substantial existence, and sometimes succeeded in forcing it into literature as a permanent character.

Bobadil, especially, is one of Ben's masterpieces. He is the most colossal coward and braggart of the comic stage. He can swear by nothing less terrible than "by the body of Caesar," or "by the foot of Pharaoh," when his oath is not something more terrific still, namely, "by my valor"! Every schoolboy knows the celebrated passage in which the boasting Captain offers to settle the affairs of Europe by associating with himself twenty other Bobadils, as cunning i' the fence as himself, and challenging an army of forty thousand men, twenty at a time, and killing the whole in a certain number of days. Leaving out the cowardice, we may say there was something of Bobadil in Jonson himself; and it may be shrewdly suspected that his conceit of destroying an army in this fashion came into his head in the exultation of feeling which followed his own successful exploit, in the presence of both armies, when he was a soldier in Flanders. Old John Dennis described genius "as a furious joy and pride of school at the conception of an extraordinary hint." Ben had this "furious joy and pride," not only in the conception of extraordinary hints, but in the doing of extraordinary things.

Jonson followed up his success by producing the plays of "Every Man out of his Humor," and "Cynthia's Revels," dramatic satires on the manners, follies, affectations, and vices of the city and the court. One good result of Jonson's egotism was, that it made him afraid of nothing. He openly appeared among the dramatists of his day as a reformer, and, poor as he was, refused to pander to popular tastes, whether those tastes took the direction of ribaldry, or blasphemy, or bombast. He had courage, morality, earnestness; but then his courage was so blustering, his morality so irascible, and his devotion to his own ideas of art so exclusive, that he was constantly defying and insulting the persons he proposed to teach. Other dramatists said to the audience, "Please to applaud this"; but Ben said, "Now, you fools, we shall see if you have sense enough to applaud this!" The stage, to be sure, was to be exalted and improved, but it was to be done by his own works, and the glory of literature was to be associated with the glory of Master Benjamin. This conceit, by making him insensible to Shakespeare's influence, made him next to Shakespeare perhaps the most original dramatist of the time. He differed from his brother dramatists not in degree, but in kind. He felt it was not for him to imitate, but to produce models for imitation; not for him to catch the spirit of the age, but to originate a better. In short, he felt and taught belief in Ben; and, high as posterity rates the literature of the age of Elizabeth, it would be supposed from his prologues and epilogues that he conceived his fat person to have fallen on evil days.

In "Every Man out of his Humor" and "Cynthia's Revels," he is in a raging passion throughout. His verse groans with the weight of his wrath. "My soul," he exclaims,

"Was never ground into such oily colors
To flatter vice and daub iniquity.
But with an armed and resolved hand
I 'll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth,
... and with a whip of steel
Print wounding lashes on their iron ribs."

But though he exhausts the whole rhetoric of railing, invective, contempt, and scorn, we yet find it difficult to feel any of the indignation he labors to excite. Admiration, however, cannot be refused to Jonson's prose style in these as in his other plays. It is terse, sharp, swift, biting,--every word a die that stamps its object in a second. Occasionally the author's veins, to use his own apt expression, seem to "run quicksilver," and "every phrase comes forth steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkles like salt in fire." Yet, though we have whole scenes in which there is brightness in every sentence, the result of the whole is something like dulness, as the object of the whole is to exalt himself and depress others. But in these plays, in strange contrast with their general character, we have a few specimens of that sweetness of sentiment, refinement of fancy, and indefinite beauty of imagination, which, occupying some secluded corner of his large brain, seemed to exist apart from his ordinary powers and passions. Among these, the most exquisite is this Hymn to Diana, which partakes of the serenity of the moonlight, whose goddess it invokes.

"Queen and huntress chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep.
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright!

"Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close.
Bless us, then, with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

"Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-gleaming quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe how short soever,--
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright."

If, as Jonson's adversaries maliciously asserted, "every line of his poetry cost him a cup of sack," we must, even in our more temperate days, pardon him the eighteen cups which, in this melodious lyric, went into his mouth as sack, but, by some precious chemistry, came out through his pen as pearls.

It was inevitable that the imperious attitude Jonson had assumed, and the insolent pungency of his satire, should rouse the wrath of the classes he lampooned, and the enmity of the poets he ridiculed and decried. Among those who conceived themselves assailed, or who felt insulted by his arrogant tone, were two dramatists, Thomas Dekkar and John Marston. They soon recriminated; and as Ben was better fitted by nature to dispense than to endure scorn and derision, he in 1601 produced "The Poetaster," the object of which was to silence forever, not only Dekkar and Marston, but all other impudent doubters of his infallibility. The humor of the thing is, that, in this elaborate attempt to convict his adversaries of calumny in taxing him with self-love and arrogance, he ostentatiously exhibits the very qualities he disclaims. He keeps no terms with those who profess disbelief in Ben. They are "play-dressers and plagiaries," "fools or jerking pedants," "buffoon barking wits," tickling "base vulgar ears with beggarly and barren trash," while his are

"The high raptures of a happy Muse,
Borne on the wings of her immortal thought,
That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel,
And beats at heaven's gate with her bright hoofs."

Dekkar retorted in a play called "Satiromastrix; or, the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet"; but, though the scurrility is brilliantly bitter, it is less efficient and hearted than Jonson's. This literary controversy, conducted in acted plays, had to the public of that day a zest similar to that we should enjoy if the editors of two opposing political newspapers should meet in a hall filled with their subscribers, and fling their thundering editorials in person at each other's heads. The theatre-goers seem to have declared for Dekkar and Marston; and Ben, disgusted with such a proof of their incapacity of judgment, sulked and growled in his den, and for two years gave nothing to the stage. He had, however, found a patron, who enabled him to do this without undergoing the famine of insufficient meat, and the still more dreadful drought of insufficient drink; for, in a gossiping diary of the period, covering these two years, we are informed, "B. J. now lives with one Townsend, and scorns the world." While, however, pleasantly engaged in this characteristic occupation, for which he had a natural genius, he was meditating a play which he thought would demonstrate to all judging spirits his possession equally of the acquirements of the scholar and the talents of the dramatist. In the conclusion of the Apologetic Dialogue which accompanies "The Poetaster," he had hinted his purpose in these energetic lines:--

"Once I 'll say,--
To strike the ears of Time in these fresh strains,
As shall, beside the cunning of their ground,
Give cause to some of wonder, some despite,
And more despair to imitate their sound.
I that spend half my nights and all my days
Here in a cell, to get a dark, pale face,
To come forth with the ivy and the bays,
And in this age can hope no better grace,--
Leave me! There 's something come into my thought,
That must and shall be sung high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof!"

Accordingly, in 1603, he produced his weighty tragedy of "Sejanus," at Shakespeare's theatre, The Globe,--Shakespeare himself acting one of the inferior parts. Think of Shakespeare laboriously committing to memory the blank verse of Jonson!