JONAH, RABBI (ABULWALID MERWAN IBN JANAH, also R. MARINUS) (c. 990-c.

1050), the greatest Hebrew grammarian and lexicographer of the middle

ages. He was born before the year 990, in Cordova, studied in Lucena,

left his native city in 1012, and, after somewhat protracted wanderings,

settled in Saragossa, where he died before 1050. He was a physician, and

Ibn Abi Usaibia, in his treatise on Arabian doctors, mentions him as the

author of a medical work. But Rabbi Jonah saw the true vocation of his

life in the scientific investigation of the Hebrew language and in a

rational biblical exegesis based upon sound linguistic knowledge. It is

true, he wrote no actual commentary on the Bible, but his philological

works exercised the greatest influence on Judaic exegesis. His first

work--composed, like all the rest, in Arabic--bears the title

_Almustalha_, and forms, as is indicated by the word, a criticism and at

the same time a supplement to the two works of Yehuda 'Hayyuj on the

verbs with weak-sounding and double-sounding roots. These two tractates,

with which 'Hayyuj had laid the foundations of scientific Hebrew

grammar, were recognized by Abulwalid as the basis of his own

grammatical investigations, and Abraham Ibn Daud, when enumerating the

great Spanish Jews in his history, sums up the significance of R. Jonah

in the words: "He completed what 'Hayyuj had begun." The principal work

of R. Jonah is the _Kitab al Tankih_ ("Book of Exact Investigation"),

which consists of two parts, regarded as two distinct books--the _Kitab

al-Luma_ ("Book of Many-coloured Flower-beds") and the _Kitab al-usul_

("Book of Roots"). The former (ed. J. Derenbourg, Paris, 1886) contains

the grammar, the latter (ed. Ad. Neubauer, Oxford, 1875) the lexicon of

the Hebrew language. Both works are also published in the Hebrew

translation of Yehuda Ibn Tibbon (_Sefer Ha-Rikmah_, ed. B. Goldberg,

Frankfurt am Main, 1855; _Sefer Ha-Schoraschim_, ed. W. Bacher, Berlin,

1897). The other writings of Rabbi Jonah, so far as extant, have

appeared in an edition of the Arabic original accompanied by a French

translation (_Opuscules et traités d'Abou'l Walid_, ed. Joseph and

Hartwig Derenbourg, Paris 1880). A few fragments and numerous quotations

in his principal book form our only knowledge of the _Kitab al-Tashwir_

("Book of Refutation") a controversial work in four parts, in which

Rabbi Jonah successfully repelled the attacks of the opponents of his

first treatise. At the head of this opposition stood the famous Samuel

Ibn Nagdela (S. Ha-Nagid) a disciple of 'Hayyuj. The grammatical work of

Rabbi Jonah extended, moreover, to the domain of rhetoric and biblical

hermeneutics, and his lexicon contains many exegetical excursuses. This

lexicon is of especial importance by reason of its ample contribution to

the comparative philology of the Semitic languages--Hebrew and Arabic,

in particular. Abulwalid's works mark the culminating point of Hebrew

scholarship during the middle ages, and he attained a level which was

not surpassed till the modern development of philological science in the

19th century.

See S. Munk, _Notice sur Abou'l Walid_ (Paris, 1851); W. Bacher,

_Leben und Werke des Abulwalid und die Quellen seiner

Schrifterklärung_ (Leipzig, 1885); id., _Aus der Schrifterklärung des

Abulwalid_ (Leipzig, 1889); id., _Die hebr.-arabische

Sprachvergleichung des Abulwalid_ (Vienna, 1884); id., _Die

hebräisch-neuhebräische und hebr.-aramäische Sprachvergleichung des

Abulwalid_ (Vienna, 1885). (W. Ba.)

JONAS, JUSTUS (1493-1555), German Protestant reformer, was born at

Nordhausen in Thuringia, on the 5th of June 1493. His real name was

Jodokus (Jobst) Koch, which he changed according to the common custom of

German scholars in the 16th century, when at the university of Erfurt.

He entered that university in 1506, studied law and the humanities, and

became Master of Arts in 1510. In 1511 he went to Wittenberg, where he

took his bachelor's degree in law. He returned to Erfurt in 1514 or

1515, was ordained priest, and in 1518 was promoted doctor in both

faculties and appointed to a well-endowed canonry in the church of St

Severus, to which a professorship of law was attached. His great

admiration for Erasmus first led him to Greek and biblical studies, and

his election in May 1519 as rector of the university was regarded as a

triumph for the partisans of the New Learning. It was not, however,

until after the Leipzig disputation with Eck that Luther won his

allegiance. He accompanied Luther to Worms in 1521, and there was

appointed by the elector of Saxony professor of canon law at Wittenberg.

During Luther's stay in the Wartburg Jonas was one of the most active of

the Wittenberg reformers. Giving himself up to preaching and polemics,

he aided the Reformation by his gift as a translator, turning Luther's

and Melanchthon's works into German or Latin as the case might be, thus

becoming a sort of double of both. He was busied in conferences and

visitations during the next twenty years, and in diplomatic work with

the princes. In 1541 he began a successful preaching crusade in Halle;

he became superintendent of its churches in 1542. In 1546 he was present

at Luther's deathbed at Eisleben, and preached the funeral sermon; but

in the same year was banished from the duchy by Maurice, duke (later

elector) of Saxony. From that time until his death, Jonas was unable to

secure a satisfactory living. He wandered from place to place preaching,

and finally went to Eisfeld (1553), where he died. He had been married

three times.

See _Briefswechsel des Justus Jonas, gesammelt und bearbeitet von G.

Kawerau_ (2 vols., Halle, 1884-1885); Kawerau's article in

Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopädie_, ed. 3, with bibliography.

JONATHAN (Heb. "Yah [weh] gives"). Of the many Jewish bearers of this

name, three are well known: (1) the grandson of Moses, who was priest at

Dan (Judg. xviii. 30). The reading Manasseh (see R.V. mg.; obtained by

inserting _n_ above the consonantal text in the Hebrew) is apparently

intended to suggest that he was the son of that idolatrous king. (2) The

eldest son of Saul, who, together with his father, freed Israel from the

crushing oppression of the Philistines (1 Sam. xiii. seq.). Both are

lauded in an elegy quoted from the Book of Jashar (2 Sam. i.) for their

warm mutual love, their heroism, and their labours on behalf of the

people. Jonathan's name is most familiar for the firm friendship which

subsisted between him and David (1 Sam. xviii. 1-4; xix. 1-7; xx., xxii.

8; xxiii. 16-18), and when he fell at the battle of Gilboa and left

behind him a young child (1 Sam. xxxi.; 2 Sam. iv. 4), David took charge

of the youth and gave him a place at his court (2 Sam. ix.). See further

DAVID, SAUL. (3) The Maccabee (see JEWS; MACCABEES).

JONCIÈRES, VICTORIN (1839-1903), French composer, was born in Paris on

the 12th of April 1839. He first devoted his attention to painting, but

afterwards took up the serious study of music. He entered the Paris

Conservatoire, but did not remain there long, because he had espoused

too warmly the cause of Wagner against his professor. He composed the

following operas: _Sardanapale_ (1867), _Le Dernier jour de Pompéi_

(1869), _Dimitri_ (1876), _La Reine Berthe_ (1878), _Le Chevalier Jean_

(1885), _Lancelot_ (1900). He also wrote incidental music to _Hamlet_, a

symphony, and other works. Joncières' admiration for Wagner asserted

itself rather in a musical than a dramatic sense. The influence of the

German master's earlier style can be traced in his operas. Joncières,

however, adhered to the recognized forms of the French opera and did not

model his works according to the later developments of the Wagnerian

"music drama." He may indeed be said to have been at least as much

influenced by Gounod as by Wagner. From 1871 he was musical critic for

_La Liberté_. He died on the 26th of October 1903.

JONES, ALFRED GILPIN (1824-1906), Canadian politician, was born at

Weymouth, Nova Scotia, in September 1824, the son of Guy C. Jones of

Yarmouth, and grandson of a United Empire Loyalist. In 1865 he opposed

the federation of the British American provinces, and, in his anger at

the refusal of the British government to repeal such portions of the

British North America Act as referred to Nova Scotia, made a speech

which won for him the name of Haul-down-the-flag Jones. He was for many

years a member of the Federal Parliament, and for a few months in 1878

was minister of militia under the Liberal government. Largely owing to

his influence the Liberal party refused in 1878 to abandon its Free

Trade policy, an obstinacy which led to its defeat in that year. In 1900

he was appointed lieutenant-governor of his native province, and held

this position till his death on the 15th of March 1906.

JONES, SIR ALFRED LEWIS (1845-1909), British shipowner, was born in

Carmarthenshire, in 1845. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to the

managers of the African Steamship Company at Liverpool, making several

voyages to the west coast of Africa. By the time he was twenty-six he

had risen to be manager of the business. Not finding sufficient scope in

this post, he borrowed money to purchase two or three small sailing

vessels, and started in the shipping business on his own account. The

venture succeeded, and he made additions to his fleet, but after a few

years' successful trading, realizing that sailing ships were about to be

superseded by steamers, he sold his vessels. About this time (1891)

Messrs. Elder, Dempster & Co., who purchased the business of the old

African Steamship Company, offered him a managerial post. This offer he

accepted, subject to Messrs. Elder, Dempster selling him a number of

their shares, and he thus acquired an interest in the business, and

subsequently, by further share purchases, its control. See further

STEAMSHIP LINES. In 1901 he was knighted. Sir Alfred Jones took a keen

interest in imperial affairs, and was instrumental in founding the

Liverpool school of tropical medicine. He acquired considerable

territorial interests in West Africa, and financial interests in many of

the companies engaged in opening up and developing that part of the

world. He also took the leading part in opening up a new line of

communication with the West Indies, and stimulating the Jamaica fruit

trade and tourist traffic. He died on the 13th of December 1909, leaving

large charitable bequests.

JONES, EBENEZER (1820-1860), British poet, was born in Islington,

London, on the 20th of January 1820. His father, who was of Welsh

extraction, was a strict Calvinist, and Ebenezer was educated at a dull,

middle-class school. The death of his father obliged him to become a

clerk in the office of a tea merchant. Shelley and Carlyle were his

spiritual masters, and he spent all his spare time in reading and

writing; but he developed an exaggerated style of thought and

expression, due partly to a defective education. The unkind reception of

his _Studies of Sensation and Event_ (1843) seemed to be the last drop

in his bitter cup of life. Baffled and disheartened, he destroyed his

manuscripts. He earned his living as an accountant and by literary hack

work, and it was not until he was rapidly dying of consumption that he

wrote his three remarkable poems, "Winter Hymn to the Snow," "When the

World is Burning" and "To Death." The fame that these and some of the

pieces in the early volume brought to their author came too late. He

died on the 14th of September 1860.

It was not till 1870 that Dante Gabriel Rossetti praised his work in

_Notes and Queries_. Rossetti's example was followed by W. B. Scott,

Theodore Watts-Dunton, who contributed some papers on the subject to

the _Athenaeum_ (September and October 1878), and R. H. Sheppard, who

edited _Studies of Sensation and Event_ in 1879.

JONES, ERNEST CHARLES (1819-1869), English Chartist, was born at Berlin

on the 25th of January 1819, and educated in Germany. His father, an

officer in the British army, was then equerry to the duke of

Cumberland--afterwards king of Hanover. In 1838 Jones came to England,

and in 1841 published anonymously _The Wood Spirit_, a romantic novel.

This was followed by some songs and poems. In 1844 he was called to the

bar at the Middle Temple. In 1845 he joined the Chartist agitation,

quickly becoming its most prominent figure, and vigorously carrying on

the party's campaign on the platform and in the press. His speeches, in

which he openly advocated physical force, led to his prosecution, and he

was sentenced in 1848 to two years' imprisonment for sedition. While in

prison he wrote, it is said in his own blood on leaves torn from a

prayer-book, _The Revolt of Hindostan_, an epic poem. On his release he

again became the leader of what remained of the Chartist party and

editor of its organ. But he was almost its only public speaker; he was

out of sympathy with the other leading Chartists, and soon joined the

advanced Radical party. Thenceforward he devoted himself to law and

literature, writing novels, tales and political songs. He made several

unsuccessful attempts to enter parliament, and was about to contest

Manchester, with the certainty of being returned, when he died there on

the 26th of January 1869. He is believed to have sacrificed a

considerable fortune rather than abandon his Chartist principles. His

wife was Jane Atherley; and his son, Llewellyn Atherley-Jones, K.C. (b.

1851), became a well-known barrister and Liberal member of parliament.

JONES, HENRY (1831-1899), English author, well known as a writer on

whist under his _nom de guerre_ "Cavendish," was born in London on the

2nd of November 1831, being the eldest son of Henry D. Jones, a medical

practitioner. He adopted his father's profession, established himself in

1852 and continued for sixteen years in practice in London. The father

was a keen devotee of whist, and under his eye the son became early in

life a good player. He was a member of several whist clubs, among them

the "Cavendish," and in 1862 appeared his _Principles of Whist, stated

and explained by_ "_Cavendish_," which was destined to become the

leading authority as to the practice of the game. This work was followed

by treatises on the laws of piquet and écarté. "Cavendish" also wrote on

billiards, lawn tennis and croquet, and contributed articles on whist

and other games to the ninth edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

"'Cavendish' was not a law-maker, but he codified and commented upon the

laws which had been made during many generations of card-playing." One

of the most noteworthy points in his character was the manner in which

he kept himself abreast of improvements in his favourite game. He died

on the 10th of February 1899.

JONES, HENRY ARTHUR (1851- ), English dramatist, was born at

Grandborough, Buckinghamshire, on the 28th of September 1851 the son of

Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare

time being given to literary pursuits. He was twenty-seven before his

first piece, _Only Round the Corner_, was produced at the Exeter

Theatre, but within four years of his début as a dramatist he scored a

great success by _The Silver King_ (November 1882), written with Henry

Herman, a melodrama produced by Wilson Barrett at the Princess's

Theatre. Its financial success enabled the author to write a play "to

please himself." _Saints and Sinners_ (1884), which ran for two hundred

nights, placed on the stage a picture of middle-class life and religion

in a country town, and the introduction of the religious element raised

considerable outcry. The author defended himself in an article published

in the _Nineteenth Century_ (January 1885), taking for his

starting-point a quotation from the preface to Molière's _Tartuffe_. His

next serious piece was _The Middleman_ (1889), followed by _Judah_

(1890), both powerful plays, which established his reputation. Later

plays were _The Dancing Girl_ (1891), _The Crusaders_ (1891), _The

Bauble Shop_ (1893), _The Tempter_ (1893), _The Masqueraders_ (1894),

_The Case of Rebellious Susan_ (1894), _The Triumph of the Philistines_

(1895), _Michael and his Lost Angel_ (1896), _The Rogue's Comedy_

(1896), _The Physician_ (1897), _The Liars_ (1897), _Carnac Sahib_

(1899), _The Manoeuvres of Jane_ (1899), _The Lackeys' Carnival_ (1900),

_Mrs Dane's Defence_ (1900), _The Princess's Nose_ (1902), _Chance the

Idol_ (1902), _Whitewashing Julia_ (1903), _Joseph Entangled_ (1904),

_The Chevalier_ (1904), &c. A uniform edition of his plays began to be

issued in 1891; and his own views of dramatic art have been expressed

from time to time in lectures and essays, collected in 1895 as _The

Renascence of the English Drama_.

JONES, INIGO (1573-1651), English architect, sometimes called the

"English Palladio," the son of a cloth-worker, was born in London on the

15th of July 1573. It is stated that he was apprenticed to a joiner, but

at any rate his talent for drawing attracted the attention of Thomas

Howard, earl of Arundel (some say William, 3rd earl of Pembroke),

through whose help he went to study landscape-painting in Italy. His

preference soon transferred itself to architecture, and, following

chiefly the style of Palladio, he acquired at Venice such a reputation

that in 1604 he was invited by Christian IV. to Denmark, where he is

said to have designed the two great royal palaces of Rosenborg and

Frederiksborg. In the following year he accompanied Anne of Denmark to

the court of James I. of England, where, besides being appointed

architect to the queen and Prince Henry, he was employed in supplying

the designs and decorations of the court masques. After a second visit

to Italy in 1612, Jones was appointed surveyor-general of royal

buildings by James I., and was engaged to prepare designs for a new

palace at Whitehall. In 1620 he was employed by the king to investigate

the origin of Stonehenge, when he came to the absurd conclusion that it

had been a Roman temple. Shortly afterwards he was appointed one of the

commissioners for the repair of St Paul's, but the work was not begun

till 1633. Under Charles I. he enjoyed the same offices as under his

predecessor, and in the capacity of designer of the masques he came into

collision with Ben Jonson, who frequently made him the butt of his

satire. After the Civil War Jones was forced to pay heavy fines as a

courtier and malignant. He died in poverty on the 5th of July 1651.

A list of the principal buildings designed by Jones is given in

Dallaway's edition of Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_, and for an

estimate of him as an architect see Fergusson's _History of Modern

Architecture_. _The Architecture of Palladio_, in 4 books, by Inigo

Jones, appeared in 1715; _The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain,

called Stonehenge, restored by Inigo Jones_, in 1655 (ed. with memoir,

1725); the _Designs of Inigo Jones_, by W. Kent, in 1727; and _The

Designs of Inigo Jones_, by J. Ware, in 1757. See also G. H. Birch,

_London Churches of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries_ (1896); W. J.

Loftie, _Inigo Jones and Wren, or the Rise and Decline of Modern

Architecture in England_ (1893).

JONES, JOHN (c. 1800-1882), English art collector, was born about 1800

in or near London. He was apprenticed to a tailor, and about 1825 opened

a shop of his own in the west-end of London. In 1850 he was able to

retire from active management with a large fortune. When quite a young

man he had begun to collect articles of _vertu_. The rooms over his shop

in which he at first lived were soon crowded, and even the bedrooms of

his new house in Piccadilly were filled with art treasures. His

collection was valued at approximately £250,000. Jones died in London on

the 7th of January 1882, leaving his pictures, furniture and objects of

art to the South Kensington Museum.

A _Catalogue of the Jones Bequest_ was published by the Museum in

1882, and a _Handbook_, with memoir, in 1883.

JONES, JOHN PAUL (1747-1792), American naval officer, was born on the

6th of July 1747, on the estate of Arbigland, in the parish of Kirkbean

and the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, Scotland. His father, John Paul, was

gardener to Robert Craik, a member of parliament; and his mother, Jean

Macduff, was the daughter of a Highlander. Young John Paul, at the age

of twelve, became shipmaster's apprentice to a merchant of Whitehaven,

named Younger. At seventeen he shipped as second mate and in the next

year as first mate in one of his master's vessels; on being released

from his indentures, he acquired an interest in a ship, and as first

mate made two voyages between Jamaica and the Guinea coast, trading in

slaves. Becoming dissatisfied with this kind of employment, he sold his

share in the ship and embarked for England. During the voyage both the

captain and the mate died of fever, and John Paul took command and

brought the ship safely to port. The owners gave him and the crew 10% of

the cargo; after 1768, as captain of one of their merchantmen, John Paul

made several voyages to America; but for unknown reasons he suddenly

gave up his command to live in America in poverty and obscurity until

1775. During this period he assumed the name of Jones, apparently out of

regard for Willie Jones, a wealthy planter and prominent political

leader of North Carolina, who had befriended John Paul in his days of

poverty.

When war broke out between England and her American colonies, John Paul

Jones was commissioned as a first lieutenant by the Continental

Congress, on the 22nd of December 1775. In 1776 he participated in the

unsuccessful attack on the island of New Providence, and as commander

first of the "Providence" and then of the "Alfred" he cruised between

Bermuda and Nova Scotia, inflicting much damage on British shipping and

fisheries. On the 10th of October 1776 he was promoted captain. On the

1st of November 1777 he sailed in the sloop-of-war "Ranger" for France

with despatches for the American commissioners, announcing the surrender

of Burgoyne and asking that Jones should be supplied with a swift

frigate for harassing the coasts of England. Failing to secure a

frigate, Jones sailed from Brest in the "Ranger" on the 10th of April

1778. A few days later he surprised the garrisons of the two forts

commanding the harbour of Whitehaven, a port with which he was familiar

from boyhood, spiked the guns and made an unsuccessful attempt to fire

the shipping. Four days thereafter he encountered the British

sloop-of-war "Drake," a vessel slightly superior to his in fighting

capacity, and after an hour's engagement the British ship struck her

colours and was taken to Brest. By this exploit Jones became a great

hero in the eyes of the French, just beginning a war with Great Britain.

With the rank of commodore he was now put at the head of a squadron of

five ships. His flagship, the "Duras," a re-fitted East Indiaman, was

re-named by him the "Bonhomme Richard," as a compliment to Benjamin

Franklin, whose _Poor Richard's Almanac_ was then popular in France. On

the 14th of August the five ships sailed from L'Orient, accompanied by

two French privateers. Several of the French commanders under Jones

proved insubordinate, and the privateers and three of the men-of-war

soon deserted him. With the others, however, he continued to take

prizes, and even planned to attack the port of Leith, but was prevented

by unfavourable winds. On the evening of the 23rd of September the three

men-of-war sighted two British men-of-war, the "Serapis" and the

"Countess of Scarbrough," off Flamborough Head. The "Alliance,"

commanded by Captain Landais, made off, leaving the "Bonhomme Richard"

and the "Pallas" to engage the Englishmen. Jones engaged the greatly

superior "Serapis," and after a desperate battle of three and a half

hours compelled the English ship to surrender. The "Countess of

Scarbrough" had meanwhile struck to the more formidable "Pallas." Jones

transferred his men and supplies to the "Serapis," and the next day the

"Bonhomme Richard" sank.

During the following year Jones spent much of his time in Paris. Louis

XVI. gave him a gold-hilted sword and the royal order of military merit,

and made him chevalier of France. Early in 1781 Jones returned to

America to secure a new command. Congress offered him the command of the

"America," a frigate then building, but the vessel was shortly

afterwards given to France. In November 1783 he was sent to Paris as

agent for the prizes captured in European waters under his own command,

and although he gave much attention to social affairs and engaged in

several private business enterprises, he was very successful in

collecting the prize money. Early in 1787 he returned to America and

received a gold medal from Congress in recognition of his services.

In 1788 Jones entered the service of the empress Catherine of Russia,

avowing his intention, however, "to preserve the condition of an

American citizen and officer." As a rear-admiral he took part in the

naval campaign in the Liman (an arm of the Black Sea, into which flow

the Bug and Dnieper rivers) against the Turks, but the jealous intrigues

of Russian officers caused him to be recalled to St Petersburg for the

pretended purpose of being transferred to a command in the North Sea.

Here he was compelled to remain in idleness, while rival officers

plotted against him and even maliciously assailed his private character.

In August 1789 he left St Petersburg a bitterly disappointed man. In May

1790 he arrived in Paris, where he remained in retirement during the

rest of his life, although he made several efforts to re-enter the

Russian service.

Undue exertion and exposure had wasted his strength before he reached

the prime of life, and after an illness, in which he was attended by the

queen's physician, he died on the 18th of July 1792. His body was

interred in the St Louis cemetery for foreign Protestants, the funeral

expenses being paid from the private purse of Pierrot François

Simmoneau, the king's commissary. In the confusion during the following

years the burial place of Paul Jones was forgotten; but in June 1899

General Horace Porter, American ambassador to France, began a systematic

search for the body, and after excavations on the site of the old

Protestant cemetery, now covered with houses, a leaden coffin was

discovered, which contained the body in a remarkable state of

preservation. In July 1905 a fleet of American war-ships carried the

body to Annapolis, where it now rests in one of the buildings of the

naval academy.

Jones was a seaman of great bravery and technical ability, but

over-jealous of his reputation and inclined to be querulous and

boastful. The charges by the English that he was a pirate were

particularly galling to him. Although of unprepossessing appearance, 5

ft. 7 in. in height and slightly round-shouldered, he was noted for his

pleasant manners and was welcomed into the most brilliant courts of

Europe.

Romance has played with the memory of Paul Jones to such an extent

that few accounts of his life are correct. Of the early biographies

the best are Sherburne's (London, 1825), chiefly a collection of

Jones's correspondence; the _Janette-Taylor Collection_ (New York,

1830), containing numerous extracts from his letters and journals; and

the life by A. S. MacKenzie (2 vols., New York, 1846). In recent years

a number of new biographies have appeared, including A. C. Buell's (2

vols., 1900), the trustworthiness of which has been discredited, and

Hutchins Hapgood's in the Riverside Biographical Series (1901). The

life by Cyrus Townsend Brady in the "Great Commanders Series" (1900)

is perhaps the best.

JONES, MICHAEL (d. 1649), British soldier. His father was bishop of

Killaloe in Ireland. At the outbreak of the English Civil War he was

studying law, but he soon took service in the army of the king in

Ireland. He was present with Ormonde's army in many of the expeditions

and combats of the devastating Irish War, but upon the conclusion of the

"Irish Cessation" (see ORMONDE, JAMES BUTLER, DUKE OF) he resolved to

leave the king's service for that of the parliament, in which he soon

distinguished himself by his activity and skill. In the Welsh War, and

especially at the last great victory at Rowton Heath, Jones's cavalry

was always far superior to that of the Royalists, and in reward for his

services he was made governor of Chester when that city fell into the

hands of the parliament. Soon afterwards Jones was sent again to the

Irish War, in the capacity of commander-in-chief. He began his work by

reorganizing the army in the neighbourhood of Dublin, and for some time

he carried on a desultory war of posts, necessarily more concerned for

his supplies than for a victory. But at Dungan Hill he obtained a

complete success over the army of General Preston, and though the war

was by no means ended, Jones was able to hold a large tract of country

for the parliament. But on the execution of Charles I., the war entered

upon a new phase, and garrison after garrison fell to Ormonde's

Royalists. Soon Jones was shut up in Dublin, and then followed a siege

which was regarded both in England and Ireland with the most intense

interest. On the 2nd of August 1649 the Dublin garrison relieved itself

by the brilliant action of Rathmines, in which the royal army was

practically destroyed. A fortnight later Cromwell landed with heavy

reinforcements from England. Jones, his lieutenant-general, took the

field; but on the 19th of December 1649 he died, worn out by the

fatigues of the campaign.

JONES, OWEN (1741-1814), Welsh antiquary, was born on the 3rd of

September 1741 at Llanvihangel Glyn y Myvyr in Denbighshire. In 1760 he

entered the service of a London firm of furriers, to whose business he

ultimately succeeded. He had from boyhood studied Welsh literature, and

later devoted time and money to its collection. Assisted by Edward

William of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and Dr. Owen Pughe, he published,

at a cost of more than £1000, the well-known _Myvyrian Archaiology of

Wales_ (1801-1807), a collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the

14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are

deposited in the British Museum; the material not utilized in the

_Myvyrian Archaiology_ amounts to 100 volumes, containing 16,000 pages

of verse and 15,300 pages of prose. Jones was the founder of the

Gwyneddigion Society (1772) in London for the encouragement of Welsh

studies and literature; and he began in 1805 a miscellany--the

_Greal_--of which only one volume appeared. An edition of the poems of

_Davydd ab Gwilym_ was also issued at his expense. He died on the 26th

of December 1814 at his business premises in Upper Thames Street,

London.

JONES, OWEN (1809-1874), British architect and art decorator, son of

Owen Jones, a Welsh antiquary, was born in London. After an

apprenticeship of six years in an architect's office, he travelled for

four years in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Spain, making a special

study of the Alhambra. On his return to England in 1836 he busied

himself in his professional work. His forte was interior decoration, for

which his formula was: "Form without colour is like a body without a

soul." He was one of the superintendents of works for the Exhibition of

1851 and was responsible for the general decoration of the Crystal

Palace at Sydenham. Along with Digby Wyatt, Jones collected the casts of

works of art with which the palace was filled. He died in London on the

19th of April 1874.

Owen Jones was described in the _Builder_ for 1874 as "the most potent

apostle of colour that architectural England has had in these days."

His range of activity is to be traced in his works: _Plans, Elevations

and Details of the Alhambra_ (1835-1845), in which he was assisted by

MM. Goury and Gayangos; _Designs for Mosaic and Tesselated Pavements_

(1842); _Polychromatic Ornament of Italy_ (1845); _An Attempt to

Define the Principles which regulate the Employment of Colour in

Decorative Arts_ (1852); _Handbook to the Alhambra Court_ (1854);

_Grammar of Ornament_ (1856), a very important work; _One Thousand and

One Initial Letters_ (1864); _Seven Hundred and Two Monograms_ (1864);

and _Examples of Chinese Ornament_ (1867).

JONES, RICHARD (1790-1855), English economist, was born at Tunbridge

Wells. The son of a solicitor, he was intended for the legal profession,

and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. Owing to ill-health, he

abandoned the idea of the law and took orders soon after leaving

Cambridge. For several years he held curacies in Sussex and Kent. In

1833 he was appointed professor of political economy at King's College,

London, resigning this post in 1835 to succeed T. R. Malthus in the

chair of political economy and history at the East India College at

Haileybury. He took an active part in the commutation of tithes in 1836

and showed great ability as a tithe commissioner, an office which he

filled till 1851. He was for some time, also, a charity commissioner. He

died at Haileybury, shortly after he had resigned his professorship, on

the 26th of January 1855. In 1831 Jones published his _Essay on the

Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation_, his most

important work. In it he showed himself a thorough-going critic of the

Ricardian system.

Jones's method is inductive; his conclusions are founded on a wide

observation of contemporary facts, aided by the study of history. The

world he professed to study was not an imaginary world, inhabited by

abstract "economic men," but the real world with the different forms

which the ownership and cultivation of land, and, in general, the

conditions of production and distribution, assume at different times

and places. His recognition of such different systems of life in

communities occupying different stages in the progress of civilization

led to his proposal of what he called a "political economy of

nations." This was a protest against the practice of taking the

exceptional state of facts which exists, and is indeed only partially

realized, in a small corner of our planet as representing the uniform

type of human societies, and ignoring the effects of the early history

and special development of each community as influencing its economic

phenomena. Jones is remarkable for his freedom from exaggeration and

one-sided statement; thus, whilst holding Malthus in, perhaps, undue

esteem, he declines to accept the proposition that an increase of the

means of subsistence is necessarily followed by an increase of

population; and he maintains what is undoubtedly true, that with the

growth of population, in all well-governed and prosperous states, the

command over food, instead of diminishing, increases.

A collected edition of Jones's works, with a preface by W. Whewell,

was published in 1859.

JONES, THOMAS RUPERT (1819- ), English geologist and palaeontologist,

was born in London on the 1st of October 1819. While at a private school

at Ilminster, his attention was attracted to geology by the fossils that

are so abundant in the Lias quarries. In 1835 he was apprenticed to a

surgeon at Taunton, and he completed his apprenticeship in 1842 at

Newbury in Berkshire. He was then engaged in practice mainly in London,

till in 1849 he was appointed assistant secretary to the Geological

Society of London. In 1862 he was made professor of geology at the Royal

Military College, Sandhurst. Having devoted his especial attention to

fossil microzoa, he now became the highest authority in England on the

Foraminifera and Entomostraca. He edited the 2nd edition of Mantell's

_Medals of Creation_ (1854), the 3rd edition of Mantell's _Geological

Excursions round the Isle of Wight_ (1854), and the 7th edition of

Mantell's _Wonders of Geology_ (1857); he also edited the 2nd edition of

Dixon's _Geology of Sussex_ (1878). He was elected F.R.S. in 1872 and

was awarded the Lyell medal by the Geological Society in 1890. For many

years he was specially interested in the geology of South Africa.

His publications include _A Monograph of the Entomostraca of the

Cretaceous Formation of England_ (Palaeontograph. Soc., 1849); _A

Monograph of the Tertiary Entomostraca of England_ (ibid. 1857); _A

Monograph of the Fossil Estheriae_ (ibid. 1862); _A Monograph of the

Foraminifera of the Crag_ (ibid. 1866, &c., with H. B. Brady); and

numerous articles in the _Annals and Magazine of Natural History_, the

_Geological Magazine_, the _Proceedings of the Geologists'

Association_, and other journals.

JONES, WILLIAM (1726-1800), English divine, was born at Lowick, in

Northamptonshire on the 30th of July 1726. He was descended from an old

Welsh family and one of his progenitors was Colonel John Jones,

brother-in-law of Cromwell. He was educated at Charterhouse School, and

at University College, Oxford. There a kindred taste for music, as well

as a similarity in regard to other points of character, led to his close

intimacy with George Horne (q.v.), afterwards bishop of Norwich, whom he

induced to study Hutchinsonian doctrines. After obtaining his bachelor's

degree in 1749, Jones held various preferments. In 1777 he obtained the

perpetual curacy of Nayland, Suffolk, and on Horne's appointment to

Norwich became his chaplain, afterwards writing his life. His vicarage

became the centre of a High Church coterie, and Jones himself was a link

between the non-jurors and the Oxford movement. He could write

intelligibly on abstruse topics. He died on the 6th of January 1800.

In 1756 Jones published his tractate _On the Catholic Doctrine of the

Trinity_, a statement of the doctrine from the Hutchinsonian point of

view, with a succinct and able summary of biblical proofs. This was

followed in 1762 by an _Essay on the First Principles of Natural

Philosophy_, in which he maintained the theories of Hutchinson in

opposition to those of Sir Isaac Newton, and in 1781 he dealt with the

same subject in _Physiological Disquisitions_. Jones was also the

originator of the _British Critic_ (May 1793). His collected works,

with a life by William Stevens, appeared in 1801, in 12 vols., and

were condensed into 6 vols. in 1810. A life of Jones, forming pt. 5 of

the _Biography of English Divines_, was published in 1849.

JONES, SIR WILLIAM (1746-1794), British Orientalist and jurist, was born

in London on the 28th of September 1746. He distinguished himself at

Harrow, and during his last three years there applied himself to the

study of Oriental languages, teaching himself the rudiments of Arabic,

and reading Hebrew with tolerable ease. In his vacations he improved his

acquaintance with French and Italian. In 1764 Jones entered University

College, Oxford, where he continued to study Oriental literature, and

perfected himself in Persian and Arabic by the aid of a Syrian Mirza,

whom he had discovered and brought from London. He added to his

knowledge of Hebrew and made considerable progress in Italian, Spanish

and Portuguese. He began the study of Chinese, and made himself master

of the radical characters of that language. During five years he partly

supported himself by acting as tutor to Lord Althorpe, afterwards the

second Earl Spencer, and in 1766 he obtained a fellowship. Though but

twenty-two years of age, he was already becoming famous as an

Orientalist, and when Christian VII. of Denmark visited England in 1768,

bringing with him a life of Nadir Shah in Persian, Jones was requested

to translate the MS. into French. The translation appeared in 1770, with

an introduction containing a description of Asia and a short history of

Persia. This was followed in the same year by a _Traité sur la poésie

orientale_, and by a French metrical translation of the odes of Hafiz.

In 1771 he published a _Dissertation sur la littérature orientale_,

defending Oxford scholars against the criticisms made by Anquetil Du

Perron in the introduction to his translation of the _Zend-Avesta_. In

the same year appeared his _Grammar of the Persian Language_. In 1772

Jones published a volume of _Poems, Chiefly Translations from Asiatick

Languages, together with Two Essays on the Poetry of Eastern Nations and

on the Arts commonly called Imitative_, and in 1774 a treatise entitled

_Poeseos Asiaticae commentatorium libri sex_, which definitely confirmed

his authority as an Oriental scholar.

Finding that some more financially profitable occupation was necessary,

Jones devoted himself with his customary energy to the study of the law,

and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1774. He studied not

merely the technicalities, but the philosophy, of law, and within two

years had acquired so considerable a reputation that he was in 1776

appointed commissioner in bankruptcy. Besides writing an _Essay on the

Law of Bailments_, which enjoyed a high reputation both in England and

America, Jones translated, in 1778, the speeches of Isaeus on the

Athenian right of inheritance. In 1780 he was a parliamentary candidate

for the university of Oxford, but withdrew from the contest before the

day of election, as he found he had no chance of success owing to his

Liberal opinions, especially on the questions of the American War and of

the slave trade.

In 1783 was published his translation of the seven ancient Arabic poems

called _Moallakât_. In the same year he was appointed judge of the

supreme court of judicature at Calcutta, then "Fort William," and was

knighted. Shortly after his arrival in India he founded, in January

1784, the Bengal Asiatic Society, of which he remained president till

his death. Convinced as he was of the great importance of consulting the

Hindu legal authorities in the original, he at once began the study of

Sanskrit, and undertook, in 1788, the colossal task of compiling a

digest of Hindu and Mahommedan law. This he did not live to complete,

but he published the admirable beginnings of it in his _Institutes of

Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Manu_ (1794); his _Mohammedan Law of

Succession to Property of Intestates_; and his _Mohammedan Law of

Inheritance_ (1792). In 1789 Jones had completed his translation of

Kalidasa's most famous drama, _Sakuntala_. He also translated the

collection of fables entitled the _Hitopadesa_, the _Gitagovinda_, and

considerable portions of the Vedas, besides editing the text of

Kalidasa's poem _Ritusamhara_. He was a large contributor also to his

society's volumes of _Asiatic Researches_.

His unremitting literary labours, together with his heavy judicial work,

told on his health after a ten years' residence in Bengal; and he died

at Calcutta on the 27th of April 1794. An extraordinary linguist,

knowing thirteen languages well, and having a moderate acquaintance with

twenty-eight others, his range of knowledge was enormous. As a pioneer

in Sanskrit learning and as founder of the Asiatic Society he rendered

the language and literature of the ancient Hindus accessible to European

scholars, and thus became the indirect cause of later achievements in

the field of Sanskrit and comparative philology. A monument to his

memory was erected by the East India Company in St Paul's, London, and a

statue in Calcutta.

See the _Memoir_ (1804) by Lord Teignmouth, published in the collected

edition of Sir W. Jones's works.

JÖNKÖPING, a town of Sweden, capital of the district (_län_) of

Jönköping, 230 m. S.W. of Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900), 23,143. It

occupies a beautiful but somewhat unhealthy position between the

southern end of Lake Vetter and two small lakes, Roksjö and Munksjö. Two

quarters of the town, Svenska Mad and Tyska Mad, recall the time when

the site was a marsh (_mad_), and buildings were constructed on piles.

The residential suburbs among the hills, especially Dunkehallar, are

attractive and healthier than the town. The church of St Kristine (c.

1650), the court-houses, town-hall, government buildings, and high

school, are noteworthy. The town is one of the leading industrial

centres in Sweden. The match manufacture, for which it is principally

famous, was founded by Johan Edvard Lundström in 1844. The well-known

brand of _säkerhets-tändstickor_ (safety-matches) was introduced later.

There are also textile manufactures, paper-factories (on Munksjö), and

mechanical works. There is a large fire-arms factory at Huskvarna, 5 m.

E. Water-power is supplied here by a fine series of falls. The hill

Taberg, 8 m. S., is a mass of magnetic iron ore, rising 410 ft. above

the surrounding country, 2950 ft. long and 1475 ft. broad, but the

percentage of iron is low as compared with the rich ores of other parts,

and the deposit is little worked. Jönköping is the seat of one of the

three courts of appeal in Sweden.

Jönköping received the earliest extant Swedish charter in 1284 from

Magnus I. The castle is mentioned in 1263, when Waldemar Birgersson

married the Danish princess Sophia. Jönköping was afterwards the scene

of many events of moment in Scandinavian history--of parliaments in

1357, 1439, and 1599; of the meeting of the Danish and Swedish

plenipotentiaries in 1448; and of the death of Sten Sture, the elder, in

1503. In 1612 Gustavus Adolphus caused the inhabitants to destroy their

town lest it should fall into the hands of the Danes; but it was rebuilt

soon after, and in 1620 received special privileges from the king. At

this period a textile industry was started here, the first of any

importance in Sweden. It was from the Dutch and German workmen,

introduced at this time, that the quarter Tyska Mad received its name.

On the 10th of December 1809 the plenipotentiaries of Sweden and Denmark

concluded peace in the town.

JONSON, BEN[1] (1573-1637), English dramatist, was born, probably in

Westminster, in the beginning of the year 1573 (or possibly, if he

reckoned by the unadopted modern calendar, 1572; see Castelain, p. 4,

note 1). By the poet's account his grandfather had been a gentleman who

"came from" Carlisle, and originally, the grandson thought, from

Annandale. His arms, "three spindles or rhombi," are the family device

of the Johnstones of Annandale, a fact which confirms his assertion of

Border descent. Ben Jonson further related that he was born a month

after the death of his father, who, after suffering in estate and person

under Queen Mary, had in the end "turned minister." Two years after the

birth of her son the widow married again; she may be supposed to have

loved him in a passionate way peculiar to herself, since on one occasion

we find her revealing an almost ferocious determination to save his

honour at the cost of both his life and her own. Jonson's stepfather was

a master bricklayer, living in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross, who

provided his stepson with the foundations of a good education. After

attending a private school in St Martin's Lane, the boy was sent to

Westminster School at the expense, it is said, of William Camden.

Jonson's gratitude for an education to which in truth he owed an almost

inestimable debt concentrated itself upon the "most reverend head" of

his benefactor, then second and afterwards head master of the famous

school, and the firm friend of his pupil in later life.

After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on

unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to Cambridge--according to

Fuller, to St John's College. (For reasons in support of the tradition

that he was a member of St John's College, see J. B. Mullinger, the

_Eagle_, No. xxv.) He says, however, himself that he studied at neither

university, but was put to a trade immediately on leaving school. He

soon had enough of the trade, which was no doubt his father's

bricklaying, for Henslowe in writing to Edward Alleyne of his affair

with Gabriel Spenser calls him "bergemen [_sic_] Jonson, bricklayer."

Either before or after his marriage--more probably before, as Sir

Francis Vere's three English regiments were not removed from the Low

Countries till 1592--he spent some time in that country soldiering, much

to his own subsequent satisfaction when the days of self-conscious

retrospect arrived, but to no further purpose beyond that of seeing

something of the world.

Ben Jonson married not later than 1592. The registers of St Martin's

Church state that his eldest daughter Maria died in November 1593 when

she was, Jonson tells us (epigram 22), only six months old. His eldest

son Benjamin died of the plague ten years later (epigram 45). (A

younger Benjamin died in 1635.) His wife Jonson characterized to

Drummond as "a shrew, but honest"; and for a period (undated) of five

years he preferred to live without her, enjoying the hospitality of Lord

Aubigny (afterwards duke of Lennox). Long burnings of oil among his

books, and long spells of recreation at the tavern, such as Jonson

loved, are not the most favoured accompaniments of family life. But

Jonson was no stranger to the tenderest of affections: two at least of

the several children whom his wife bore to him he commemorated in

touching little tributes of verse; nor in speaking of his lost eldest

daughter did he forget "her mother's tears." By the middle of 1597 we

come across further documentary evidence of him at home in London in the

shape of an entry in Philip Henslowe's diary (July 28) of 3s. 6d.

"received of Bengemenes Johnsones share." He was therefore by this

time--when Shakespeare, his senior by nearly nine years, was already in

prosperous circumstances and good esteem--at least a regular member of

the acting profession, with a fixed engagement in the lord admiral's

company, then performing under Henslowe's management at the Rose.

Perhaps he had previously acted at the Curtain (a former house of the

lord admiral's men), and "taken mad Jeronimo's part" on a play-wagon in

the highway. This latter appearance, if it ever took place, would, as

was pointed out by Gifford, probably have been in Thomas Kyd's _Spanish

Tragedy_, since in _The First Part of Jeronimo_ Jonson would have had,

most inappropriately, to dwell on the "smallness" of his "bulk." He was

at a subsequent date (1601) employed by Henslowe to write up _The

Spanish Tragedy_, and this fact may have given rise to Wood's story of

his performance as a stroller (see, however, Fleay, _The English Drama_,

ii. 29, 30). Jonson's additions, which were not the first changes made

in the play, are usually supposed to be those printed with _The Spanish

Tragedy_ in the edition of 1602; Charles Lamb's doubts on the subject,

which were shared by Coleridge, seem an instance of that subjective kind

of criticism which it is unsafe to follow when the external evidence to

the contrary is so strong.

According to Aubrey, whose statement must be taken for what it is worth,

"Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor." His

physique was certainly not well adapted to the histrionic conditions of

his--perhaps of any--day; but, in any case, it was not long before he

found his place in the organism of his company. In 1597, as we know from

Henslowe, Jonson undertook to write a play for the lord admiral's men;

and in the following year he was mentioned by Merès in his _Palladis

Tamia_ as one of "the best for tragedy," without any reference to a

connexion on his part with the other branch of the drama. Whether this

was a criticism based on material evidence or an unconscious slip, Ben

Jonson in the same year 1598 produced one of the most famous of English

comedies, _Every Man in his Humour_, which was first acted--probably in

the earlier part of September--by the lord chamberlain's company at the

Curtain. Shakespeare was one of the actors in Jonson's comedy, and it is

in the character of Old Knowell in this very play that, according to a

bold but ingenious guess, he is represented in the half-length portrait

of him in the folio of 1623, beneath which were printed Jonson's lines

concerning the picture. _Every Man in his Humour_ was published in 1601;

the critical prologue first appears in the folio of 1616, and there are

other divergences (see Castelain, appendix A). After the Restoration the

play was revived in 1751 by Garrick (who acted Kitely) with alterations,

and long continued to be known on the stage. It was followed in the same

year by _The Case is Altered_, acted by the children of the queen's

revels, which contains a satirical attack upon the pageant poet, Anthony

Munday. This comedy, which was not included in the folio editions, is

one of intrigue rather than of character; it contains obvious

reminiscences of Shylock and his daughter. The earlier of these two

comedies was indisputably successful.

Before the year 1598 was out, however, Jonson found himself in prison

and in danger of the gallows. In a duel, fought on the 22nd of September

in Hogsden Fields, he had killed an actor of Henslowe's company named

Gabriel Spenser. The quarrel with Henslowe consequent on this event may

account for the production of _Every Man in his Humour_ by the rival

company. In prison Jonson was visited by a Roman Catholic priest, and

the result (certainly strange, if Jonson's parentage is considered) was

his conversion to the Church of Rome, to which he adhered for twelve

years. Jonson was afterwards a diligent student of divinity; but, though

his mind was religious, it is not probable that its natural bias much

inclined it to dwell upon creeds and their controversies. He pleaded

guilty to the charge brought against him, as the rolls of Middlesex

sessions show; but, after a short imprisonment, he was released by

benefit of clergy, forfeiting his "goods and chattels," and being

branded on his left thumb. The affair does not seem to have affected his

reputation; in 1599 he is found back again at work for Henslowe,

receiving together with Dekker, Chettle and "another gentleman,"

earnest-money for a tragedy (undiscovered) called _Robert II., King of

Scots_. In the same year he brought out through the lord chamberlain's

company (possibly already at the Globe, then newly built or building)

the elaborate comedy of _Every Man out of his Humour_ (quarto 1600; fol.

1616)--a play subsequently presented before Queen Elizabeth. The

sunshine of court favour, rarely diffused during her reign in rays

otherwise than figuratively golden, was not to bring any material

comfort to the most learned of her dramatists, before there was laid

upon her the inevitable hand of which his courtly epilogue had besought

death to forget the use. Indeed, of his _Cynthia's Revels_, performed by

the chapel children in 1600 and printed with the first title of _The

Fountain of Self-Love_ in 1601, though it was no doubt primarily

designed as a compliment to the queen, the most marked result had been

to offend two playwrights of note--Dekker, with whom he had formerly

worked in company, and who had a healthy if rough grip of his own; and

Marston, who was perhaps less dangerous by his strength than by his

versatility. According to Jonson, his quarrel with Marston had begun by

the latter attacking his morals, and in the course of it they came to

blows, and might have come to worse. In _Cynthia's Revels_, Dekker is

generally held to be satirized as Hedon, and Marston as Anaides (Fleay,

however, thinks Anaides is Dekker, and Hedon Daniel), while the

character of Crites most assuredly has some features of Jonson himself.

Learning the intention of the two writers whom he had satirized, or at

all events of Dekker, to wreak literary vengeance upon him, he

anticipated them in _The Poetaster_ (1601), again played by the children

of the queen's chapel at the Blackfriars and printed in 1602; Marston

and Dekker are here ridiculed respectively as the aristocratic Crispinus

and the vulgar Demetrius. The play was completed fifteen weeks after its

plot was first conceived. It is not certain to what the proceedings

against author and play before the lord chief justice, referred to in

the dedication of the edition of 1616, had reference, or when they were

instituted. Fleay's supposition that the "purge," said in the _Returne

from Parnassus_ (Pt. II. act iv. sc. iii.) to have been administered by

Shakespeare to Jonson in return for Horace's "pill to the poets" in this

piece, consisted of _Troilus and Cressida_ is supremely ingenious, but

cannot be examined here. As for Dekker, he retaliated on _The Poetaster_

by the _Satiromastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet_ (1602).

Some more last words were indeed attempted on Jonson's part, but in the

_Apologetic Dialogue_ added to _The Poetaster_ in the edition of 1616,

though excluded from that of 1602, he says he intends to turn his

attention to tragedy. This intention he apparently carried out

immediately, for in 1602 he received £10 from Henslowe for a play,

entitled _Richard Crookbacke_, now lost--unfortunately so, for purposes

of comparison in particular, even if it was only, as Fleay conjectures,

"an alteration of Marlowe's play." According to a statement by Overbury,

early in 1603, "Ben Johnson, the poet, now lives upon one Townesend,"

supposed to have been the poet and masque-writer Aurelian Townshend, at

one time steward to the 1st earl of Salisbury, "and scornes the world."

To his other early patron, Lord Aubigny, Jonson dedicated the first of

his two extant tragedies, _Sejanus_, produced by the king's servants at

the Globe late in 1603, Shakespeare once more taking a part in the

performance. Either on its performance or on its appearing in print in

1605, Jonson was called before the privy council by the Earl of

Northampton. But it is open to question whether this was the occasion on

which, according to Jonson's statement to Drummond, Northampton "accused

him both of popery and treason" (see Castelain, Appendix C). Though, for

one reason or another, unsuccessful at first, the endurance of its

reputation is attested by its performance, in a German version by an

Englishman, John Michael Girish, at the court of the grandson of James

I. at Heidelberg.

When the reign of James I. opened in England and an adulatory loyalty

seemed intent on showing that it had not exhausted itself at the feet of

Gloriana, Jonson's well-stored brain and ready pen had their share in

devising and executing ingenious variations on the theme "Welcome--since

we cannot do without thee!" With extraordinary promptitude his genius,

which, far from being "ponderous" in its operations, was singularly

swift and flexible in adapting itself to the demands made upon it, met

the new taste for masques and entertainments--new of course in degree

rather than in kind--introduced with the new reign and fostered by both

the king and his consort. The pageant which on the 7th of May 1603 bade

the king welcome to a capital dissolved in joy was partly of Jonson's,

partly of Dekker's, devising; and he was able to deepen and diversify

the impression by the composition of masques presented to James I. when

entertained at houses of the nobility. _The Satyr_ (1603) was produced

on one of these occasions, Queen Anne's sojourn at Althorpe, the seat of

Sir Robert Spencer, afterwards Lord Althorpe, who seems to have

previously bestowed some patronage upon him. _The Penates_ followed on

May-day 1604 at the house of Sir William Cornwallis at Highgate, and the

queen herself with her ladies played his _Masque of Blackness_ at

Whitehall in 1605. He was soon occasionally employed by the court

itself--already in 1606 in conjunction with Inigo Jones, as responsible

for the "painting and carpentry"--and thus speedily showed himself

master in a species of composition for which, more than any other

English poet before Milton, he secured an enduring place in the national

poetic literature. Personally, no doubt, he derived considerable

material benefit from the new fashion--more especially if his statement

to Drummond was anything like correct, that out of his plays (which may

be presumed to mean his original plays) he had never gained a couple of

hundred pounds.

Good humour seems to have come back with good fortune. Joint employment

in _The King's Entertainment_ (1604) had reconciled him with Dekker; and

with Marston also, who in 1604 dedicated to him his _Malcontent_, he was

again on pleasant terms. When, therefore, in 1604 Marston and Chapman

(who, Jonson told Drummond, was loved of him, and whom he had probably

honoured as "Virgil" in _The Poetaster_, and who has, though on doubtful

grounds, been supposed to have collaborated in the original _Sejanus_)

produced the excellent comedy of _Eastward Ho_, it appears to have

contained some contributions by Jonson. At all events, when the authors

were arrested on account of one or more passages in the play which were

deemed insulting to the Scots, he "voluntarily imprisoned himself" with

them. They were soon released, and a banquet at his expense, attended by

Camden and Selden, terminated the incident. If Jonson is to be believed,

there had been a report that the prisoners were to have their ears and

noses cut, and, with reference apparently to this peril, "at the midst

of the feast his old mother drank to him, and showed him a paper which

she had intended (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in

the prison among his drink, which was full of lusty strong poison; and

that she was no churl, she told him, she minded first to have drunk of

it herself." Strange to say, in 1605 Jonson and Chapman, though the

former, as he averred, had so "attempered" his style as to have "given

no cause to any good man of grief," were again in prison on account of

"a play"; but they appear to have been once more speedily set free, in

consequence of a very manly and dignified letter addressed by Jonson to

the Earl of Salisbury. As to the relations between Chapman and Jonson,

illustrated by newly discovered letters, see Bertram Dobell in the

_Athenaeum_ No. 3831 (March 30, 1901), and the comments of Castelain.

He thinks that the play in question, in which both Chapman and Jonson

took part, was _Sir Gyles Goosecappe_, and that the last imprisonment of

the two poets was shortly after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In

the mysterious history of the Gunpowder Plot Jonson certainly had some

obscure part. On the 7th of November, very soon after the discovery of

the conspiracy, the council appears to have sent for him and to have

asked him, as a loyal Roman Catholic, to use his good offices in

inducing the priests to do something required by the council--one hardly

likes to conjecture it to have been some tampering with the secrets of

confession. In any case, the negotiations fell through, because the

priests declined to come forth out of their hiding-places to be

negotiated with--greatly to the wrath of Ben Jonson, who declares in a

letter to Lord Salisbury that "they are all so enweaved in it that it

will make 500 gentlemen less of the religion within this week, if they

carry their understanding about them." Jonson himself, however, did not

declare his separation from the Church of Rome for five years longer,

however much it might have been to his advantage to do so.

His powers as a dramatist were at their height during the earlier half

of the reign of James I.; and by the year 1616 he had produced nearly

all the plays which are worthy of his genius. They include the tragedy

of _Catiline_ (acted and printed 1611), which achieved only a doubtful

success, and the comedies of _Volpone, or the Fox_ (acted 1605 and

printed in 1607 with a dedication "from my house in the Blackfriars"),

_Epicoene, or the Silent Woman_ (1609; entered in the Stationers'

Register 1610), the _Alchemist_ (1610; printed in 1610), _Bartholomew

Fair_ and _The Devil is an Ass_ (acted respectively in 1614 and 1616).

During the same period he produced several masques, usually in connexion

with Inigo Jones, with whom, however, he seems to have quarrelled

already in this reign, though it is very doubtful whether the architect

is really intended to be ridiculed in _Bartholomew Fair_ under the

character of Lanthorn Leatherhead. Littlewit, according to Fleay, is

Daniel. Among the most attractive of his masques may be mentioned the

_Masque of Blackness_ (1606), the Masque of Beauty (1608), and the

_Masque of Queens_ (1609), described by Swinburne as "the most splendid

of all masques" and as "one of the typically splendid monuments or

trophies of English literature." In 1616 a modest pension of 100 marks a

year was conferred upon him; and possibly this sign of royal favour may

have encouraged him to the publication of the first volume of the folio

collected edition of his works (1616), though there are indications that

he had contemplated its production, an exceptional task for a playwright

of his times to take in hand, as early as 1612.

He had other patrons more bountiful than the Crown, and for a brief

space of time (in 1613) had travelled to France as governor (without

apparently much moral authority) to the eldest son of Sir Walter

Raleigh, then a state prisoner in the Tower, for whose society Jonson

may have gained a liking at the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, but for

whose personal character he, like so many of his contemporaries, seems

to have had but small esteem. By the year 1616 Jonson seems to have made

up his mind to cease writing for the stage, where neither his success

nor his profits had equalled his merits and expectations. He continued

to produce masques and entertainments when called upon; but he was

attracted by many other literary pursuits, and had already accomplished

enough to furnish plentiful materials for retrospective discourse over

pipe or cup. He was already entitled to lord it at the Mermaid, where

his quick antagonist in earlier wit-combats (if Fuller's famous

description be authentic) no longer appeared even on a visit from his

comfortable retreat at Stratford. That on the other hand Ben carried his

wicked town habits into Warwickshire, and there, together with Drayton,

made Shakespeare drink so hard with them as to bring upon himself the

fatal fever which ended his days, is a scandal with which we may fairly

refuse to load Jonson's memory. That he had a share in the preparing for

the press of the first folio of Shakespeare, or in the composition of

its preface, is of course a mere conjecture.

It was in the year 1618 that, like Dr Samuel Johnson a century and a

half afterwards, Ben resolved to have a real holiday for once, and about

midsummer started for his ancestral country, Scotland. He had (very

heroically for a man of his habits) determined to make the journey on

foot; and he was speedily followed by John Taylor, the water-poet, who

still further handicapped himself by the condition that he would

accomplish the pilgrimage without a penny in his pocket. Jonson, who put

money in his good friend's purse when he came up with him at Leith,

spent more than a year and a half in the hospitable Lowlands, being

solemnly elected a burgess of Edinburgh, and on another occasion

entertained at a public banquet there. But the best-remembered

hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the learned Scottish poet,

William Drummond of Hawthornden, to which we owe the so-called

_Conversations_. In these famous jottings, the work of no extenuating

hand, Jonson lives for us to this day, delivering his censures, terse as

they are, in an expansive mood whether of praise or of blame; nor is he

at all generously described in the postscript added by his fatigued and

at times irritated host as "a great lover and praiser of himself, a

contemner and scorner of others." A poetical account of this journey,

"with all the adventures," was burnt with Jonson's library.

After his return to England Jonson appears to have resumed his former

course of life. Among his noble patrons and patronesses were the

countess of Rutland (Sidney's daughter) and her cousin Lady Wroth; and

in 1619 his visits to the country seats of the nobility were varied by a

sojourn at Oxford with Richard Corbet, the poet, at Christ Church, on

which occasion he took up the master's degree granted to him by the

university; whether he actually proceeded to the same degree granted to

him at Cambridge seems unknown. He confessed about this time that he was

or seemed growing "restive," i.e. lazy, though it was not long before he

returned to the occasional composition of masques. The extremely

spirited _Gipsies Metamorphosed_ (1621) was thrice presented before the

king, who was so pleased with it as to grant to the poet the reversion

of the office of master of the revels, besides proposing to confer upon

him the honour of knighthood. This honour Jonson (hardly in deference to

the memory of Sir Petronel Flash) declined; but there was no reason why

he should not gratefully accept the increase of his pension in the same

year (1621) to £200--a temporary increase only, inasmuch as it still

stood at 100 marks when afterwards augmented by Charles I.

The close of King James I.'s reign found the foremost of its poets in

anything but a prosperous condition. It would be unjust to hold the Sun,

the Dog, the Triple Tun, or the Old Devil with its Apollo club-room,

where Ben's supremacy must by this time have become established,

responsible for this result; taverns were the clubs of that day, and a

man of letters is not considered lost in our own because he haunts a

smoking-room in Pall Mall. Disease had weakened the poet's strength, and

the burning of his library, as his _Execration upon Vulcan_ sufficiently

shows, must have been no mere transitory trouble to a poor poet and

scholar. Moreover he cannot but have felt, from the time of the

accession of Charles I. early in 1625 onwards, that the royal patronage

would no longer be due in part to anything like intellectual sympathy.

He thus thought it best to recur to the surer way of writing for the

stage, and in 1625 produced, with no faint heart, but with a very clear

anticipation of the comments which would be made upon the reappearance

of the "huge, overgrown play-maker," _The Staple of News_, a comedy

excellent in some respects, but little calculated to become popular. It

was not printed till 1631. Jonson, whose habit of body was not more

conducive than were his ways of life to a healthy old age, had a

paralytic stroke in 1626, and a second in 1628. In the latter year, on

the death of Middleton, the appointment of city chronologer, with a

salary of 100 nobles a year, was bestowed upon him. He appears to have

considered the duties of this office as purely ornamental; but in 1631

his salary was suspended until he should have presented some fruits of

his labours in his place, or--as he more succinctly phrased

it--"yesterday the barbarous court of aldermen have withdrawn their

chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard, £33, 6s. 8d." After being

in 1628 arrested by mistake on the utterly false charge of having

written certain verses in approval of the assassination of Buckingham,

he was soon allowed to return to Westminster, where it would appear from

a letter of his "son and contiguous neighbour," James Howell, he was

living in 1629, and about this time narrowly escaped another

conflagration. In the same year (1629) he once more essayed the stage

with the comedy of _The New Inn_, which was actually, and on its own

merits not unjustly, damned on the first performance. It was printed in

1631, "as it was never acted but most negligently played"; and Jonson

defended himself against his critics in his spirited _Ode to Himself_.

The epilogue to _The New Inn_ having dwelt not without dignity upon the

neglect which the poet had experienced at the hands of "king and queen,"

King Charles immediately sent the unlucky author a gift of £100, and in

response to a further appeal increased his standing salary to the same

sum, with the addition of an annual tierce of canary--the

poet-laureate's customary royal gift, though this designation of an

office, of which Jonson discharged some of what became the ordinary

functions, is not mentioned in the warrant dated the 26th of March 1630.

In 1634, by the king's desire, Jonson's salary as chronologer to the

city was again paid. To his later years belong the comedies, _The

Magnetic Lady_ (1632) and _The Tale of a Tub_ (1633), both printed in

1640, and some masques, none of which met with great success. The

patronage of liberal-minded men, such as the earl, afterwards duke, of

Newcastle--by whom he must have been commissioned to write his last two

masques _Love's Welcome at Welbeck_ (1633) and _Love's Welcome at

Bolsover_ (1634)--and Viscount Falkland, was not wanting, and his was

hardly an instance in which the fickleness of time and taste could have

allowed a literary veteran to end his career in neglect. He was the

acknowledged chief of the English world of letters, both at the festive

meetings where he ruled the roast among the younger authors whose pride

it was to be "sealed of the tribe of Ben," and by the avowal of grave

writers, old or young, not one of whom would have ventured to dispute

his titular pre-eminence. Nor was he to the last unconscious of the

claims upon him which his position brought with it. When, nearly two

years after he had lost his surviving son, death came upon the sick old

man on the 6th of August 1637, he left behind him an unfinished work of

great beauty, the pastoral drama of _The Sad Shepherd_ (printed in

1641). For forty years, he said in the prologue, he had feasted the

public; at first he could scarce hit its taste, but patience had at last

enabled it to identify itself with the working of his pen.

We are so accustomed to think of Ben Jonson presiding, attentive to his

own applause, over a circle of younger followers and admirers that we

are apt to forget the hard struggle which he had passed through before

gaining the crown now universally acknowledged to be his. Howell

records, in the year before Ben's death, that a solemn supper at the

poet's own house, where the host had almost spoiled the relish of the

feast by vilifying others and magnifying himself, "T. Ca." (Thomas

Carew) buzzed in the writer's ear "that, though Ben had barrelled up a

great deal of knowledge, yet it seemed he had not read the _Ethics_,

which, among other precepts of morality, forbid self-commendation."

Self-reliance is but too frequently coupled with self-consciousness, and

for good and for evil self-confidence was no doubt the most prominent

feature in the character of Ben Jonson. Hence the combativeness which

involved him in so many quarrels in his earlier days, and which jarred

so harshly upon the less militant and in some respects more pedantic

nature of Drummond. But his quarrels do not appear to have entered

deeply into his soul, or indeed usually to have lasted long.[2] He was

too exuberant in his vituperations to be bitter, and too outspoken to be

malicious. He loved of all things to be called "honest," and there is

every reason to suppose that he deserved the epithet. The old

superstition that Jonson was filled with malignant envy of the greatest

of his fellow-dramatists, and lost no opportunity of giving expression

to it, hardly needs notice. Those who consider that Shakespeare was

beyond criticism may find blasphemy in the saying of Jonson that

Shakespeare "wanted art." Occasional jesting allusions to particular

plays of Shakespeare may be found in Jonson, among which should hardly

be included the sneer at "mouldy" Pericles in his _Ode to Himself_. But

these amount to nothing collectively, and to very little individually;

and against them have to be set, not only the many pleasant traditions

concerning the long intimacy between the pair, but also the lines,

prefixed to the first Shakespeare folio, as noble as they are judicious,

dedicated by the survivor to "the star of poets," and the adaptation,

clearly sympathetic notwithstanding all its buts, _de Shakespeare

nostrat_. in the _Discoveries_. But if Gifford had rendered no other

service to Jonson's fame he must be allowed to have once for all

vindicated it from the cruellest aspersion which has ever been cast upon

it. That in general Ben Jonson was a man of strong likes and dislikes,

and was wont to manifest the latter as vehemently as the former, it

would be idle to deny. He was at least impartial in his censures,

dealing them out freely to Puritan poets like Wither and (supposing him

not to have exaggerated his free-spokenness) to princes of his church

like Cardinal du Perron. And, if sensitive to attack, he seems to have

been impervious to flattery--to judge from the candour with which he

condemned the foibles even of so enthusiastic an admirer as Beaumont.

The personage that he disliked the most, and openly abused in the

roundest terms, was unfortunately one with many heads and a tongue to

hiss in each--no other than that "general public" which it was the

fundamental mistake of his life to fancy he could "rail into

approbation" before he had effectively secured its goodwill. And upon

the whole it may be said that the admiration of the few, rather than the

favour of the many, has kept green the fame of the most independent

among all the masters of an art which, in more senses than one, must

please to live.

Jonson's learning and industry, which were alike exceptional, by no

means exhausted themselves in furnishing and elaborating the materials

of his dramatic works. His enemies sneered at him as a translator--a

title which the preceding generation was inclined to esteem the most

honourable in literature. But his classical scholarship shows itself in

other directions besides his translations from the Latin poets (the _Ars

poetica_ in particular), in addition to which he appears to have written

a version of Barclay's _Argenis_; it was likewise the basis of his

_English Grammar_, of which nothing but the rough draft remains (the MS.

itself having perished in the fire in his library), and in connexion

with the subject of which he appears to have pursued other linguistic

studies (Howell in 1629 was trying to procure him a Welsh grammar). And

its effects are very visible in some of the most pleasing of his

non-dramatic poems, which often display that combination of polish and

simplicity hardly to be reached--or even to be appreciated--without some

measure of classical training.

Exclusively of the few lyrics in Jonson's dramas (which, with the

exception of the stately choruses in _Catiline_, charm, and perhaps may

surprise, by their lightness of touch), his non-dramatic works are

comprised in the following collections. The book of _Epigrams_

(published in the first folio of 1616) contained, in the poet's own

words, the "ripest of his studies." His notion of an epigram was the

ancient, not the restricted modern one--still less that of the critic

(R. C., the author of _The Times' Whistle_) in whose language, according

to Jonson, "witty" was "obscene." On the whole, these epigrams excel

more in encomiastic than in satiric touches, while the pathos of one or

two epitaphs in the collection is of the truest kind. In the lyrics and

epistles contained in the _Forest_ (also in the first folio), Jonson

shows greater variety in the poetic styles adopted by him; but the

subject of love, which Dryden considered conspicuous by its absence in

the author's dramas, is similarly eschewed here. The _Underwoods_ (not

published collectively till the second and surreptitious folio) are a

miscellaneous series, comprising, together with a few religious and a

few amatory poems, a large number of epigrams, epitaphs, elegies and

"odes," including both the tributes to Shakespeare and several to royal

and other patrons and friends, besides the _Execration upon Vulcan_, and

the characteristic ode addressed by the poet to himself. To these pieces

in verse should be added the _Discoveries--Timber, or Discoveries made

upon Men and Matters_, avowedly a commonplace book of aphorisms noted by

the poet in his dally readings--thoughts adopted and adapted in more

tranquil and perhaps more sober moods than those which gave rise to the

outpourings of the _Conversations at Hawthornden_. As to the critical

value of these _Conversations_ it is far from being only negative; he

knew how to admire as well as how to disdain. For these thoughts, though

abounding with biographical as well as general interest, Jonson was

almost entirely indebted to ancient writers, or (as has been shown by

Professor Spingarn and by Percy Simpson) indebted to the humanists of

the Renaissance (see _Modern Language Review_, ii. 3, April 1907).

The extant dramatic works of Ben Jonson fall into three or, if his

fragmentary pastoral drama be considered to stand by itself, into four

distinct divisions. The tragedies are only two in number--_Sejanus his

Fall and Catiline his Conspiracy_.[3] Of these the earlier, as is worth

noting, was produced at Shakespeare's theatre, in all probability before

the first of Shakespeare's Roman dramas, and still contains a

considerable admixture of rhyme in the dialogue. Though perhaps less

carefully elaborated in diction than its successor, _Sejanus_ is at

least equally impressive as a highly wrought dramatic treatment of a

complex historic theme. The character of Tiberius adds an element of

curious psychological interest on which speculation has never quite

exhausted itself and which, in Jonson's day at least, was wanting to the

figures of _Catiline_ and his associates. But in both plays the action

is powerfully conducted, and the care bestowed by the dramatist upon the

great variety of characters introduced cannot, as in some of his

comedies, be said to distract the interest of the reader. Both these

tragedies are noble works, though the relative popularity of the subject

(for conspiracies are in the long run more interesting than camarillas)

has perhaps secured the preference to Catiline. Yet this play and its

predecessor were alike too manifestly intended by their author to court

the goodwill of what he calls the "extraordinary" reader. It is

difficult to imagine that (with the aid of judicious shortenings) either

could altogether miss its effect on the stage; but, while Shakespeare

causes us to forget, Jonson seems to wish us to remember, his

authorities. The half is often greater than the whole; and Jonson, like

all dramatists and, it might be added, all novelists in similar cases,

has had to pay the penalty incurred by too obvious a desire to underline

the learning of the author.

Perversity--or would-be originality--alone could declare Jonson's

tragedy preferable to his comedy. Even if the revolution which he

created in the comic branch of the drama had been mistaken in its

principles or unsatisfactory in its results, it would be clear that the

strength of his dramatic genius lay in the power of depicting a great

variety of characters, and that in comedy alone he succeeded in finding

a wide field for the exercise of this power. There may have been no very

original or very profound discovery in the idea which he illustrated in

_Every Man in his Humour_, and, as it were, technically elaborated in

_Every Man out of his Humour_--that in many men one quality is

observable which so possesses them as to draw the whole of their

individualities one way, and that this phenomenon "may be truly said to

be a humour." The idea of the master quality or tendency was, as has

been well observed, a very considerable one for dramatist or novelist.

Nor did Jonson (happily) attempt to work out this idea with any

excessive scientific consistency as a comic dramatist. But, by refusing

to apply the term "humour" (q.v.) to a mere peculiarity or affectation

of manners, and restricting its use to actual or implied differences or

distinctions of character, he broadened the whole basis of English

comedy after his fashion, as Molière at a later date, keeping in closer

touch with the common experience of human life, with a lighter hand

broadened the basis of French and of modern Western comedy at large. It

does not of course follow that Jonson's disciples, the Bromes and the

Cartwrights, always adequately reproduced the master's conception of

"humorous" comedy. Jonson's wide and various reading helped him to

diversify the application of his theory, while perhaps at times it led

him into too remote illustrations of it. Still, Captain Bobadil and

Captain Tucca, Macilente and Fungoso, Volpone and Mosca, and a goodly

number of other characters impress themselves permanently upon the

memory of those whose attention they have as a matter of course

commanded. It is a very futile criticism to condemn Jonson's characters

as a mere series of types of general ideas; on the other hand, it is a

very sound criticism to object, with Barry Cornwall, to the "multitude

of characters who throw no light upon the story, and lend no interest to

it, occupying space that had better have been bestowed upon the

principal agents of the plot."

In the construction of plots, as in most other respects, Jonson's at

once conscientious and vigorous mind led him in the direction of

originality; he depended to a far less degree than the greater part of

his contemporaries (Shakespeare with the rest) upon borrowed plots. But

either his inventive character was occasionally at fault in this

respect, or his devotion to his characters often diverted his attention

from a brisk conduct of his plot. Barry Cornwall has directed attention

to the essential likeness in the plot of two of Jonson's best comedies,

_Volpone_ and _The Alchemist_; and another critic, W. Bodham Donne, has

dwelt on the difficulty which, in _The Poetaster_ and elsewhere, Ben

Jonson seems to experience in sustaining the promise of his actions.

_The Poetaster_ is, however, a play _sui generis_, in which the real

business can hardly be said to begin till the last act.

Dryden, when criticizing Ben Jonson's comedies, thought fit, while

allowing the old master humour and incontestable "pleasantness," to deny

him wit and those ornaments thereof which Quintilian reckons up under

the terms _urbana_, _salsa_, _faceta_ and so forth. Such wit as Dryden

has in view is the mere outward fashion or style of the day, the

euphuism or "sheerwit" or _chic_ which is the creed of Fastidious Brisks

and of their astute purveyors at any given moment. In this Ben Jonson

was no doubt defective; but it would be an error to suppose him, as a

comic dramatist, to have maintained towards the world around him the

attitude of a philosopher, careless of mere transient externalisms. It

is said that the scene of his _Every Man in his Humour_ was originally

laid near Florence; and his _Volpone_, which is perhaps the darkest

social picture ever drawn by him, plays at Venice. Neither locality was

ill-chosen, but the real atmosphere of his comedies is that of the

native surroundings amidst which they were produced; and Ben Jonson's

times live for us in his men and women, his country gulls and town

gulls, his alchemists and exorcists, his "skeldring" captains and

whining Puritans, and the whole ragamuffin rout of his _Bartholomew

Fair_, the comedy _par excellence_ of Elizabethan low life. After he had

described the pastimes, fashionable and unfashionable, of his age, its

feeble superstitions and its flaunting naughtinesses, its vapouring

affectations and its lying effronteries, with an odour as of "divine

tabacco" pervading the whole, little might seem to be left to describe

for his "sons" and successors. Enough, however, remained; only that his

followers speedily again threw manners and "humours" into an

undistinguishable medley.

The gift which both in his art and in his life Jonson lacked was that of

exercising the influence or creating the effects which he wished to

exercise or create without the appearance of consciousness. Concealment

never crept over his efforts, and he scorned insinuation. Instead of

this, influenced no doubt by the example of the free relations between

author and public permitted by Attic comedy, he resorted again and

again, from _Every Man out of his Humour_ to _The Magnetic Lady_, to

inductions and commentatory intermezzos and appendices, which, though

occasionally effective by the excellence of their execution, are to be

regretted as introducing into his dramas an exotic and often vexatious

element. A man of letters to the very core, he never quite understood

that there is and ought to be a wide difference of methods between the

world of letters and the world of the theatre.

The richness and versatility of Jonson's genius will never be fully

appreciated by those who fail to acquaint themselves with what is

preserved to us of his "masques" and cognate entertainments. He was

conscious enough of his success in this direction--"next himself," he

said, "only Fletcher and Chapman could write a masque." He introduced,

or at least established, the ingenious innovation of the anti-masque,

which Schlegel has described, as a species of "parody added by the poet

to his device, and usually prefixed to the serious entry," and which

accordingly supplies a grotesque antidote to the often extravagantly

imaginative main conception. Jonson's learning, creative power and

humorous ingenuity--combined, it should not be forgotten, with a genuine

lyrical gift--all found abundant opportunities for displaying themselves

in these productions. Though a growth of foreign origin, the masque was

by him thoroughly domesticated in the high places of English literature.

He lived long enough to see the species produce its poetic masterpiece

in Comus.

_The Sad Shepherd_, of which Jonson left behind him three acts and a

prologue, is distinguished among English pastoral dramas by its

freshness of tone; it breathes something of the spirit of the greenwood,

and is not unnatural even in its supernatural element. While this piece,

with its charming love-scenes between Robin Hood and Maid Marion,

remains a fragment, another pastoral by Jonson, the _May Lord_ (which F.

G. Fleay and J. A. Symonds sought to identify with _The Sad Shepherd_;

see, however, W. W. Greg in introduction to the Louvain reprint), has

been lost, and a third, of which Loch Lomond was intended to be the

scene, probably remained unwritten.

Though Ben Jonson never altogether recognized the truth of the maxim

that the dramatic art has properly speaking no didactic purpose, his

long and laborious life was not wasted upon a barren endeavour. In

tragedy he added two works of uncommon merit to our dramatic literature.

In comedy his aim was higher, his effort more sustained, and his success

more solid than were those of any of his fellows. In the subsidiary and

hybrid species of the masque, he helped to open a new and attractive

though undoubtedly devious path in the field of dramatic literature. His

intellectual endowments surpassed those of most of the great English

dramatists in richness and breadth; and in energy of application he

probably left them all behind. Inferior to more than one of his

fellow-dramatists in the power of imaginative sympathy, he was first

among the Elizabethans in the power of observation; and there is point

in Barrett Wendell's paradox, that as a dramatist he was not really a

poet but a painter. Yet it is less by these gifts, or even by his

unexcelled capacity for hard work, than by the true ring of manliness

that he will always remain distinguished among his peers.

Jonson was buried on the north side of the nave in Westminster Abbey,

and the inscription, "O Rare Ben Jonson," was cut in the slab over his

grave. In the beginning of the 18th century a portrait bust was put up

to his memory in the Poets' Corner by Harley, earl of Oxford. Of

Honthorst's portrait of Jonson at Knole Park there is a copy in the

National Portrait Gallery; another was engraved by W. Marshall for the

1640 edition of his Poems.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The date of the first folio volume of Jonson's _Works_

(of which title his novel but characteristic use in applying it to

plays was at the time much ridiculed) has already been mentioned as

1616; the second, professedly published in 1640, is described by

Gifford as "a wretched continuation of the first, printed from MSS.

surreptitiously obtained during his life, or ignorantly hurried

through the press after his death, and bearing a variety of dates from

1631 to 1641 inclusive." The works were reprinted in a single folio

volume in 1692, in which _The New Inn_ and _The Case is Altered_ were

included for the first time, and again in 6 vols. 8vo in 1715. Peter

Whalley's edition in 7 vols., with a life, appeared in 1756, but was

superseded in 1816 by William Gifford's, in 9 vols. (of which the

first includes a biographical memoir, and the famous essay on the

"Proofs of Ben Jonson's Malignity, from the Commentators on

Shakespeare"). A new edition of Gifford's was published in 9 vols. in

1875 by Colonel F. Cunningham, as well as a cheap reprint in 3 vols.

in 1870. Both contain the _Conversations_ with Drummond, which were

first printed in full by David Laing in the _Shakespeare Society's

Publications_ (1842) and the _Jonsonus Virbius_, a collection

(unparalleled in number and variety of authors) of poetical tributes,

published about six months after Jonson's death by his friends and

admirers. There is also a single-volume edition, with a very readable

memoir, by Barry Cornwall (1838). An edition of Ben Jonson's works

from the original texts was recently undertaken by C. H. Herford and

Percy Simpson. A selection from his plays, edited for the "Mermaid"

series in 1893-1895 by B. Nicholson, with an introduction by C. H.

Herford, was reissued in 1904. W. W. Bang in his _Materialien zur

Kunde des alten englischen Dramas_ has reprinted from the folio of

1616 those of Ben Jonson's plays which are contained in it (Louvain,

1905-1906). _Every Man in his Humour_ and _Every Man out of his

Humour_ have been edited for the same series (16 and 17, 1905 and

1907) by W. W. Bang and W. W. Greg. _Every Man in his Humour_ has also

been edited, with a brief biographical as well as special

introduction, to which the present sketch owes some details, by H. B.

Wheatley (1877). Some valuable editions of plays by Ben Jonson have

been recently published by American scholars in the _Yale Studies in

English_, edited by A. S. Cook--_The Poetaster_, ed. H. S. Mallory

(1905); _The Alchemist_, ed. C. M. Hathaway (1903); _The Devil is an

Ass_, ed. W. S. Johnson (1905); _The Staple of News_, ed. De Winter

(1905); _The New Inn_, ed. by G. Bremner (1908); _The Sad Shepherd_

(with Waldron's continuation) has been edited by W. W. Greg for Bang's

_Materialien zur Kunde des alten englischen Dramas_ (Louvain, 1905).

The criticisms of Ben Jonson are too numerous for cataloguing here;

among those by eminent Englishmen should be specially mentioned John

Dryden's, particularly those in his _Essay on Dramatic Poësy_

(1667-1668; revised 1684), and in the preface to _An Evening's Love,

or the Mock Astrologer_ (1668), and A. C. Swinburne's _Study of Ben

Jonson_ (1889), in which, however, the significance of the

_Discoveries_ is misapprehended. See also F. G. Fleay, _Biographical

Chronicle of the English Drama_ (1891), i. 311-387, ii. 1-18; C. H.

Herford, "Ben Jonson" (art. in _Dict. Nat. Biog._, vol. xxx., 1802);

A. W. Ward, _History of English Dramatic Literature_, 2nd ed. (1899),

ii. 296-407; and for a list of early impressions, W. W. Greg, _List of

English Plays written before 1643 and printed before 1700_

(Bibliographical Society, 1900), pp. 55-58 and supplement 11-15. An

important French work on Ben Jonson, both biographical and critical,

and containing, besides many translations of scenes and passages, some

valuable appendices, to more than one of which reference has been made

above, is Maurice Castelain's _Ben Jonson, l'homme et l'oeuvre_

(1907). Among treatises or essays on particular aspects of his

literary work may be mentioned Emil Koeppel's _Quellenstudien zu den

Dramen Ben Jonson's_, &c. (1895); the same writer's "Ben Jonson's

Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker," &c., in _Anglicistische

Forschungen_, 20 (1906); F. E. Schelling's _Ben Jonson and the

Classical School_ (1898); and as to his masques, A. Soergel, _Die

englischen Maskenspiele_ (1882) and J. Schmidt, "Über Ben Jonson's

Maskenspiele," in Herrig's _Archiv_, &c., xxvii. 51-91. See also H.

Reinsch, "Ben Jonson's Poetik und seine Beziehungen zu Horaz," in

_Münchener Beiträge_, 16 (1899). (A. W. W.)