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According to Rowe, 20 Shakespeare's "acquaintance with Ben Johnson began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good nature: Mr. Johnson, who was at that time. altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company, when Shakespeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Johnson and his writings to the publick." This anecdote,21-like many other traditionary stories,-is perhaps in some respects erroneous; but there seems to be nothing which forbids our believing it to be based on truth.-Private dwellings in those days did not furnish the accommodations and comforts which they now afford; and conviviality was confined almost entirely to taverns and ordinaries. At the Mermaid Tavern, Sir Walter Raleigh had insti

But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." Discoveries,—Works, ix. 175, ed. Gifford. Concerning the passage of Julius Cæsar, act iii. sc. 1, to which Jonson alludes, see more in note ad l.

20 Life of Shakespeare.

21 Gifford treated it as 66 an arrant fable," on the strength of a notice in Henslowe's Diary, of "the comodey of Umers" having been originally acted by the Lord Admiral's Men in 1597,-which comedy Gifford supposed to have been Jonson's Every Man in his Humour: but Jonson (as before mentioned) expressly states that his play was first acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants in 1598; and therefore Mr. Collier (Life of Shakespeare, p. 133, sec. ed.) concludes that Henslowe's notice must refer to some other piece.

tuted 22 a club, which included among its members Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, and others eminent for genius and learning. That Shakespeare also belonged to it we can hardly question; and there most probably it was that he and Jonson delighted the company with those brilliant and good-natured repartees, of which Fuller, from the accounts still current in his own time, has preserved a memorial. "Many," he says, were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion and an English man-of-war: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his performances; Shakespeare with the English man-ofwar, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."23

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22 About 1603, if Gifford be right (Memoirs of Jonson, p. lxv.).—The Mermaid Tavern is generally said to have been in Friday-street: but, as Mr. P. Cunningham observes (Handbook of London), "Ben Jonson has settled its locality" by a passage in his lines On the famous voyage;

"At Bread-street's Mermaid having din'd, and merry,
Propos'd to go to Holborn in a wherry."

Works, viii. 242, ed. Gifford.

23 Worthies, p. 126, aaa, ed. fol.-After reading the above passage of Fuller, how are we disappointed to find that no better than the following have been handed down to us as specimens of Shakespeare's and Jonson's "wit"!

Shakespeare was god-father to one of Ben Johnsons children, and after the christning, being in a deepe study, Johnson came to cheere him up, and askt him why he was so melancholy. No, faith, Ben, sayes he, not I; but I have beene considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god-child, and I have resolv'd at last. I prythe what? sayes he. I faith, Ben, Ile e'en give him a dowzen good Lattin spoones, and thou shalt translate them." From Merry Passages and Jeasts (collected by Sir Nicholas L'estrange), Ms. Harl. 6395.

In a work by Francis Meres, entitled Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, being the Second Part of Wits Commonwealth, 1598, is a remarkable passage concerning Shakespeare and the productions by which at that date he had established his fame:

"As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c.

66 As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best

"Verses by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, occasioned by the motto to the Globe Theatre,-Totus mundus agit histrionem.

Jonson.

If but stage-actors all the world displays,
Where shall we find spectators of their plays?

Shakespeare.

Little or much of what we see we do;

We are all both actors and spectators too."

From Poetical Characteristicks,—a Ms. formerly in the Harleian collection.

"Mr. Ben Johnson and Mr. Wm. Shakespeare being merrye att a tavern, Mr. Jonson haveing begune this for his epitaph,

Here lies Ben Johnson,

That was once one,

he gives ytt to Mr. Shakspear to make upp, who presently wrightes,

Who, while hee liv'de, was a sloe thinge,

And now, being dead, is no-thinge."

Ms. Ashmol. Oxon. 38, p. 181.—

The letter from Peele to Marlowe, concerning Shakespeare and Jonson, which has been given in several publications, is undoubtedly a forgery: see Life of Peele, p. 327, prefixed to his Works, ed. Dyce, 1861.

for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labors Lost, his Love Labours Wonne, his Midsummers Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the 2., Richard the 3., Henry the 4., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet.

"As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase, if they would speake English."

Of the various pieces thus mentioned by Meres in 1598, a portion only were then in print: the others afterwards found their way to the press at unequal intervals, some remaining in manuscript till the publication of the folio in 1623. To take them in the order of his enumeration. Venus and Adonis and Lucrece first appeared (as already stated), the former in 1593, the latter in 1594; the Sonnets in 1609; The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors in 1623; Love's Labour's lost in 1598; Love's Labour's won (supposing that title to be, as it most probably is, only another name for All's well that ends well) in 1623; A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice in 1600; King Richard the Second and King Richard the Third in 1597; The First Part of King Henry the Fourth in 1598; The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth in 1600; King John in 1623; Titus

Andronicus (if not in 159424) in 1600; Romeo and Juliet (with a most imperfect text) in 1597.

Among the Epigrams of Weever, published in 1599, but written earlier, are the following wretched lines in commendation of our author's poetry both narrative and dramatic;

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"Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare.

Honie-tongd Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,

I swore Apollo got them, and none other;

Their rosie-tainted features clothed in tissue,

Some heaven-born goddesse said to be their mother:
Rose-cheeckt Adonis with his amber tresses,

Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her;
Chaste Lucretia, virgine-like her dresses,

Proud lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her;
Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not;

Their sugred tongues and power-attractive beauty
Say they are saints, althogh that saints they shew not,
For thousand vowes to them subjective dutie.
They burn in love, thy children, Shakespeare, let them :
Go, wo thy Muse; more nymphish brood beget them."

During the same year appeared a small poetical miscellany called The Passionate Pilgrim, the title-page attributing the whole to Shakespeare,25 though it con

24 "This play," says Langbaine, was first printed 4° Lond. 1594." Account of Eng. Dramatic Poets, p. 464: and, though no such edition is at present known, Langbaine's statement is probably correct; for Titus Andronicus was entered in the Stationers' Registers, Feb. 6th, 1593.

25 That Shakespeare did not authorize the publication of The Passionate Pilgrim is certain.-No second edition of it is known.-To the third edition, 1612, the publisher, W. Jaggard, added two pieces from Heywood's Troja Britannica; which proceeding was thus noticed by Heywood in the Postscript to his Apology for Actors, also printed in 1612: “Here, likewise, I must necessarily insert a manifest injury done me in that worke [Troja Britannica] by taking the two epistles of Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris, and printing them in a lesse volume under

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