These were Marston and Decker, but as is usual with these sort of caricatures, the originals sometimes mistook their likenesses. They were both town-wits, and cronies, of much the same stamp; by a careful perusal of their works, the editor of Jonson has decided that Marston was Crispinus. With him Jonson had once lived on the most friendly terms: afterwards the great poet quarrelled with both, or they with him.
Dryden, in the preface to his “Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco,” in his quarrel with Settle, which has been sufficiently narrated by Dr. Johnson, felt, when poised against this miserable rival, who had been merely set up by a party to mortify the superior genius, as Jonson had felt when pitched against Crispinus. It is thus that literary history is so interesting to authors. How often, in recording the fates of others, it reflects their own! “I knew indeed (says Dryden) that to write against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben Jonson had done it before to Decker, our author’s predecessor, whom he chastised in his Poetaster, under the character of Crispinus.” Langbaine tells us the subject of the “Satiromastix” of Decker, which I am to notice, was “the witty Ben Jonson;” and with this agree all the notices I have hitherto met with respecting “the Horace Junior” of Decker’s Satiromastix. Mr. Gilchrist has published two curious pamphlets on Jonson; and in the last, p. 56, he has shown that Decker was “the poet-ape of Jonson,” and that he avenged himself under the character of Crispinus in his “Satiromastix;” to which may be added, that the Fannius, in the same satirical comedy, is probably his friend Marston.
Jonson allowed himself great liberty in personal satire, by which, doubtless, he rung an alarum to a waspish host; he lampooned Inigo Jones, the great machinist and architect. The lampoons are printed in Jonson’s works [but not in their entirety. The great architect had sufficient court influence to procure them to be cancelled; and the character of In-and-in Medley, in “The Tale of a Tub,” has come down to us with no other satirical personal traits than a few fantastical expressions]; and I have in MS. an answer by Inigo Jones, in verse, so pitiful that I have not printed it. That he condescended to bring obscure individuals on the stage, appears by his character of Carlo Buffoon, in Every Man out of his Humour. He calls this “a second untruss,” and was censured for having drawn it from personal revenge. The Aubrey Papers, recently published have given us the character of this Carlo Buffoon, “one Charles Chester, a bold impertinent fellow; and they could never be at quiet for him; a perpetual talker, and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him, and seals up his mouth; i.e., his upper and nether beard, with hard wax.”—p. 514. Such a character was no unfitting object for dramatic satire. Mr. Gilchrist’s pamphlets defended Jonson from the frequent accusations raised against him for the freedom of his muse, in such portraits after the life. Yet even our poet himself does not deny their truth, while he excuses himself. In the dedication of “The Fox,” to the two Universities, he boldly asks, “Where have I been particular? Where personal?—Except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, buffoon, creatures (for their insolencies) worthy to be taxed.” The mere list he here furnishes us with would serve to crowd one of the “twopenny audiences” in the small theatres of that day.
Alluding, no doubt, to the price of seats at some of the minor theatres.
It was the fashion with the poets connected with the theatre to wear long hair. Nashe censures Greene “for his fond (foolish) disguising of a Master of Arts (which was Greene’s degree) with ruffianly hair.”—Ed.
Alluding to the trial of the Poetasters, which takes place before Augustus and his poetical jury of Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, &c., in Ben’s play.