Ben Jonson traveled too.  For a time he traveled in France with Sir Walter Raleigh’s son, while Sir Walter himself was shut up in the Tower.  But Jonson’s most famous journey is his walk to Scotland.  He liked to believe that he belonged to a famous Border family, and wished to visit the land of his forefathers.  So in the mid-summer of 1618 he set out.  We do not know how long he took to make his lengthy walk, but in September he was comfortably settled in Leith, being “worthily entertained” by all the greatest and most learned men of the day.  He had money enough for all his wants, for he was able to give a gold piece and two and twenty shillings to another poet less well off than himself.  He was given the freedom of the city of Edinburgh and more than 200 pounds was spent on a great feast in his honor.  About Christmas he went to pay a visit to a well-known Scottish poet, William Drummond, who lived in a beautiful house called Hawthornden, a few miles from Edinburgh.  There he stayed two or three weeks, during which time he and his host had many a long talk together, discussing men and books.  Drummond wrote down all that he could remember of these talks, and it is from them that we learn a good deal of what we know about our poet, a good deal, perhaps, not to his credit.  We learn from them that he was vain and boastful, a loud talker and a deep drinker.  Yet there is something about this big blustering Ben that we cannot help but like.

In January sometime, Jonson set his face homeward, and reached London in April or May, having taken nearly a year to pay his visit.  He must have been pleased with his journey, for on his return he wrote a poem about Scotland.  Nothing of it has come down to us, however, except one line in which he calls Edinburgh “The heart of Scotland, Britain’s other eye.”

The years passed for Jonson, if not in wealth, at least in such comfort as his way of life allowed.  For we cannot ever think of him as happy in his own home by his own fireside.  He is rather a king in Clubland spending his all freely and taking no thought for the morrow.  But in 1625 King James died, and although the new King Charles still continued the poet’s pension, his tastes were different from those of his father, and Jonson found himself and his Masques neglected.  His health began to fail too, and his library, which he dearly loved, was burned, together with many of his unpublished manuscripts, and so he fell on evil days.

Forgotten at court, Jonson began once more to write for the stage.  But now that he had to write for bread, it almost seemed as if his pen had lost its charm.  The plays he wrote added nothing to his fame.  They were badly received.  And so at last, in trouble for to-morrow’s bread, without wife or child to comfort him, he died on 8th August, 1637.

He was buried in Westminster, and it was intended to raise a fine tomb over his grave.  But times were growing troublous, and the monument was still lacking, when a lover of the poet, Sir John Young of Great Milton, in Oxfordshire, came to do honor to his tomb.  Finding it unmarked, he paid a workman 1s. 6d. to carve above the poet’s resting-place the words, “O rare Ben Jonson.”  And perhaps these simple words have done more to keep alive the memory of the poet than any splendid monument could have done.