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.

Sejanus:  His fall
to the no less noble by virtue than blood
ESME lord AUBIGNY

My lord,-If ever any ruin were so great as to survive, I think this be one I send you, The Fall of Sejanus.  It is a poem, that, if I well remember, in your lordship’s sight, suffered no less violence from our people here, than the subject of it did from the rage of the people of Rome; but with a different fate, as, I hope, merit:  for this hath outlived their malice, and begot itself a greater favour than he lost, the love of good men.  Amongst whom, if I make your lordship the first it thanks, it is not without a just, confession of the bond your benefits have, and ever shall hold upon me,

Your lordship’s most faithful honourer.  Ben Jonson.

To the readers

The following and voluntary labours of my friends, prefixed to my book, have relieved me in much whereat, without them, I should necessarily have touched.  Now I will only use three or four short and needful notes, and so rest.

First, if it be objected, that what I publish is no true poem, in the strict laws of time, I confess it:  as also in the want of a proper chorus; whose habit and moods are such and so difficult, as not any, whom I have seen, since the ancients, no, not they who have most presently affected laws, have yet come in the way of.  Nor is it needful, or almost possible in these our times, and to such auditors as commonly things are presented, to observe the old state and splendour of dramatic poems, with preservation of any popular delight.  But of this I shall take more seasonable cause to speak, in my observations upon Horace his Art of Poetry, which, with the text translated, I intend shortly to publish.  In the mean time, if in truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of elocution, fulness and frequency of sentence, I have discharged the other offices of a tragic writer, let not the absence of these forms be imputed to me, wherein I shall give you occasion hereafter, and without my boast, to think I could better prescribe, than omit the due use for want of a convenient knowledge.