As the lusty girl of France, the sober German,
The plump Dutch frow, the stately dame of Spain.”
It has been asked whether Massinger and Shakspeare ever met?--whether, as Hartley Coleridge inquires, they ever “took a cup of sack together at the Mitre or the Mermaid;” and whether Massinger was ever umpire or bottle-holder in the “wit-combats” described by Fuller? But upon this, as well as on many other points, there is no light. We know not whom Massinger loved, nor whom he hated; we would fain believe, with Coleridge, that his life was not passed without some true affection--a link between passion and virtue; we would willingly believe that, like Tasso, he loved one above him in rank--or one below him--rather than that he had never loved at all. But his works repel the surmise. True love is vehement--but it is delicate; and it would have elevated his thoughts, and purified his expressions. Massinger may have done justice to the intellect and companionship of his countrywomen, but he had no reverence for the most beautiful part of their nature; and in this, as in other respects, is far below Shakspeare.
The obscurity which overshadowed all Massinger’s career has rendered any communication, as we have seen, between him and Buckingham, doubtful; but it was far otherwise in respect to Ben Jonson--whose works are so replete with allusions to the Villiers family, and to their attributes, amusements, and bounties, that no biography of George Villiers can be complete without a more copious reference to the works of this dramatist than can be conveyed in the passing notices which have been given of his masques, in the course of the preceding narrative.[[197]] Ben Jonson was ten years older than Massinger; and was born in 1574. Whether from his surname, or his Christian name, or from his after-life, it is not easy to say, but one generally looks upon Ben Jonson as a man of low birth. But such was not the fact. His grandfather, a man of some family and fortune, was a gentleman in the service of Henry VIII.; his father was in holy orders, “a grave minister of the Gospel.”[[198]]
The family had originally settled at Annandale, in Scotland; but Ben Jonson was born in Westminster. He had the misfortune to come into the world a month after his father’s death. It was, perhaps, a less adverse circumstance that his mother, two years afterwards, married again. Her views were not exalted, and she took for her second husband--tired, it might seem, of the genteel poverty of the cloth--a master-bricklayer. Not even has Fuller, not even has Gifford, been able to ascertain in what part of the suburb of Westminster “Ben” was born. Fuller, however, consoles us; he could not trace the poet in his cradle, but he could “fetch him,” as he observes, in his “short coats.” About two years old, Ben was discovered--that is to say, the haunts of his infancy were--“a little child in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross.”
This neighbourhood was as poor as that of Westminster Abbey; and the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, which then extended to Whitehall on the south, to Marylebone on the north, to the Savoy on the east, and to Chelsea and Kensington on the west, when first rated to the poor in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, contained only two hundred persons sufficiently wealthy to pay those rates.[[199]] It afterwards became the greatest cure in England, until several of its parishes were separated from the patron saint, St. Martin’s.
Here, however, Ben Jonson was brought up--getting such education as he might from a school in the church of St Martin’s. It is stated, however, by Gifford, to have been a “private school.” He might possibly have been one of the private pupils on a foundation school. Some unknown benefactor, however, removed the future poet from St Martin’s, and placed him at St. Peter’s College, Westminster, which was founded by Queen Elizabeth, in 1660--“a public school for grammar, rhetorick,--poetry (which the maiden Queen was too wise to despise) and for the Latin and Greek languages.”
This removal was the visible cause of all Ben Jonson’s eminence. Camden, the historian, was then one of the masters of that school, from whose ranks issued Cowley, George Herbert, Dryden, Churchill, Cowper, Southey, and many others less celebrated. Ben Jonson always retained an affectionate remembrance of Camden’s instructions:--
“Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe
All that in wits I am, and all I know.”