It was some fifteen years after James’ coming to power that Ben Jonson made his memorable Scotch journey—perhaps out of respect for his forebears, who had gone, two generations before, out of Annandale—perhaps out of some lighter caprice. In any event it would have been only a commonplace foot-journey of a middle-aged man, well known over all Britain as poet and dramatist, with no special record of its own, except for a visit of a fortnight which he made, in the north country, to Drummond of Hawthornden:—this made it memorable. For this Drummond was a note-taker; he was a smooth but not strong poet; was something proud of his Scotch lairdship; lived in a beautiful home seated upon a crag that lifts above the beautiful valley of Eskdale; its picturesque irregularities of tower and turret are still very charming, and Eskdale is charming with its wooded walks, cliffs, pools, and bridges; Roslin Castle is near by, and Roslin Chapel, and so is Dalkeith.
The tourist of our time can pass no pleasanter summer’s day than in loiterings there and thereabout. Echoes of Scott’s border minstrelsy beat from bank to bank. Poet Drummond was proud to have poet Jonson as a guest, and hospitably plied him with “strong waters;” under the effusion Jonson dilated, and Drummond, eagerly attentive, made notes. These jottings down, which were not voluminous, and which were not published until after both parties were in their graves, have been subject of much and bitter discussion, and relate to topics lying widely apart. There is talk of Petrarch and of Queen Elizabeth—of Marston and of Overbury—of Drayton and Donne—of Shakespeare (all too little)—of King James and Petronius—of Jonson’s “shrew of a wife” and of Sir Francis Bacon; and there are more or less authentic stories of Spenser and Raleigh and Sidney. Throughout we find the burly British poet very aggressive, very outspoken, very penetrative and fearless: and we find his Scotch interviewer a little overawed by the other’s audacities, and not a little resentful of his advice to him—to study Quintillian.
An Italian Reporter.
It was in the very year of Ben Jonson’s return from the north that a masque of his—“Pleasure is Reconciled to Virtue”—was represented at Whitehall; and it so happens that we have a lively glimpse of this representation from the note-book of an Italian gentleman who was chaplain to Pietro Contarini, then ambassador from Venice, and who was living at Sir Pindar’s home in Bishopsgate Street (a locality still kept in mind by a little tavern now standing thereabout called “Sir Pindar’s Head”).
This report of Busino, the Italian gentleman of whom I spoke, about his life in London, was buried in the archives of Venice, until unearthed about twenty years since by an exploring Englishman.[5] So it happens, that in this old Venetian document we seem to look directly through those foreign eyes, closed for two hundred and seventy years, upon the play at Whitehall.
“For two hours,” he says, “we were forced to wait in the Venetian box, very hot and very crowded. Then the Lord Chamberlain came up, and wanted to add another, who was a greasy Spaniard.”
This puts Busino in an ill humor (there was no good-will between Italy and Spain in those days); but he admires the women—“all so many queens.”
“There were some very lovely faces, and at every moment my companions kept exclaiming: ‘Oh, do look at this one!’ ‘Oh, do see that other!’ ‘Whose wife is this?’ ‘And that pretty one near her, whose daughter is she?’ [Curious people!] Then the King came in and took the ambassador to his royal box, directly opposite the stage, and the play began at 10 P.M.”
There was Bacchus on a car, followed by Silenus on a barrel, and twelve wicker-flasks representing very lively beer bottles, who performed numerous antics; then a moving Mount Atlas, as big as the stage would permit; scores of classic affectations and astonishing mythologic mechanism; and at last, with a great bevy of pages, twelve cavaliers in masques—the Prince Charles (afterward Charles I.) being chief of the revellers.