malignity" brought forward, and dismissed with the contempt that they deserve, in a paper appended to Gifford's 'Memoir of Jonson.' The same acute critic had the merit of pointing out a passage in Jonson's 'Poetaster,' which, he says, “is as undoubtedly true of Shakspere as if it were pointedly written to describe him." He further says, "It is evident that throughout the whole of this drama Jonson maintains a constant allusion to himself and his contemporaries," and that, consequently, the lines in question were intended for Shakspere:

"That which he hath writ

Is with such judgment labour'd and distill'd Through all the needful uses of our lives, That, could a man remember but his lines, He should not touch at any serious point, But he might breathe his spirit out of him.

And live hereafter more admired than now.' We have already noticed the expression of Jonson to Drummond, that "Shakspere wanted art." It is impossible to receive Jonson's words as any support of the absurd opinion, so long propagated, that Shakspere worked without labour and without method. Jonson's own testimony, delivered five years after the conversation with Drummond, offers the most direct evidence against such a construction of his expression :"Yet must I not give Nature all thy art, My gentle Shakspere, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter Nature be, His art doth give the fashion and that he Who casts to write a living line must sweat (Such as thine are), and strike the second heat

*The Poetaster,' Act v. Sc. I.

+ Book viii. ch. i. p. 369.

Upon the Muses' anvil: turn the same
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame;
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,—
For a good poet's made as well as born:
And such wert thou."

There can be no difficulty in understanding Jonson's dispraise of Shakspere, small as it was, when we look at the different characters of the two men. In his 'Discoveries,' written in his last years, there is the following passage :-"I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspere, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer had been, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too." The players had said, in their preface to the first folio-"His mind and hand went together; and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Jonson, no doubt, alludes to this assertion. But we are not, therefore, to understand that Shakspere took no pains in perfecting what, according to the notions of his editors, he delivered with such easiness. The differences between the earlier and the later copies of some of his plays show the unremitting care and the exquisite judgment with which he revised his productions. The expression "without a blot" might, nevertheless, be perfectly true; and the fact, no doubt, impressed upon the minds of Heminge and Condell what they were desirous to impress upon others, that Shakspere was a writer of unequalled facility—“ as he was a happy imitator of nature, he was a most

gentle expresser of it." Jonson received this evidence of facility as a reproof to his own laborious mode of composition. He felt proud, and wisely so, of the commendations of his admirers, that his works cost him much sweat and much oil; and when the players told him that Shakspere never blotted out a line, he had his self-satisfied retort, "Would he had blotted a thousand." But this carelessness, as it appeared to Jonson,-this exuberant facility, as the players thought,— was in itself no proof that Shakspere did not elaborate his works with the nicest care. The same thing was said of Fletcher as of him. Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of Beaumont and Fletcher's works in 1647, says

"Whatever I have seen of Mr. Fletcher's own hand is free from interlining, and his friends affirm he never writ any one thing twice." But the stationer does not put this forth as any proof of carelessness; for he most judiciously adds, "It seems he had that rare felicity to prepare and perfect all first in his own brain, to shape and attire his notions, to add or lop off before he committed one word to writing, and never touched pen till all was to stand as firm and immutable as if engraven in brass or marble." This is the way, we believe, in which all works of great originality are built up. If Shakspere blotted not a line, it was because he wrote not till he had laid the foundations, and formed the plan, and conceived the ornaments, of his wondrous edifices. The execution of the work was then an easy thing; and the facility was the beautiful result of the previous labour.

But if Jonson expressed himself a little petulantly, and perhaps inconsiderately, about the boast of the players, surely nothing can be nobler than the hearty tribute which he pays to the memory of Shakspere :-" I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." Unquestionably this is language which shows that the memory of Shakspere was cherished by others even to idolatry; so that Jonson absolutely adopts an apologetical tone in venturing an observation which can scarcely be considered disparaging-“ he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was neces

sary he should be stopped." It was the facility that excited Jonson's critical comparison of Shakspere with himself; and it was in the same way that, when he wrote his noble verses "To the Memory of my Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us," he could not avoid drawing a comparison between his own profound scholarship and Shakspere's practical learning

"If I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less
Greek,

From thence to honour thee I will not seek
For names: but call forth thund'ring Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,

To live again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage: or, when thy socks were

Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie,

As they were not of Nature's family."

The interpretation of this passage is certainly not difficult. Its general sense is expressed by Gifford :-" Jonson not only sets Shakspeare above his contemporaries, but above the ancients, whose works himself idolized, and of whose genuine merits he was perhaps a more competent judge than any scholar of his age."*

The entire passage was unquestionably meant for praise, whatever opinion might be implied in it as to Shakspere's learning. Looking to the whole construction and tendency of the passage, it may even be doubted whether Jonson intended to express a direct opinion as to Shakspere's philological attainments. If we paraphrase

*Jonson's Works,' vol. viii. p.333.

But if the passage which we have previously quoted from 'The Poetaster' be, as Gifford so plausibly imagined, intended for Shakspere, it is decisive as to Jonson's own opinion of his great friend's acquirements: it is the opinion of every man, now, who is not a slave to the authority of the smallest minds that ever undertook to measure the vast poetical region of Shakspere with their little tape, inch by inch :

"His learning savours not the school-like gloss That most consists in echoing words and terms,

And soonest wins a man an empty name."

The verses of Jonson, prefixed to the folio of 1623, conclude with these remarkable

lines:

"Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping stage;

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume's light." From 1616, the year of Shakspere's death, to 1623, the date of the first edition of his collected works, Jonson himself had written nothing for the stage. Beaumont had died the year before Shakspere; but Fletcher alone was sustaining the high reputation which he had won with his accomplished associate. Massinger had been in London from 1606, known certainly to have written in conjunction with other dramatists before the period of Shakspere's death, and, without doubt, assisting to fill the void which he had left; for The Bondman' appears in the list of the Master of the Revels in 1623. The indefatigable Thomas Heywood was a writer for the stage from the commencement of the seventeenth century to the suppression of the theatres. Webster was a poet of Shakspere's own theatre, immediately after his death, and a leading character in 'The Duchess of Malfi' was played by Burbage. Rowley produced some of his best works at the same period. Chapman had not ceased to write. Ford was known as a rising poet. Many others were there of genius and learning who at this particular time were struggling for the honours of the drama, and some with

The worst with this deceased man compared;" and he then proceeds to exhibit the precise character of the popular admiration of Shakspere

"So have I seen, when Cæsar would appear,

And on the stage at half-sword parley were Brutus and Cassius, O, how the audience Were ravish'd! with what wonder they went thence !

When, some new day, they would not brook a line

Of tedious, though well-labour'd, Catiline; Sejanus too was irksome: they prized more 'Honest' Iago, or the jealous Moor. And though the Fox and subtle Alchymist, Long intermitted, could not long be miss'd, Though these have shamed all th' ancients, and might raise

Their author's merit with a crown of bays, Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire Acted, have scarce defray'd the sea-coal fire And door-keepers: when, let but Falstaff

come,

Hal, Poins, the rest,-you scarce shall have a room,

All is so pester'd: Let but Beatrice
And Benedict be seen, lo! in a trice
The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full,
To hear Malvolio, that cross-garter'd gull.
Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught
book,

Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look: