Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems

Transcribed from the 1892 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
BY BEN JOHNSON.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: LONDON , PARIS & MELBOURNE . 1892.
In this little book we have some of the best thoughts of one of the most vigorous minds that ever added to the strength of English literature. The songs added are a part of what Ben Jonson called his “Underwoods.”
Ben Jonson was of a north-country family from the Annan district that produced Thomas Carlyle. His father was ruined by religious persecution in the reign of Mary, became a preacher in Elizabeth’s reign, and died a month before the poet’s birth in 1573. Ben Jonson, therefore, was about nine years younger than Shakespeare, and he survived Shakespeare about twenty-one years, dying in August, 1637. Next to Shakespeare Ben Jonson was, in his own different way, the man of most mark in the story of the English drama. His mother, left poor, married again. Her second husband was a bricklayer, or small builder, and they lived for a time near Charing Cross in Hartshorn Lane. Ben Jonson was taught at the parish school of St. Martin’s till he was discovered by William Camden, the historian. Camden was then second master in Westminster School. He procured for young Ben an admission into his school, and there laid firm foundations for that scholarship which the poet extended afterwards by private study until his learning grew to be sworn-brother to his wit.
Ben Jonson began the world poor. He worked for a very short time in his step-father’s business. He volunteered to the wars in the Low Countries. He came home again, and joined the players. Before the end of Elizabeth’s reign he had written three or four plays, in which he showed a young and ardent zeal for setting the world to rights, together with that high sense of the poet’s calling which put lasting force into his work. He poured contempt on those who frittered life away. He urged on the poetasters and the mincing courtiers, who set their hearts on top-knots and affected movements of their lips and legs:—