Jonson died, August 6, 1637, and a second folio of his works, which 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 passage 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:—­