If they have not miscarried: if they have,
All that his faint and faltering tongue doth crave
Is, that you not impute it to his brain--
That’s yet unhurt, although set round with pain.
It cannot long hold out: all strength must yield;
Yet judgment would the last be in the field
With the true poet.”
Charles sent him a hundred pounds: the poet, in the fulness of gratitude, wrote "A petition from poor Ben to the best of monarchs, masters, and men"--full of gaiety and good-humour, yet touching, even in its sparkling wit. The petition prayed that His Majesty would make his father’s “hundred marks a hundred pounds,” alluding to the pension granted by King James. The petition was granted, and in the patent by which the annuity was confirmed, it was said, “especially to encourage Jonson to proceed in those services of his wit and penn, which we have enjoined unto him.”
A tierce of Canary accompanied this act of bounty. It was Jonson’s favourite wine, and the King, from his private bounty, sent it to the sick poet. It was to be a yearly gift, not only to Jonson, but to his successors; and the wine--Spanish Canary--was to be taken from his Majesty’s cellars at Whitehall, out of the stores of wine “remaining therein.” Charles little anticipated that even his love of the drama should be made a cause of reproach to him at his trial. “Had the King but studied Scripture half as much as he studied Ben Jonson or Shakspeare!” was the cry of the Puritans.
Jonson might now have been tolerably happy, had not his former coadjutor, Inigo, still borne him enmity for having, during the preceding year, placed his own name before that of the royal architect. The conduct of Jones in this respect has been placed in its true light by a letter from a Mr. Perry to Sir Thomas Pickering.[[223]] In that letter it is stated that Inigo used his “predominant power” at Court to injure Jonson, then bed-ridden and impoverished, as the poet was. Henceforth, Aurelian Townshend, a poet scarcely known, was employed to invent the masques represented at Court, in conjunction with Inigo Jones.