his moral purpose in dramatic satire, his scorn of the popularity procured by sacrificing to what he deemed the vicious habits of the stage, are taken into consideration, it may almost be wondered why such singular pleasure should be found in combining to overwhelm him with obloquy.

With respect to the story just quoted, no words, I presume, are needed to prove it an arrant fable. Nor is the variation of it, which is found in Rowe, any thing better. "Shakspeare's acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity. Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players to have it acted; and the person into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, was just upon the point of returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company, when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to engage him to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public favour." Shak. vol. i. p. 12.

* In the first edition of his life of Shakspeare, Rowe inserted the usual charges against Jonson of ingratitude,

That Jonson was "altogether unknown to the world" is a palpable untruth. At this period, (1598) Jonson was as well known as Shakspeare, and perhaps, better. He was poor, indeed, and very poor, and a mere retainer of the theatres; but he was intimately acquainted with Henslowe and Alleyn, and with all the performers at their houses. He was familiar with Drayton and Chapman, and Rowley, and Middleton, and Fletcher;

jealousy, &c. Subsequent inquiry proved the injustice of this attack, and he therefore with a proper sense of what was due to truth, to his own character, and to the public, omitted the whole in the next edition. This exploded falsehood Mr. Malone, with an intrepid defiance of all that Rowe respected, brings insultingly back to him, because, as he says, "he believes it"! In a subsequent page, Mr. Malone notices a paragraph respecting Shakspeare which also appeared in the first edition" but," says he, " as Mr. Rowe suppressed the passage in his second edition, it may be presumed that he found reason to change his opinion." Shak. vol. i. p. 482. It is a pity that this was not thought of in the former instance !

"Lent the 18 of agust 1598, to bye a boocke called Hoate anger sone cowld, of Mr. Porter, Mr. Cheattell and Bengemen Johnson, in full payment the some of vilb." Shak. vol. ii. p. 484.

"Lent unto Robert Shawe, and Jewbey the 23 of Octob. 1598, to lend unto Mr. Chapman one his playboocke and ij actes of a tragedie of Benjemen's plotte, the sum of iijlb." ibid.

he had been writing for three years, in conjunction with Marston, and Decker, and Chettle, and Porter, and Bird, and with most of the poets of the day: he was celebrated by Meares as one of the principal writers of tragedy; and he had long been rising in reputation as a scholar and poet among the most distinguished characters of the age. At this moment he was employed on Every Man out of his Humour, which was acted in 1599, and, in the elegant dedication of that comedy to the "Gentlemen of the Inns of Court," he says, "When I wrote this poem,

✦ Mr. Malone wonders why Meares should say this of Jonson who had only written the Comedy of Every Man in his Humour: and he concludes that tragedy was used for both species of dramatie writing. But Meares expressly distinguishes them, and gives the names of the chief writers in comedy, in the next paragraph. It does not follow, because we have no tragedies extant of this early date, that Jonson had written none. In the page just quoted, mention is made of several tragedies in which our poet was concerned, and in which, probably," having departed with his right," he retained no property. Add to this, that, in the dedication of Catiline to the Earl of Pembroke, he calls it " the best of his tragedies," an expression that he would scarcely have used, had he written none but Sejanus before it.

Rowe knew little of the dramatic history of that age. There was no such thing as writing plays, and then taking them to the players for acceptance. Rowe was thinking of the practice of his own times.

I had friendship with divers in your Societies, who, as they were great names in learning, so were they no less examples of living. Of them and then, that I say no more, it was not despised."-And yet, Jonson was, at this time, altogether unknown to the world"! and offered a virgin comedy (which had already been three years on the stage) to a player in the humble hope that it might be accepted!" and this player discovered that Every Man in his Humour" would not do for the theatre," at a time when Locrine and old Jeronymo, and Titus Andronicus, and the worthless Pericles were daily exhibiting with applause! This is but a small portion of the absurdities which the world is contented to take on trust in its eagerness to criminate Jonson; for this notable tissue of falsehood and folly is introduced solely to prove "the baseness and malignity of our poet's conduct towards Shakspeare."

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5 The critics have already forgotten, that Jonson "had ambled by a waggon and played old Jeronymo," that "he acted and wrote, but both ill, at several theatres," that " he was, himself, the proprietor of a theatre in the Barbican," that he had killed Mr. Marlow the poet," and been "tutor to young Raleigh," long before he produced this comedythese are falsehoods in which they all believe; though, with the same consistent absurdity, they hold that he was at this time, wholly unknown!

It would be an abuse of the reader's patience, to add another word on the imaginary introduction of this play to the stage. It was brought out, as we have seen, at the Rose, a rival theatre with which Shakspeare had not the slightest concern. To be plain-whoever introduced Jonson to the notice of the players, we may be quite sure that it was not Shakspeare, whose merit, in this case, as far as appears, must be confined to procuring for his own theatre (in Black Friars) an improved copy of a popular performance."

Every Man in his Humour, though it dip not, even in its altered state, much improve the finances of the author, yet brought him what he valued more. From this period, he perceptibly grew into acquaintance and familiarity with the first characters among the wise and great.

The play, as we have it in the folio, was acted, Jonson informs us, in 1598. In the prologues to our ancient dramas, care is usually taken to notice the variations which they had undergone, since their first appearance, if at all important The present comedy had been radically changed: the names, the place of action, the circumstances, materially altered since it was first exhibited at the Rose, yet not the slightest allusion is made to it in any part of the prologue; a circumstance sufficient of itself, to prove that it was written and spoken previously to the re-modelling of the play, and, indeed, on its first appearance, for which it was expressly and exclusively calculated.