"Ben, says Mr. Drummond, was eat up with fancies; he told me, that about the time the Plague raged in London, being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton's house with old Camden, he saw in a vision his eldest son, then a young child, and at London, appear unto him, with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword; at which amazed, he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him; who persuaded him, it was but an apprehension, at which he should not be dejected. In the mean time, there came letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him, he said, of a manly shape, and of that growth he thinks he shall be at the resurrection. He said, he spent many a night in looking at his great toe, about which he had seen Tartars, and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians fight in his imagination.
"That he had a design to write an epic poem, and was to call it Chrologia; or the Worthies of his Country, all in couplets, for he detested all other rhime. He said he had written a discourse on poetry, both against Campion and Daniel, especially the last, where he proves couplets to be the best sort of verses." His censure of the English poets was as follows:
"That Sidney did not keep a decorum, in making every one speak as well as himself. Spenser's stanza pleased him not, nor his matter; the meaning of the allegory of the Fairy Queen he delivered in writing to Sir Walter Raleigh, which was, that by the bleating beast he understood the Puritans; and by the false Duessa, the Queen of Scots. Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, had no children, and was no poet, and that he had wrote the civil wars without having one battle in all his book. That Drayton's Poly-olbion, if he had performed what he promised to write, the Deeds of all the Worthies, had been excellent. That Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas was not well done, and that he wrote his verses before he understood to confer; and those of Fairfax were not good. That the translations of Homer and Virgil in long Alexandrines were but prose. That Sir John Harrington's Ariosto of all translations was the worst. He said Donne was originally a poet; his grandfather on the mother's side, was Heywood the epigramatist. That Donne for not being understood would perish. He affirmed, that Donne wrote all his best pieces before he was twenty years of age. He told Donne, that his Anniversary was prophane, and fall of blasphemies, that if it had been written on the virgin Mary it had been tolerable. To which Donne answered, that he described the idea of a woman but not as she was. That Sir Walter Raleigh esteemed fame more than conscience; the best wits in England were employed in making his history. Ben himself had written a piece to him on the Punic war, which he altered and put in his book. He said there was no such ground for an heroic poem, as King Arthur's fiction, and Sir Philip Sidney had an intention of turning all his Arcadia to the stories of King Arthur. He said Owen was a poor pedantic school-master, sucking his living from the posteriors of little children, and has nothing good in him, his epigrams being bare narrations. He loved Fletcher, Beaumont and Chapman. That Sir William Alexander was not half kind to him, and neglected him because a friend to Drayton. That Sir R. Ayton loved him dearly; he fought several times with Marston, and says that Marston wrote his father in Law's preachings, and his father in law his comedies."
Mr. Drummond has represented the character of our author in a very disadvantageous, though perhaps not in a very unjust light. "That he was a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others, rather chusing to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which was one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the parts which reigned in him; a bragger of some good that he wanted: he thought nothing right, but what either himself or some of his friends had said or done. He was passionately kind and angry; careless either to gain or to keep, vindictive, but if he was well answered, greatly chagrined; interpreting the best sayings and deeds often to the worst. He was for any religion, being versed in all; his inventions were smooth and easy, but above all he excelled in translation. In short, he was in his personal character the very reverse of Shakespear, as surly, ill-natured, proud and disagreeable, as Shakespear with ten times his merit was gentle, good-natured, easy and amiable." He had a very strong memory; for he tells himself in his discoveries that he could in his youth have repeated all that he had ever written, and so continued till he was past forty; and even after that he could have repeated whole books that he had read, and poems of some select friends, which he thought worth remembring.
Mr. Pope remarks, that when Ben got possesion of the stage, he brought critical learning into vogue, and that this was not done without difficulty, which appears from those frequent lessons (and indeed almost declamations) which he was forced to prefix to his first plays, and put into the mouths of his actors, the Grex, Chorus, &c. to remove the prejudices and inform the judgement of his hearers. Till then the English authors had no thoughts of writing upon the model of the ancients: their tragedies were only histories in dialogue, and their comedies followed the thread of any novel, as they found it, no less implicitly than if it had been true history. Mr. Selden in his preface to his titles of honour, stiles Johnson, his beloved friend and a singular poet, and extols his special worth in literature, and his accurate judgment. Mr. Dryden gives him the title of the greatest man of the last age, and observes, that if we look upon him, when he was himself, (for his last plays were but his dotages) he was the most learned and judicious writer any theatre ever had; that he was a most severe judge of himself as well as others; that we cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it; that in his works there is little to be retrenched or altered; but that humour was his chief province.
Ben had certainly no great talent for versification, nor does he seem to have had an extraordinary ear; his verses are often wanting in syllables, and sometimes have too many.
I shall quote some lines of his poem to the memory of Shakespear, before I give a detail of his pieces.
To the memory of my beloved the author Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR, and what he hath left us.
To draw no envy (Shakespear) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame:
While I confess thy writings to be such,
As neither man nor muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:
For silliest ignorance, on these may light,
Which when it sounds at best but ecchoes right;
As blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth; but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
A crafty malice might pretend his praise,
And think to ruin where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous baud or whore,
Should praise a matron: What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
Th' applause, delight, the wonder of the stage!
My Shakespear rise; I will not lodge thee by,
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye,
A little further to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while the book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;
I mean with great but disproportion'd muses:
For if I thought, my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou did'st our Lily outshine,
Or sporting Kid, or Marlow's mighty line.
He then goes on to challenge all antiquity to match Shakespear; but the poetry is so miserable, that the reader will think the above quotation long enough.