Ben Jonson’s genius was producing its best work in the earlier years of the reign of James I. His Volpone, the Silent Woman, and the Alchemist first appeared side by side with some of the ripest works of Shakespeare in the years from 1605 to 1610.  In the latter part of James’s reign he produced masques for the Court, and turned with distaste from the public stage.  When Charles I. became king, Ben Jonson was weakened in health by a paralytic stroke.  He returned to the stage for a short time through necessity, but found his best friends in the best of the young poets of the day.  These looked up to him as their father and their guide.  Their own best efforts seemed best to them when they had won Ben Jonson’s praise.  They valued above all passing honours man could give the words, “My son,” in the old poet’s greeting, which, as they said, “sealed them of the tribe of Ben.”

H. M.

SYLVA

Rerum et sententiarum quasi “[Greek text] dicta a multiplici materia et varietate in iis contenta.  Quemadmodum enim vulgo solemus infinitam arborum nascentium indiscriminatim multitudinem Sylvam dicere:  ita etiam libros suos in quibus variae et diversae materiae opuscula temere congesta erant, Sylvas appellabant antiqui:  Timber-trees.

Timber;
or,
discoveries made upon men and matter,
as they have flowed out of his daily readings,
or had their reflux to his peculiar
notion of the times.

Tecum habita, ut noris quam sit tibi curta supellex {11}
Pers.  Sat. 4.

Fortuna.—­Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.  I therefore have counselled my friends never to trust to her fairer side, though she seemed to make peace with them; but to place all things she gave them, so as she might ask them again without their trouble, she might take them from them, not pull them:  to keep always a distance between her and themselves.  He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.  Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man.  Contraries are not mixed.  Yet that which happens to any man may to every man.  But it is in his reason, what he accounts it and will make it.

Casus.—­Change into extremity is very frequent and easy.  As when a beggar suddenly grows rich, he commonly becomes a prodigal; for, to obscure his former obscurity, he puts on riot and excess.

Consilia.—­No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise but may easily err, if he will take no others’ counsel but his own.  But very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching.  For he that was only taught by himself {12} had a fool to his master.