His first task, as Surveyor of the Works, to which office James

appointed him, was to build, for twenty pounds, a scaffolding, when

the Earl and Countess of Somerset were arraigned; his next, to

discover, by King James’s pedantic mandate, who were the founders of

Stonehenge. In 1619, he was entrusted with the direction of the

Banqueting-house at Whitehall, which was finished in two years, and

ordered to draw up a plan for the whole structure.

Horace Walpole, who was a true royalist whenever the arts were

concerned, if not slyly in every other respect, thus speaks of that

great but vain effort to build in London a palace worthy of the

country. “The whole fabric,” he says, referring to Jones’s designs

for Whitehall, “was so glorious an idea, that one forgets in a

moment, in the regret for its not being executed, the confirmation

of our liberties obtained by a melancholy scene that passed before

the windows of that very Banqueting-house.”[168] The misfortunes of

this eminent man now began. Inigo Jones was a Roman Catholic, and,

as such, was peculiarly obnoxious to the Parliament party. His very

name, too, was mingled with associations of those arts and that

magnificence, which, from being the cause of envy, were now the

objects of detestation to certain of the people. “Painting had now,”

says Walpole, “become idolatry; monuments were deemed carnal pride,

and a venerable cathedral seemed equally contradictory to Magna

Charta and the Bible.” Even the statue of Charles at Charing Cross

was regarded as of ill-omen, and taken away lest it should bring

back unpleasant recollections.

Footnote 168:

Walpole, p. 270.

“The Parliament did vote it down,

And thought it very fitting,

Lest it should fall and kill them all,

In the house where they were sitting.”

It had become a matter of wonder that society could ever have

tolerated those masques patronized by James, by Charles, and by

Buckingham, in which the masks, costumes, and scenes were designed

by Jones, and the poetry written by Jonson. These representations

had been indeed interrupted by the quarrel between Inigo Jones and

Ben Jonson; and in the civil war they ceased entirely. With the

royal family and their followers literature and the arts were

banished; they were restored with the monarchy, but good taste was

not revived. “The history of destruction” superseded that reign of

elegance and learning which had a brief duration under Charles, and

which, whilst Buckingham was at the head of affairs, was the

main-spring of every impulse. “Ruin was the harvest of the Puritans,

and they gleaned after the reformers.” Of course vengeance fell on

the unfortunate royal architect and stage manager, Inigo Jones. His

face had been seen at every gorgeous revel; his hand was traceable

in many a country seat, even in the picturesque college of St.

John’s at Oxford; he had designed the chapel of Henrietta Maria at

St. James’s; he had erected the arcade and church of Covent Garden:

every familiar scene was haunted with his presence.

The party that condemned him felt neither gratitude nor pity; two

years before the King’s death, he was fined 500_l._ for malignancy.

Afraid of a sequestration of all his revenues, he is stated to have

buried his money, as did Stone, the painter, in Scotland Yard; and

to have removed it, when fearful of discovery, to Lambeth Marsh. He

lived to see Cromwell occupy Whitehall, which he had hoped to

renovate; and to hear that Charles had suffered beneath the very

windows of that fine and perfect fragment of a palace which was

still, in spite of all the terrors of that execution, called the

Banqueting-house; he lived to be called “Iniquity Jones,” by the

successor of that Earl of Pembroke who had once been his generous

patron; he lived to learn that the wit, the poetry, the scenery that

had combined to render the masques at Burleigh a feast not only for

the senses, but for the intellect, were construed into heathenism.

All gallantry and romance were gone--and gone for ever; wit, indeed,

flourished after the Restoration, but it was wit without decency or

feeling. The old man must have felt that he had lived too long.

Somerset House had been with great difficulty saved from the

destruction of the Parliamentary decree; it gave poor Inigo, who

still appears to have nominally held his former office, a refuge

wherein he could lay down his head and die. He was buried in the

church of St. Bennet, at Paul’s Wharf; a monument erected there to

his memory was destroyed in the Fire of London, and the great

architect of the Banqueting-house remains without any memorial, save

the works of his genius.

Vandyck was not settled in England, under the patronage of Charles

I., until after the death of Buckingham. Mytens, whose position as

the King’s principal painter was, as he believed, encroached on by

the celebrity of Vandyck, was patronized by Buckingham, for whom he

painted a portrait of Sir Jeffrey Hudson.

This little wonder of the seventeenth century was nine years old

only at the Duke’s death. He had been domesticated at Burleigh on

account of his diminutive stature, which did not, at that time,

exceed seven or eight inches. Jeffrey was the plaything of the

Court: at the marriage-feast of Charles I., the Duchess of

Buckingham had him inserted in a cold pie, and served up at table to

the Queen, by way of presenting him to the royal bride, who took him

in her lap, and kept him. Until the age of thirty, this little

personage never grew. He then suddenly shot up three feet nine

inches, which he carried off with infinite dignity, and remained at

that height. He was still the butt of all the idlers at Whitehall,

and the theme of a poem, by Davenant, called “Jeffresdos,” the

subject being a battle between the dwarf and a turkey-cock.

Henceforth he became important--went over to France on a mission of

great confidence, to fetch an experienced _sage-femme_ for the

Queen--was taken by the Pirates off Dunkirk on his return--was

rescued, only to encounter the incessant raillery of the courtiers,

which, to a man of his present size and importance, became

exasperating. Faithful and trusty, he went with Henrietta Maria into

France, and there, being goaded on by renewed insults from a Mr.

Crofts, sent a challenge. Crofts came to fight him provided only

with a squirt; the duel was to be on horseback, and with pistols,

that Jeffrey, or, as he had now become, Sir Jeffrey, might be more

on a level with his antagonist. By the first shot, Crofts was struck

dead. The next event in this adventurous life was the capture of

Jeffrey by a Turkish rover, during one of his voyages; he was sold

as a slave, and taken into Barbary; he was, however, ransomed, or

set free, so as to resume his attendance on the Queen. After the

Restoration, he was suspected of being concerned in the Popish plot,

and confined in the Gate House at Westminster. Here, a life that had

been rendered worthy of record even by his very littleness was

closed, in 1682; his old enemy, a gigantic porter at Whitehall in

Charles’s time, with whom the little creature was in incessant

strife, having long since been displaced--and another giant, Oliver

Cromwell’s porter, established in his stead.

On Mytens the office of his Majesty’s “picture-drawer in ordinary,

with a fee of 20_l._ per annum, was conferred in 1625, procured by

the agency of Endymion Porter, who was the servant and relative of

Buckingham, from the Duke.”[169]

Footnote 169:

Walpole, p. 151, 152.

Incited by the example of the Earl of Arundel, who employed a Mr.

Petty to collect antiquities in Greece, Buckingham despatched for

the same purpose Sir Thomas Roe, telling him, in explaining his

wishes, that “he was not so fond of antiquity as to court it in a

deformed or unshapen stone.”[170] Lord Arundel had begun to

“transplant old Greece into England.” His agent, Petty, was

indefatigable, “eating with Greeks on their work days, and lying

with fishermen with planks,” so that he might obtain his ends. This

valiant antiquary lost all his curiosities on returning from Samos,

and was imprisoned as a spy, but, regaining his liberty, set forth

again to his researches with the energy of a Layard.[171]

Footnote 170:

Walpole, p. 206. Note. From Peacham’s “Complete Gentleman.”

Footnote 171:

The fate of the Arundelian marbles is stated by Walpole to have

been as follows:--They came into the elder branch of the family,

the Dukes of Norfolk, and were sold by the Duchess, who was

divorced in the time of George II., to the Earl of Pomfret for

300_l._ The Countess of Pomfret, great-grandmother to the present

Earl, gave them to the University

The principal medallist in the time of Charles I. was Andrew

Vanderdort, a Dutchman, also patronized by Prince Henry. Upon the

accession of Charles, Vanderdort was made keeper of the King’s

cabinet of medals, with a salary of 40_l._ This cabinet or museum

was contained in a room in Whitehall, running across from the Thames

towards the Banqueting-house, and fronting the gardens westward. By

Vanderdort the coins of the realm were designed; and to the

commission to perform that work was added an injunction that he

should superintend the engravers. To Vanderdort was once confided

the preparing of the catalogue of the Royal collection, written in

bad English, and preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford. It is

related of him, that, being entrusted with a miniature by Gibson,

the “Parable of the Lost Sheep,” he laid it up so carefully, that,

when asked for it by the King, he could not find it, and hung

himself from grief.[172]

Footnote 172:

Walpole.

It was owing to the suggestions of Buckingham that the great

portrait-painter, Gerard Honthorst, was invited by Charles I. to

England. Honthorst of Oxford. was a native of Utrecht, but had

completed his education at Rome. He had many pupils in painting of

high rank, and amongst them were Elizabeth of Bohemia and her

daughters, the Princess Sophia, mother of George I., and the

Princess Louisa, afterwards Abbess of Maubissen, being the most apt

scholars of that family. It was owing to the early culture of the

arts which both the sons of James I. had enjoyed, that it became an

easy task for Buckingham to incite Charles to the patronage of great

masters in afterlife. Solomon de Caus, a Gascon, was the instructor

of Prince Henry, and probably of Charles, who inherited the pictures

and statues which his brother had collected. Honthorst probably

improved by his lessons the taste that had been already so well

cultivated. At Hampton Court, a large picture on the staircase

sometimes rivets attention, without conferring pleasure--for the

taste for allegorical paintings has long since been extinct. It

delineates Charles and his Queen as Apollo and Diana in the clouds;

the Duke of Buckingham, as Mercury, is introducing them to the Arts

and Sciences, whilst genii are driving away Envy and Malice. This,

and other paintings, were completed by Honthorst in six months; the

King giving him three thousand florins, a service of silver plate

for twelve persons, and a horse. He also painted portraits of the

Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, sitting with their two children; and

it was likewise the Duke’s fancy to have a large picture by him,

representing a tooth-drawer, with many figures introduced around the

operation.

Horatio Gentileschi, a native of Pisá, was one of those who

contributed alike to the collection of Charles and to the glories of

York House, which, long before Buckingham’s death, had, we are told,

become the admiration of the world.

Gentileschi was treated with a degree of liberality that was quite

congenial to the feelings of Buckingham: he was invited to England,

and rooms were provided for his use, and a considerable salary

advanced to him. Some of the painted ceilings in Greenwich Palace

were his work; and he ornamented York House in a similar manner.

When it was dismantled, one of the ceilings was transplanted to

Buckingham House, in St. James’s Park, the seat of Sheffield, Duke

of Buckingham. He also painted the Villiers family, and, by the

Duke’s order, a Magdalen, lying in a grotto, contemplating a

skull--a strange subject for the worldly and high-spirited

Buckingham to select. But the delight of Charles and of his

favourite was Nicholas Lanière, meritorious as a painter, engraver,

and musician. It was Lanière who composed the music for some of Ben

Jonson’s masques, in recitative. Lanière, after the death of

Charles, set to music a funeral hymn written by Thomas Pierce. As a

composer, he was salaried by Charles with two hundred a-year. He

had, however, also painted pictures for King James; and it is stated

that Buckingham, not being able to induce that monarch to reward him

adequately, gave Lanière three hundred pounds at one time, and five

hundred at another, from his own means.[173] Lanière had been

instrumental in the negociation for the Mantua collection. After the

death of Charles he was one of those painters who viewed with deep

concern the dispersion of the Whitehall collection; and bought

several pictures at the sale of what he had contributed to enrich.

Footnote 173:

Biograph. Brit., Art. “Villiers.” Note.

Whilst ceilings were painted, pictures distributed on richly-carved

panels, and in spacious galleries, there was even an attempt in

those days to decorate with frescoes the exterior of houses, as in

Bavaria, where even the dwellings of superior farmers are sometimes

adorned in that manner. Francis Cleyn, a Dane, was called to England

in the reign of James I., in order to improve also the manufacture

of tapestry at Mortlake, to which James had contributed two thousand

pounds. Hitherto, Sir Francis Crane, the proprietor, had worked only

on old patterns; Cleyn brought new and original designs to the aid

of the tapestry-workers. Five of the cartoons were sent by Charles

to be copied. Cleyn also painted the outside of Wimbledon House in

fresco; he designed one of the chimney-pieces in Holland House, and

gave the drawings for two chairs, carved and gilt, with shells for

backs, still there. In every possible department art was called into

play. Drawings for the great seals were made by Cleyn. He published

books for “carvers and goldsmiths.” Nothing was to be tasteless,

clumsy, or inappropriate; and, with this spirit abroad, it is not

surprising that the little that the Rebellion spared should be

models for our own conservative generation.

Whilst Villiers employed portrait-painters on himself and on his

family, he did not forget the old man at Brookesby, long since gone

to the grave. Cornelius Jansen, by his order, painted a portrait of

his father; probably from some family picture. It was in the

possession of Horace Walpole, “less handsome,” he says, “but

extremely like his son.”

The patronage extended by Charles I. to architects[174] was often

directed by Buckingham; for the King and the favourite had but one

soul between them. To exalt and improve the art of painting, they

summoned foreign architects as well as painters to England,

remunerated them liberally, and treated them with the courtesy due

to one of the noblest of professions. Charles delighted to dabble

with his brush on the canvas, his hand directed by the master, with

whom he sat for hours. Buckingham’s few leisure days were devoted to

his buildings and paintings. Amongst the English builders who worked

at the Banqueting-house, under Inigo Jones, was Nicholas Stone, who

was in 1619 appointed master-mason to the King, at the usual salary,

of twelve pence a-day; but the extra work he executed for Charles

was amply paid; and his salary during the two years he worked at

Whitehall amounted to four shillings and tenpence the day.[175]

Nicholas Stone designed four of the dials at St. James’s and

Whitehall.[176] He rebuilt the fountains at Theobald’s and Nonsuch;

his drawings are, it is to be feared, lost. He was the statuary

employed by the Countess of Dorset to set up at Westminster the

monument of Spenser the poet, for which he was paid forty pounds.

His great talent lay in tombs; amongst others, he erected one for

the Countess of Buckingham, the Duke’s mother, three years after her

son’s death, in 1631, in Westminster Abbey, for which he received

560_l._ Doubtless, therefore, he was continually employed by

Buckingham, and Stone’s various performances must have been just

what the Duke required. He was the modest architect, who did not

disdain to form and chisel the piers for gates--Inigo Jones

designing them,--at Holland House. He built the great gate of St.

Mary’s Church at Oxford, and the stone gates for the Physic Garden

in that city,--also designed by Inigo. The figure of the Nile at

Somerset House was by Stone; his skill, like that of Inigo, is

familiar to us, though we may almost have forgotten the hand that

had so much “cunning.” At York House, at Wanstead, New Hall and

Burleigh, his fine face, with his love-locks, his plain collar, and

tight doublet, were, we may be sure, often to be seen before ruin

and desertion darkened those once splendid homes of Villiers.

Footnote 174:

Walpole, p. 149, _passim_.

Footnote 175:

Walpole, p. 166.

Footnote 176:

There were five dials at Whitehall; a Mr. Gunter drew the lines,

and wrote a pamphlet on the use of them, in 1624. “One, too,” says

Horace Walpole, “may still be extant.” Vertue saw them at

Buckingham House, from whence they were sold.

Few men, it must be acknowledged, in so brief a space, have done

more for the arts in this country than George Villiers. By

Charles, his friend and sovereign, who survived him twenty years,

much more was effected. Without their unceasing efforts, without

even the almost pardonable extravagance that was directed to

purposes so refined, England would almost have been devoid of

paintings by the greatest masters, and, what would be almost

worse, destitute of the love and reverence for high art which has

come down to us from the time of Charles I., and which is now

cherished, though unconsciously, in the breast of the poor

artisan, as in that of the richest peer or commoner. The crowds

who not only throng, but enjoy, the galleries of Hampton

Court--and, still more, the humble visitors from the Faubourg St.

Antoine and the Marais to the Louvre, on Sundays, in Paris--prove

that a love of what is true and holy, and even sublime, in

pictures, exists intuitively in the uncultivated mind, as well as

in the highest intelligence of the soul. Those who called from its

latent recesses this love of art in the seventeenth century are

greatly entitled to the gratitude of that age to which the

luxuries of music and painting are become necessities.

CHAPTER V.

PATRONAGE OF THE DRAMA BY CHARLES AND THE DUKE OF

BUCKINGHAM--MASSINGER--BEN JONSON--THEIR CONNECTION WITH THE

COURT, AND WITH THE DUKE.

CHAPTER V.

After considering the benefits conferred by Charles I. and his

favourite on art, and detailing their patronage of eminent masters,

one turns, naturally, to the literature of the day, and more

especially--as subsidiary to music and painting--to the drama.

The accession of James I. opened fairer prospects to dramatists than

they had enjoyed in the days of Elizabeth, who paid as grudgingly

for her amusements as for the services of her statesmen. To her

“Master of the bears and dogs” she assigned a salary of a farthing a

day only.[177] Yet the office was sometimes held by a Knight; and,

during the “princely pleasures of Kenilworth,” of which bear-baiting

formed a prominent feature, by no less opulent a person than Edward

Alleyn, the actor, and founder of Dulwich College. Little but

honour, therefore, had accrued, in the time of Elizabeth, to poets

and play-writers; and the struggling authors were obliged to have

recourse to a more liberal patronage than that of the Court--until

James I., somewhat “of a poet, but more of a scholar,” promoted,

with an extravagant zeal, the diversions which his taste disposed

him to enjoy. Plays, which his predecessor had deemed likely to draw

her younger subjects from the manlier recreations of bear-baiting

and hunting, were patronized in high quarters, and were henceforth

the fashionable diversions notwithstanding the invectives of the

Puritans, both of the Court, and in the provincial castles of the

nobility at a distance from London.

Footnote 177:

Note in Hartley Coleridge’s Introduction to Massinger’s Plays, p.

32.

Independently of the delights of the masque, which comprised both

music, dancing, and poetry, there were pleasures to be found in the

drama which accorded with the tendencies and failings of that

period.

It was an age of personality, a disposition to which existed as

strongly in the unrefined court of James, and even among his

northern retainers, as in the brilliant galleries of Versailles,

encouraged by Louis XIV., and led by the dangerous and witty St.

Simon. “The great eye of the world,” says an able writer, “was not

then, any more than now, so intent on things and principles as not

to have a corner for the infirmities of individuals.”[178] Wilson,

Weldon, Winwood, Osborne, Peyton, Sanderson, circulated what were in

many instances fabrications about the higher classes; whilst the

crimes and absurdities of the lower orders were celebrated by the

ballad-mongers, or dramatized for the stage. Many of those ballads

transmitted to us, which were exempted from the fate of “damn’d

ditties,” were founded on authentic domestic tragedies, the actors

in which have long since passed into oblivion. The ballad, which

afforded the multitude a pleasing insight into the fact that their

superiors were no better than themselves, was the most popular

literature of the day. Sung to doleful tunes, with a nasal twang,

they called forth the satire of the dramatist, who aimed at a higher

species of personality, and who deprecated these, often scurrilous,

productions; which were, at length, checked in the time of Swift by

the imposition of a penny stamp on every loose sheet. The ballad was

a source of dread to the tavern bully, whose iniquities it exposed.

“If I have not ballads made of you all, and sung to filthy tunes,

may this cup of sack be my poison,” says Falstaff.

Footnote 178:

Hartley Coleridge, p. 9.

“Now shall have we damnable ballads out against us,

Most wicked madrigals.”

_Humorous Lieutenant._

Whilst the attention of society was not altogether fixed on exalted

members only, it was found difficult to restrain satire, and even

calumny, from introducing living characters on the stage, and from

depicting them with hateful qualities, and in invidious situations.

In vain did the Master of the Revels, who was under the peculiar

influence of the Court, endeavour to control the disposition to

personality which characterized even many of the plays acted before

James I. and his son. In these compositions the public acquired that

insight into conduct and peculiarities which is now derived from

periodical papers, or from diaries, letters, and autobiographies, in

which our age is especially fertile.

Amongst the dramatists of James and Charles’s reigns, we may take,

as the most remarkable, Philip Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and

Fletcher, and John Ford, the greater part of whose works were

produced during the life of King James and of Charles I. and II.

The biography of each of these celebrated men elucidates much of the

manners and temper of the times, and their history comprises that of

this species of literature during the commencement and middle of the

seventeenth century.

Philip Massinger was the son of Arthur Massinger, a retainer in the

household of the Earl of Pembroke. A retainer was often a gentleman

of good birth but small means, and this was probably the condition

of Arthur Massinger, who, from his carrying letters from his master,

the Earl, to Queen Elizabeth, could not have been a man of low

origin, else he would not have been admitted to the honour of

conveying any dispatch to one who placed so much importance on

lineage in those who entered her presence. That custom was still in

force, which surrounded a nobleman, not with menials, but with a

middle-class of bondmen, who thought service no degradation. It was

esteemed a turn of fortune when a youth of gentle birth could be

introduced into some noble house, to learn therein politeness,

chivalrous attention to ladies, and to imbibe, from example and

precept, that loyalty which was then considered a sort of virtue.

The education and training of a page is now confined to royal

courts; but there were, in England, in those days of the Tudors and

Stuarts, many minor courts, which exacted, in miniature, the duties

and service that existed in the palaces of the monarch. And of those

stately and wealthy patrons, none were more respected than the

Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, to whom Arthur Massinger wrote himself

“Bondman.”

That wholesome discipline which it is difficult in our own time for

a parent to preserve over his family was maintained to the advantage

of a page who rose from a lowly to a confidential situation.

Massinger’s lines in the “New Way to Pay Old Debts” refer to the

subjection under which the youth groaned, but to which the matured

actors on this world’s stage looked back with gratitude:--

“Art thou scarce manumised from the porter’s lodge,

And now sworn servant to the pantofle,

And darest thou dream of marriage?”

_New Way to Pay Old Debts._

Yet in this servitude the father of Philip Massinger lived and died.

These grand establishments, in which the noble head saw around him

none but persons of gentle blood and breeding, would long since have

ceased to be congenial, even if they still existed, to the English

notions of independence, by which servitude is confounded with

slavery. But they had this advantage--the son of a retainer was

supposed to have a claim on the illustrious noble, who estimated his

father’s fidelity and offices; and that this was the case with

Philip Massinger, might seem probable from the advantages of

education which he was enabled to derive; and the value of which he

had learned to appreciate, in the proximity to the really noble and

intellectual family of Herbert. It appears from Philip Massinger’s

dedication of the “Bondman,” that he never had any personal

communication with Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; but that

is no proof that he may not have been indebted for the advantage of

a university education to the far more intellectual and estimable

Henry, Earl of Pembroke, his father’s patron, as appears from the

following passage in the dedication of the “Bondman” to the Earl of

Montgomery:--

“However, I could never arrive at the happiness to be made known to

your lordship; yet a desire born with me, to make a tender of all

duties and service to the noble family of the Herberts, descended to

me as an inheritance from my dead father, Arthur Massinger. Many

years he happily spent in the service of your honourable house, and

died a servant in it, leaving his to be ever most glad and ready to

be at the command of all such as derive themselves from his most

honoured master, your lordship’s most honoured father.”[179]

Footnote 179:

Massinger’s Works, edited by Hartley Coleridge, p. 74.

It would be agreeable to reflect that Massinger had passed his

childhood and youth, partly at all events, in the classical region

of Wilton Castle, which Sir Philip Sidney had almost sanctified to

the Muses by his presence, and whence he had issued forth on that

expedition in which he died a hero’s death. But those were not the

days in which the childhood and youth of celebrated men were

recorded, and of Massinger’s not a trace remained. We only guess at

the early influences which formed his imaginative, yet vigorous

mind. We only conjecture that his taste was directed to poetry by

the taste of those whom he must have learned first to respect. We

are not sure, yet we are glad to believe, that whilst his mind took

on afterwards the impressions of the age in which he lived, it was

in earliest youth incited by the author of the “Arcadia,” and by the

acquirements of her to whom that poem was dedicated, to culture and

exercise, until circumstances brought its powers into full activity.

The dedication of the “Bondman” was written in 1624; and whilst it

shews that the poet had never seen Philip, Earl of Montgomery, it

does not follow, as has been stated, that he was _not_ reared at

Wilton during the life-time of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the “noble

father” of Philip, who, as a younger son, was created Earl of

Montgomery, and long known by that title only. Henry, who was

succeeded by his eldest son, the second Earl of Pembroke, died in

1600; and since Massinger was born in 1584, it is extremely probable

that he passed his childhood at Wilton, although, in compliance with

the custom of the age, he was probably sent out to nurse. Even the

name of his mother is unknown. Few authors of so much merit as

Massinger have been, as Hartley Coleridge observes, “so little

noticed by contemporaries;” and none so soon forgotten by succeeding

times.

There can, however, be but little doubt that Philip Massinger

imbibed at Wilton that value for letters which is so soon caught by

children from the society of the intellectual; and that a gentler

influence than that of Earl Henry stimulated the natural

inclinations of his mind. A learned education for women of rank was

in vogue for nearly a century after the Reformation: with

Protestantism came in the notion that the female understanding was

worthy of high cultivation; and our earliest and most superior

women, in those times, were prepared for their important part in

life by a sound and almost masculine training. Witness the learning

of Lady Jane Grey, of Queen Elizabeth, of Joanna, Lady Abergavenny,

whom Walpole believes to have been the “foundress of that noble

school of female learning, of which (with herself) there were,” he

says, “no less than four authoresses in the three descents.”[180]

Among the learned and the virtuous none was more esteemed in her

time than Mary, the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and the third wife

of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the son of Arthur Massinger’s patron.

She was one of those ornaments of her age who added lustre to her

station without forfeiting one feminine attribute. What was then

called a “polite education” comprised not only the acquisition of

light literature, but that also of classical learning. From her

mother, Lady Mary Dudley, this admirable woman inherited a noble and

congenial spirit; from her father, Sir Henry Sidney, surpassing

abilities, moral excellencies, enlarged views, generous motives.

That father, superior to the venal courtiers of his time, spent his

whole fortune in his endeavours to benefit Ireland and Wales, of the

affairs of which he held the administration. In her brother, Sir

Philip Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke found a companion in all her

pursuits, as well as in affection. Hence, as Spenser wrote, their

minds grew in unison:--

“The gentlest shepherdess that liv’d that day,

And most resembling, both in shape and spirit,

Her brother dear.”

In conjunction with him, this gifted woman is said to have

translated the Psalms;[181] of which effort Daniel says:--

“Those hymns which thou dost consecrate to Heaven,

Which Israel’s singer to his God did frame,

Unto thy voyage eternity hath given,

And makes thee dear to Him from whence they came.”

Footnote 180:

Joanna, Lady Abergavenny, Mary Arundel, Catherine Grey, Mary

Duchess of Norfolk. See “Royal and Noble Authors.”

Several of these are extant; one of them was published in the

_Guardian_;[182] and it corresponds with a Psalm printed in the

“_Nugæ Antiquæ_” as the Countess of Pembroke’s.[183] It has been

regretted that these productions are not authorized to be sung in

churches; for the present version, Mr. Hartley Coleridge remarks,

“is a disgrace and a mischief to the establishment.” These

translations are preserved in the library at Wilton.

Footnote 181:

Horace Walpole’s “Royal and Noble Authors,” vol. ii., p. 308.

Footnote 182:

No. 7.

Footnote 183:

Ibid.

The Countess was residing there when the “Discourse of Life and

Death,” by Mornay, which she translated from the French, was

printed. This was in 1590, when Philip Massinger was six years of

age. She survived until 1621; and, since she extended her patronage

both to arts and letters, it is probable that she not only

befriended Ben Jonson, but that she encouraged and assisted the

struggling dramatist, whose father had been so favoured or retained

in her husband’s house. Ben Jonson’s well-known lines on her tomb

have challenged various criticisms. Whilst by some they are deemed a

tribute “which have never been exceeded in the records of monumental

praise,”[184] by another critic they are considered “too

hyperbolical, too clever, and too conceited to be inscribed on a

Christian’s tomb.”[185]

Footnote 184:

Note in Parke’s edition of “Royal and Noble Authors.”

Footnote 185:

Hartley Coleridge.

“Underneath this marble hearse

Lies the subject of all verse--

Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother;

Death, ere thou canst find another,

Learned, and fair, and good as she,

Time shall throw a dart at thee.”

At all events, Massinger imbibed from his father’s connection with

the Herbert family, one taste--that for theatricals. Amongst the

retinue of the great peer, was a company of itinerant performers,

“the Earl of Pembroke’s players;” and though the childhood of

Massinger is indeed a blank, it maybe inferred that the attractions

of the theatre, or rather of the hall, in which that portion of the

Earl’s household must have been frequently occupied, were such as to

fascinate a boy of an imaginative turn of mind. He is stated to have

been shy, melancholy, retiring, and studious; that he received a

classical education, as a boy, is also stated; but when that

education was received, who directed that thoughtful and dreamy mind

to poetry, or how he, who was evidently designed for a scholastic

career, should have devoted himself to the profession of a

play-writer, does not appear to have been ascertained, even by the

indefatigable Gilford.

But it was an age of great mental energy, and there was sufficient

in the rich harvest won by Shakspeare, or in the rare delights

afforded by his works, to account for the direction of young

Massinger’s genius.

It has been conjectured, also, that he acted occasionally in those

plays the parts of which were then usually sustained by boys: of

this there remains not a single proof, and nothing is _certain_, in

so far as the events of his youth are concerned, except that he was

entered at St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford, in 1601-2.

It must not be supposed that this fact at all implied what in the

present day it might appear to indicate. It did not follow that

Massinger was to enter one of the learned professions, because he

became a commoner in that small, ancient society of St. Alban’s

Hall; nor was it a proof that the young man had parents who were in

affluent circumstances, as a University career now seems to imply.

Oxford was then a place for cheap education, and many of the “poor

scholars” at the various colleges underwent, as Strype shews us,

great hardships. On the other hand, it was not uncommon for the

profession of letters to be in those days a man’s only calling; and

an academical training was his best commencement in that arduous

course, since a certain display of erudition was undoubtedly one of

the characteristics of the period.

The exhibition to college was, according to Anthony Wood, given to

Massinger by the Earl of Pembroke; but others allege that Massinger

derived the means of subsistence at Oxford from his father.

In those schools, where a man for the first, and perhaps for the

only, time in his existence, frames his own success, independently

of the patronage of others--in those schools, famed for

strict impartiality, and where the battle is really to the

strong--Massinger, nevertheless, did not appear. He left Oxford

without taking his degree; for he had made the mistake, fatal to a

poor man, who has to rest upon the endowments of that grand old

university for his support, of not adopting the studies which the

university prescribes to the exclusion of others. It was, indeed, a

sin in the eyes of that zealous antiquary, whose tomb, in a corner

of the anti-chapel of Merton College, is so often overlooked, save

by those who honour his labours, and who view his merits, thus

enshrined, with regretful reverence--that he gave his mind, as

Anthony Wood tells us, “more to poetry or romance, for about four

years or more, than to logic and philosophy, which he ought to have

done, as he was patronized _to that end_.”

He adds, without further comment than this, “that, being

sufficiently famed for several specimens of wit, he betook himself

to writing plays.” Massinger left Oxford in 1606--he was then

twenty-two years of age.

For some time his history is again a blank, and his exertions and

struggles, whatever they may have been, fell upon a serious,

religious, thoughtful temperament, devoid of the elasticity with

which Shakespeare fought and conquered the trials of fate.

Play-writing was, at that time, almost the only means by which ready

money could be obtained, and had the patronage of the Court in full

activity, when Massinger cast himself into his future and only

career. James I., soon after his accession, licensed the company of

players who had hitherto been styled the “Lord Chamberlain’s,” but

who were henceforth to be called "the King’s servants"--amongst whom

were Shakspeare, Burbage, Heminge, and others. Queen Anne adopted

the “Earl of Worcester’s company,” and Prince Henry that of the Earl

of Nottingham, the hero of the “Armada.” The Court, and even

provincial nobles and gentry, although Protestantized, kept, with as

scrupulous attention as ever, the great feasts of the Church; and on

these, as in former times a mystery or morality was given, so now a

play was often performed. “The stage,” says Hartley Coleridge, “was

evoking and realizing the finest imaginations of the strongest

intellects.”

Whether Massinger ever acted or not, is as doubtful as every other

incident of his early life. It was not until 1614 that a glimmering

of his actual condition in life is seen through the darkness, and

the disclosure is melancholy and discouraging. There is something

touching, as well as dreary, in the gloom that one can only

diversify with scenes of penury and imprisonment for debt. At last

the light breaks out; and, in the words of the following appeal, the

history of some years of disappointment is disclosed:--[186]

"To our most loving friend, Mr. Philip Hinchlow, Esquire, these,--

“Mr. Hinchlow--You understand our unfortunate extremitye, and I doe

not thinke you so void of cristianitee but that you would throw so

much money into the Thames as wee request now of you, rather than

endanger so many innocent lives. You know there is X_l._ more at

least to be receaved of you for the play. We desire you to lend us

V_l._ of that; which shall be allowed to you, without which we

cannot be bayled nor I play any more till this be dispatch’d. It

will lose you XX_l._ ere the end of the next weeke, besides the

hindrance of the next new play. Pray, sir, consider our cases with

humanity, and now give us cause to acknowledge you our true friend

in time of neede. Wee have entreated Mr. Davison to deliver this

note, as well as witness your love as our promises and always

acknowledgement to be ever your most thankful and loving

friends,[187]

”PHILIP MASSINGER.

“R. DAVISON.

”NAT. FIELD."

Footnote 186:

This letter was discovered by Malone, in Dulwich College. There is

no date on it, but Mr. Payne Collier dates it in 1614, eight years

before the publication of the “Virgin Martyr.”

Footnote 187:

Introduction to Massinger’s Works, p. xxxiii.

This letter is the only one with the signature of Philip Massinger

extant. It was addressed to a pawnbroker--such was Philip Hinchlow,

who, besides exercising that ancient profession, was also engaged in

theatrical speculations, his advances being chiefly made upon the

wearing apparel and properties, of which he acquired a large portion

in this way. “A comfortable sort of person,” remarks Hartley

Coleridge, “for three poets to be obliged to.” Especially when they,

as it were, pledged to him the labour of their brains; and that when

they were either already in prison, or afraid of that crisis in

their miserable destiny. Nathaniel Field, the writer of this letter,

was Massinger’s partner in the production of the “Fatal Dowry;” he

had a share in the Globe and Blackfriar’s Theatres, in conjunction

with Burbage, the original _Richard III._, _Hamlet_, and _Othello_;

and with Lowin, the original _Falstaff_. Field was also an actor,

and he performed in Ben Jonson’s masque, “Cynthia’s Revels,” in

1600, when he appeared as one of the children of the Queen’s chapel.

Robert Daborne was a man of good descent, a scholar and a clergyman,

although the author of several plays; nor was he the only clerical

dramatist in an age which was, indeed, "not an innocent one"--for

Cartwright, also a play-writer, was a divine, and, as Fuller states,

“a florid and seraphical preacher.”[188]

Footnote 188:

Introduction to Massinger’s Works, p. xxxv.

It has been remarked that the “Fatal Dowry” was like the production

of a man in debt. Massinger might refer to his own case when he

wrote:--

“I will not take

One single piece of this great heap. Why should I

Borrow that I have no means to pay; nay, am

A very bankrupt, even in flattering hope,

Of ever raising any.”

In addition to his poverty, to hard work, and the degradation of

debt, Massinger was fully conscious that he had not, in giving up

the certainty of a profession, attained a position in society. The

dramatist’s occupation was scarcely, in those times, considered a

creditable employment.[189] By the Puritans it was deemed sinful--by

learned men, idle and trifling; and although lawyers and

academicians, courtiers and ladies, and even the Queen and Princes

of the blood, took the conspicuous parts, there was still a certain

disrepute attached to the very instruments by means of which the

stage was brought into what is justly called its “palmiest state.”

Footnote 189:

Introduction to Massinger’s Works, p. xiv; from Dr. Farmer’s

“Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare.”

There were perhaps various reasons for the slow success of Massinger

as a dramatist, and for that adverse fate the bitterness of which

breaks forth in all his works. The age was Puritan; and he was

supposed to have exchanged the Protestant principles with which he

had entered Oxford for Romanist opinions--or rather, what we should

now term Tractarian. That he may have been, as Mr. Gifford infers,

from his leaving Oxford without a degree, a Roman Catholic, is borne

out by no fact, although seemingly attested by the subjects of his

plays--the “Virgin Martyr,” the “Renegade,” and the “Maid of

Honour,” and from some passages in his other dramas. The bare

suspicion was enough to make an author unfashionable at the time

when the religion of the poet’s ancestors was the object of hatred

and terror, and the laws against recusants were in all their hateful

force. The plots of Massinger’s plays were, however, almost

invariably taken from French or Italian novels, or from old legends,

which embodied Romanism, and must, if Protestantized, have assumed

the form of satire. Another drawback to Massinger’s popularity was

the strong Whiggism which manifested itself in his plays, and which

was so greatly at variance with the tone of the Court and of the

higher classes during the early part of the reign of James I. He had

not the reverence for constituted authority which marked the

sentiments of Shakspeare, whilst his devotion to birth (not to

_rank_ alone) savoured of the son of the retainer in a great house,

where the servant generally is a far greater worshipper of the old

descent than the real possessor of the ancient pedigree.[190] Thus,

whilst this ill-fated man, full of genius, full of virtue, and of a

deep sense of religion, was always tempting the slings and arrows of

fortune, he was distrusted by the Puritans as a favourer of the

Romish faith; he was avoided by the loyal as an enemy to passive

obedience; and he must have been regarded with disgust by the rich

city merchants and traders, for his contempt for newly-acquired

wealth, and his merciless exposition of their assumption, in his

dramas.

Footnote 190:

Introduction to Massinger’s Works, p. xxxvii.

Massinger, therefore, lived and died in poverty. The language of

complaint became habitual to him; he spoke of his despised state

with agony--yet his patrons were many and honourable; but he

addressed each successively in dedications which were masterpieces

of pure English, as his last hope--his dependence on whom “ate into

his very soul.” To Sir Robert Wiseman, of Thorrell’s Hall, in Essex,

he “freely, and with a zealous thankfulness, acknowledges that for

many years he had but _faintly subsisted_, had he not often tasted

of his great bounty.”[191] In his dedication of “The Picture” to the

noble Society of the Inner Temple, he thanks them, “his honoured and

selected friends,” for their “frequent bounties.” He lived upon

presents; and of the comforts of a certain income he had not,

probably, even one year’s experience. It is impossible to think of

such a career without pain--starving one day, repulsed with

condescension from the halls of the rich, another. He has depicted

feelingly, indeed, the gentleman reduced to penury, in the “New Way

to Pay Old Debts,” and the insults heaped on him by over-fed

sycophants.

Footnote 191:

Massinger’s Works, p. 167; in his Dedication of “The Great Duke of

Florence” to Sir Robert Wiseman.

“_Overreach_ (to _Wellborn_)--

Avaunt, thou beggar!

If ever thou presume to own me more,

I’ll have thee caged and whipp’d.

“_Amble_ (to _Wellborn_)--

Cannot you stay, to be serv’d among your fellows

From the basket, but you must press into the hall?”

The “basket” contained broken meat, which was placed in the porter’s

lodge of great houses, to be distributed to the poor.

So, in the “Fatal Dowry,” _Pontalier_ says to _Liladum_:--

“Go to the basket, and repent.”

It is with true feeling that Massinger put into the mouth of

_Wellborn_ these pleading lines:--

“Scorn me not, good lady!

But, as in form you are angelical,

Imitate the heavenly natures, and vouchsafe

At the least awhile to hear me. You will grant

The blood that runs in this arm is as noble

As that which fills your veins; those costly jewels

And those rich clothes you wear, your men’s observance

And women’s flattery, are in you no virtues;

Nor these rags, with my poverty, in me vices.”

His life, however, was not without its solace. Happily for the

literary men of the age, Ralegh had comprehended what is most

essential both to mind and body, and in founding the meetings at the

Mermaid had provided for the dramatist, poet, and philosopher,

suitable relaxation. The place of meeting was at the Mermaid, in

Bread Street, Cheapside. Here Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont,

Fletcher, and many others, enjoyed the rare companionship of Ralegh,

during the brief intervals in which he was not either engaged at the

Court, or in distant expeditions. Here wit was the current coin of

the company; toil was cast aside; “away with melancholy,” was the

burden of the guests, who had probably many a care hidden in the

core of their hearts. To Shakspeare’s joyous nature, and to the

sanguine and then unbroken spirit of Ralegh, the sorrows of the

past, the terrors of the future, might easily be forgotten, or

suspended over a cup of rich Canary; or, as night drew on, after a

beaker of sack-posset. But one may picture to oneself the diffident,

yet proud Philip Massinger, in his black doublet and plain white

linen collar, with shabby tassels hanging from it, feasting,

perhaps, at another man’s expense--trying to shine in these

"wit-combats"--trying to forget “the basket,” and to seem

prosperous; but, with the remembrance of the five pounds borrowed

upon the security of his capital of brains, with a heavy sigh, as

the delightful bard of Avon talked of retiring, on his fortune of

two hundred a-year, to the quaint old town, his birth-place.

It must, however, have been a delicious opportunity of looking into

minds as various as they were original. Beaumont has described the

surface:--

“What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid!--heard words that have been

So nimble and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life ...

... and when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.”

A modern writer has compared these meetings to the “_Noctes

Ambrosianæ_.” Happier far the wits of modern days, than the gifted

men who, in the time of the Stuarts, were fain to cringe to patrons

for their subsistence. None but unsuccessful authors will rail at

modern publishers, when they remember the infinite miseries, with

few signal exceptions, of those who were unhappy enough to depend on

individuals and not on the public, whose will and taste the

publisher alone studies.

Intemperance was, in those days, not only the sin of the

middle-classes, but that of the Court; and both James and his Queen

are said to have indulged in it. Massinger seems to have held what

were rare opinions in his time, and to have been an advocate for

total abstinence:--

"O take care of wine!

Cold water is far better for your healths,

Of which I am very tender."--_The Picture._

He wrote rapidly, and his pen was never idle; yet he lived in

miserable poverty. There is no record either that he was married--no

indication that, like every other poet, he had an unfortunate or

unrequited attachment. His pilgrimage had one solace, that of a

fervent religion; which had, probably, much of the superstitions

which were mingled, in those early days of Protestantism, with the

reformed faith. The Church of England was then “an untrimmed vessel,

lurching now towards Rome, and now towards Geneva;” it is therefore

no wonder if many of the young, the impassioned, the imaginative,

inclined to that form of faith and of worship which wore at least

the semblance of venerable seniority.[192]

Footnote 192:

Hartley Coleridge’s “Introduction,” p. xxv.

There is not a line in Massinger’s works that can either convict him

of Romanism, or stamp him as a Protestant. Like many of his

contemporaries, his romantic fancy was captivated by the picturesque

ceremonial, the saintly observances, the _dramatic_ services of the

Romish Church; and to this was probably added a disgust to that

puritanic fervour by which not only the drama--to which there were,

in fact, many just exceptions to be made--but all that was

enchanting in life, poetry, secular music, revelry (not necessarily

corrupting), was condemned as sinful, and all intellectual luxury

prohibited and anathematized.

The Herbert family continued to be friends to Massinger--at all

events, to lend him the support of their name. He dedicated “The New

Way to Pay Old Debts,” the most celebrated of his plays, to Robert,

Earl of Carnarvon. “I was born,” he says, “a most devoted servant to

the thrice noble family of your incomparable lady, and am most

ambitious, though at a proper distance, to be known to your

lordship.” Robert, Earl of Carnarvon, who had married the Lady

Katherine Herbert, although a friend and favourer of the Muses, and

also Grand Falconer of England, is long since forgotten--whilst the

poet, who addressed him “at a proper distance,” is remembered with

pride and interest.

There was so close an intimacy at one time between the Earl of

Pembroke’s family and that of the Duke of Buckingham, that it seems

strange that no trace of Massinger’s having been patronized by him

are to be discovered. In fact, the annals of Massinger’s life

present little except the dates of his works. The eldest son of the

unworthy Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, the poet’s chief

patron, was married in 1634 to Lady Mary Villiers, then a mere girl.

It is true that this alliance was formed six years after

Buckingham’s death; but it was probably concerted before that event,

after the fashion of the day, in which the infant in the cradle was

often affianced by ambitious parents, and the nuptials solemnized at

ten or twelve years of age. Charles, Lord Herbert set out on his

travels directly after he had married his young wife, and died of

small-pox at Florence in 1636. Massinger wrote a poem on his loss,

among others, to his little bride:--

“True sorrow fell

With showers of tears--still bathe the widowed bed

Of his dear spouse.”

The elegy, as it has been observed, had better not have been

written; and his “dear spouse” very likely at that time preferred

balls and revelries to her husband.

It was, however, not impossible that Villiers, to please the Herbert

family, may have been the means of introducing Massinger to Charles

I., who justly estimated his great merits, and proved a more

generous as well as a worthier patron than the Earl of Pembroke and

Montgomery.

The political tenets of Massinger brought him on one occasion into

considerable danger. They were, nevertheless, such as we should now

term moderate; but they were irrelevantly introduced into his

dramas, at a time when liberalism was almost regarded as next to

treason. In 1631, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels,

refused to receive a play of Massinger’s because it contained what

that functionary called “dangerous matters,” as to the deposing of

Sebastian, King of Portugal, and “thereby reflected upon Spain.”

Even the name of that piece is unknown, although the Master of the

Revels took care that the fee of twenty shillings for reading it

over was paid to him. In 1638, when the question of the Ship-money

was dividing the nation from the Court, Massinger, unable to control

his indignation at the oppressive measures of Charles I., produced

another play, called “The King and the Subject,” founded on the

history of Don Pedro the Cruel. It contained, amongst other free and

bold passages, these lines:--

“Monies? We’ll raise supplies which way we please,

And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which

We’ll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Cæsars

In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws

But what their swords did ratify--the wives

And daughters of the senators bowing to

Their will as deities----”

It was evident to all who had occasion to peruse the play in

manuscript, that Don Pedro was intended for the King. It was

submitted, however, to Charles, who was at Newmarket; he read it,

and then, in his own hand, marked the objectionable passage, and

wrote underneath these words, “This is too insolent; note that the

poet make it the speech of a King, Don Pedro, to his subjects.” This

is one instance of the kind nature of the often mistaken King, who

avoided condemning the play to oblivion.[193] That he encouraged

Massinger--that he perceived, beneath the bitterness of a struggling

man, a noble independence of character, is evident from Massinger’s

plays being, in the commencement of that reign, the fashionable

representations at Court. A bespeak at Court was the most signal

proof of success, and was all that could be desired by an author;

and Charles took an opportunity of conferring this benefit on

Massinger, when the poet’s feelings had been grievously wounded by

the opposition made to “The Emperor of the East,” on its first

performance by bespeaking that play.

Footnote 193:

The play was acted, but not printed, and has never been

discovered.--See Coleridge, from Malone.

Massinger recorded his gratitude for the bespeak in a prologue, in

which he affirms his chief aim had been to please the King, and the

fair Henrietta Maria, in this production:--

“What we now present,

When first conceived in his vote and intent,

Was sacred to your pleasure; in each part

With his best of fancy, judgment, language, art,

Fashioned and formed so as might well, and may,

Deserve a welcome, and no vulgar way.

He durst not, sir, at such a solemn feast,

Lard his grave matter with one scurrilous jest,

But laboured that no passage might appear

But what the Queen, without a blush, might hear.”

In 1633, just after the appearance of Prynne’s “Histriomastix,”

Charles ordered the representation of Massinger’s “Guardian” at

Whitehall, on Sunday--an unwise act, in the eyes of all; a wrong one

in those of most persons, who, without undue prejudice, view the

Sabbath not only as a day of holy rest, but as one in which the

thoughts and actions should be eminently pure, serene, and devout.

We cannot but allow that the Puritans had much reason on their side

in condemning this profanation, which was, one can scarcely doubt,

instigated by Queen Henrietta, or intended to please her. The plays

of Massinger were peculiarly unsuited to the Sabbath, from their

grossness.

It is not easy to say what amount of indelicacy the ladies of that

period could listen to “without a blush.” Their confusion was,

indeed, hidden beneath a black velvet mask. Even eighty or ninety

years afterwards, the incomparable Queen Mary, the consort of

William III., and her maids of honour, listened, under that

protection, to the comedies of an age, perhaps, if possible, still

more licentious in its plays than that in which Massinger wrote. Nor

was it until the mask was abolished by law that the presence of

women was recognized as controlling impropriety. In the reign of

Anne, influenced by the correctness of the Court, as well as by the

presence of ladies, unexceptionable plays, of loftier tone, by

Steele and Addison, were placed on the stage. It is to be hoped that

Queen Henrietta scarcely comprehended what she heard in a language

of which she knew but little before her arrival in England; or

perhaps, with the French notions, that a married woman, however

young, may go everywhere and hear everything, even if only just

emancipated from a convent or the nursery, she may not have thought

herself and her attendants degraded by what they heard.

The Queen’s partiality for Massinger was soon known by another

demonstration on her part. On the site of the old Monastery of

Blackfriars, which had been signalized by the sitting of the

Black Parliament, in the reign of Henry VIII., by the trial of

Katharine of Arragon in its hall, and by the condemnation of

Wolsey, James Burbage, and his company, known as the Earl of

Leicester’s players, had erected a theatre. It was within the

precincts, but not the jurisdiction, of the City; and the Lord

Mayor, after ejecting Burbage from the City, tried in vain to

drive them out of Blackfriars. The Puritan inhabitants of the

precincts were also inimical to the playhouse, and petitioned

the Lords and Council against its continuance there.[194]

Nevertheless, Queen Henrietta bespoke “Cleander,” a lost play of

Massinger’s, and went to see it acted at Blackfriars. She was

justly censured for this imprudence--not, indeed, for her

inconsistent patronage of dramas unfit for women to hear or

read--a sin which that age perceived not--but for a public

attendance at a theatre, on the stage of which the young

gallants of the time chose to sit, perched on stools, with

tobacco pipes in their mouths--or congregated in twopenny

refreshment-rooms, where ale and tobacco were sold.

Footnote 194:

Cunningham’s “London.”

It does not appear that the patronage of the Court gave permanent

independence to Massinger. After the production of his last drama,

“The Fair Anchoress of Pausilippo,” his career was over. He latterly

lived at the Bankside, a residence probably chosen by him from its

vicinity to various theatres--to Blackfriars, from its proximity to

Blackfriars Road; to the Globe Theatre, in which Shakespeare had a

share; to Paris Garden, to the Rose, to the Hope, and the Swan. The

Chirk, near the Church of St. Saviour’s, even in the time of Charles

I., was the seat of all manner of low dissipation--bear-baiting,

among the rest--and consequently of misery and vice. The district

was not sanctified even by the holy edifice of St. Saviour’s; that

noble church, the finest specimen of the early English style in

London, the crypt of which is one of the un-seen sights of the

metropolis, having, happily, escaped the restoring hand of some

reprehensible churchwardens, who have done their best to spoil the

nave, and to reduce it to the level of their own ideas. To his

obscure home, near St. Saviour’s, Philip Massinger retired on the

evening of the 16th of March, 1639-40, to rest, in his usual health.

He was found dead in the morning in his bed. No friendly hand closed

his eyes--no kind voice whispered into his ear words of hope and

peace in Heaven, of which he had known so little on earth: no record

of the mortal disease which thus struck him down--what would be

called, in our time, prematurely--has been found. His death was,

like his life, a blank. The parish register tells us all that can be

told: “March 16, 1639-40.--Buried Philip Massinger, _a stranger_.”

He was followed to the grave by actors, and buried in the churchyard

of St. Saviour’s, then called St. Mary Overie, from an old

suppressed priory. No stone marked his grave. His funeral was too

poor for his remains to be interred within the church, where

Lancelot Andrews and Henry Sacheverell preached, and where their

bones repose; and where the poet Gower founded a chantry, and

erected a tomb. Massinger was interred among the poor and the

humble; perhaps his old companions of the playhouse, in after-days,

slept, also, near his nameless grave.

His burial cost 2_l._--a sum large enough, in those days, to ensure

it, in Mr. Gifford’s eyes, a considerable amount of state and

ceremony; and the word “stranger,” which grates so painfully on the

feelings of those who reverence genius, is said by that authority to

be usually affixed to the name of any one not belonging to the

parish of St. Saviour. Yet, that his contemporaries put no epitaph

on his tomb, that there was nothing but the sod over the cold clay,

that no tradition even exists to show where he once lay, seems to

prove that the Puritans were in the ascendancy on that sad day when

the “stranger” was conveyed to his last home; and that they were

meet ancestors of those who have since “restored” the old church,

and have cleverly concealed the beauties of its interior.

Massinger had great qualities. He was religious, and of rare honesty

and independence; yet his religion did not purify his thoughts, nor

tend, consequently, to chasten his productions--and his

circumstances wore away his real independence, as his dedications

testify. His conceptions of what was noble, of what was virtuous,

are beautifully expressed in those plays, which are yet so full of

coarseness as to be unpresentable; and whilst he never loses any

opportunity of exalting virtue, he seizes every occasion of

depraving the taste, if not the mind. In this respect he is far more

culpable than Shakspeare; the age had deteriorated: James I. was

coarse, and liked coarseness in others; his Court and his amusements

all partook of that characteristic, which increased after the old

chivalric style had declined. The elegance and purity in the works

of Sir Philip Sidney and Spenser were succeeded by coarseness in

those of Massinger, Ford, and Ben Jonson. When Massinger ceased to

write freely--and, in so doing, to indulge every fancy, fair or

foul--he wrote feebly. Of this “The Roman Actor,” to play which he

“held to be the most perfect birth of his Minerva,” affords an

example. It is free from indelicacy, but presents few of Massinger’s

striking excellencies. The plot is bad; the scene in which the

character of _Paris_ might have been so powerfully developed, when

tempted by _Domitian_, is poor. The tortures of the senators on the

stage, and the appearance of their ghosts afterwards, savours of the

love which Massinger had for the horrible--with the delineation of

which he seems to have consoled himself for his forbearance in other

points. Nevertheless, whilst the secondary characters in “The Roman

Actor” are poor and indistinct--whilst those of the primary actors

are striking and truthful--the timid tyranny of _Domitian_, and the

ambition of _Donitia_, are admirably worked out.

The inordinate taste for revolting incidents on the stage was a

great feature of the times; the contemporaries of Somerset and his

wife were habituated to the excitement of fearful mysteries, of

crimes, and sins half-disclosed, yet awful in the dimness of partial

discovery. The frequent occurrence of murders, sometimes designedly,

“but more often in hasty broils,” in that day, presented subjects

which, to us, seem extravagant, but which were highly acceptable to

the bravadoes, who, smoking on the stage, brandished their rapiers,

and were ready to avenge a quarrel at the sword’s point. In nothing

is the difference of manners so marked between those days and these

as in the matter of _honour_. In those times, honour was perpetually

in every man’s mouth--personal courage was prominently brought

forward; and hence, every play had its braggart or its coward; and,

as we see in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher,[195] honour had its

code, its professional counsel, and its practical paid supporters.

But, with this code, this practice, moral courage had little to do;

the code of honour drew the main limit of caste, and the burgher and

the tradesman were beneath it. So important was it, however, to

observe the new code _aux ongles_, that a manual or grammar of its

rules was applied to satisfy the captious on nice points. Thus, when

_Adorio_, in Massinger’s “Maid of Honour,” laments that his honour

and reputation should suffer from having taken a blow in public from

_Caldoro_, accompanied with the infamous “mark of coward,” he is

referred by _Camillo_, to whom he pours forth his vexation, to

Caranza’s “Grammar” for directions, in much the same manner as a

lawyer would quote Lord St. Leonards on a point of law--or

travellers call on Murray as their authority.

Footnote 195:

See “Maid’s Tragedy.”

When _Adorio_ talks of what he “would do” in the matter, _Camillo_

answers:--

“Never think on’t,

Till fitter time and place invite you to it.

I have read Caranza, and find not in his Grammar

Of quarrels that the injured man be bound

To seek for reparation at an hour;

But may, and without loss, till he hath settl’d

More serious occasions that import him.

For a day or two defer it.

_Adorio._--You’ll subscribe

Your hand to this?

_Camillo._--And justify’t with my life.

Presume upon’t.

_Adorio._--On then; you shall o’errule me.”

Women were not let off so easily; happily for them, more was

expected from them than from men. Without referring to Caranza,

their honour consisted not only in chastity, but in constancy to

vows, and resistance to the temptations of wealth; and these

attributes were sufficiently rare to make the “Maid of Honour” an

exceptional character.[196] Massinger, however, assures us that

English women, even in those days, asserted a superiority in

intellect and character: it is true, they had no opportunity of

travelling, and stayed at home; but they learned from their lovers

and brothers the customs of those foreign countries which it was

then dangerous to traverse.

Footnote 196:

“The Guardian.” See Massinger’s Works, p. 351.

Most men of rank or fortune, nevertheless, made the “grand tour”

before marrying; or left their young betrothed mistresses in their

native counties. In the “Guardian,” _Calipso_ says:--

“Why, sir, do gallants travel?

Answer that question; but at their return

With wonder to the hearers to discourse of

The garb and difference in foreign females--

As the lusty girl of France, the sober German,

The plump Dutch frow, the stately dame of Spain.”

It has been asked whether Massinger and Shakspeare ever

met?--whether, as Hartley Coleridge inquires, they ever “took a cup

of sack together at the Mitre or the Mermaid;” and whether Massinger

was ever umpire or bottle-holder in the “wit-combats” described by

Fuller? But upon this, as well as on many other points, there is no

light. We know not whom Massinger loved, nor whom he hated; we would

fain believe, with Coleridge, that his life was not passed without

some true affection--a link between passion and virtue; we would

willingly believe that, like Tasso, he loved one above him in

rank--or one below him--rather than that he had never loved at all.

But his works repel the surmise. True love is vehement--but it is

delicate; and it would have elevated his thoughts, and purified his

expressions. Massinger may have done justice to the intellect and

companionship of his countrywomen, but he had no reverence for the

most beautiful part of their nature; and in this, as in other

respects, is far below Shakspeare.

The obscurity which overshadowed all Massinger’s career has rendered

any communication, as we have seen, between him and Buckingham,

doubtful; but it was far otherwise in respect to Ben Jonson--whose

works are so replete with allusions to the Villiers family, and to

their attributes, amusements, and bounties, that no biography of

George Villiers can be complete without a more copious reference to

the works of this dramatist than can be conveyed in the passing

notices which have been given of his masques, in the course of the

preceding narrative.[197] Ben Jonson was ten years older than

Massinger; and was born in 1574. Whether from his surname, or his

Christian name, or from his after-life, it is not easy to say, but

one generally looks upon Ben Jonson as a man of low birth. But such

was not the fact. His grandfather, a man of some family and fortune,

was a gentleman in the service of Henry VIII.; his father was in

holy orders, “a grave minister of the Gospel.”[198]

Footnote 197:

From the State Papers, a new volume of which has lately been

published, it appears that Jonson was accused of writing certain

lines on Buckingham’s assassination.--See Appendix.

Footnote 198:

Gifford’s “Life of Ben Jonson,” p. 2; from Anthony Wood.

The family had originally settled at Annandale, in Scotland; but Ben

Jonson was born in Westminster. He had the misfortune to come into

the world a month after his father’s death. It was, perhaps, a less

adverse circumstance that his mother, two years afterwards, married

again. Her views were not exalted, and she took for her second

husband--tired, it might seem, of the genteel poverty of the

cloth--a master-bricklayer. Not even has Fuller, not even has

Gifford, been able to ascertain in what part of the suburb of

Westminster “Ben” was born. Fuller, however, consoles us; he could

not trace the poet in his _cradle_, but he could “fetch him,” as he

observes, in his “short coats.” About two years old, Ben was

_discovered_--that is to say, the haunts of his infancy were--“a

little child in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross.”

This neighbourhood was as poor as that of Westminster Abbey; and the

parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, which then extended to

Whitehall on the south, to Marylebone on the north, to the Savoy on

the east, and to Chelsea and Kensington on the west, when first

rated to the poor in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, contained only two

hundred persons sufficiently wealthy to pay those rates.[199] It

afterwards became the greatest cure in England, until several of its

parishes were separated from the patron saint, St. Martin’s.

Footnote 199:

Cunningham’s London.

Here, however, Ben Jonson was brought up--getting such education as

he might from a school in the church of St Martin’s. It is stated,

however, by Gifford, to have been a “private school.” He might

possibly have been one of the private pupils on a foundation school.

Some unknown benefactor, however, removed the future poet from St

Martin’s, and placed him at St. Peter’s College, Westminster, which

was founded by Queen Elizabeth, in 1660--“a public school for

grammar, rhetorick,--_poetry_ (which the maiden Queen was too wise

to despise) and for the Latin and Greek languages.”

This removal was the visible cause of all Ben Jonson’s eminence.

Camden, the historian, was then one of the masters of that school,

from whose ranks issued Cowley, George Herbert, Dryden, Churchill,

Cowper, Southey, and many others less celebrated. Ben Jonson always

retained an affectionate remembrance of Camden’s instructions:--

“Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe

All that in wits I am, and all I know.”

He dedicated his best play, “Every Man in his Humour,” to Master

Camden, “Clarencieux,” ending his dedication thus:--

“Now, I pray you to accept this; such wherein neither the confession

of my manners shall make you blush--nor of my studies repent you to

have been the instructor; and for the profession of any

thankfulness, I am sure it will, with good men, find either praise

or excuse, from your true lover, Ben Jonson.”[200]

Footnote 200:

Ben Johnson’s Works, p. i.

From Westminster, Jonson went to Cambridge, probably to St. John’s;

but even of this important fact no certainty exists, for the

university register is imperfect, and from 1600 to 1602 there is an

hiatus. It is merely conjectured, from there being several books

containing the name of Ben Jonson in the library of St. John’s, that

he entered that College. Here, however, he only stayed, according to

Fuller, some weeks; funds were wanting for his support--a

circumstance which seems to shew that he was not sent up to Trinity

College on the foundation, as otherwise he would have had an

exhibition at Westminster. His parents were unable to supply means;

and the young student, thirsting for distinction, was obliged to

return and follow his step-father’s calling. Never was there a

situation so pitiable, and the condition of this aspiring scholar

was compassionated by other scholars of happier fortunes than

himself. Camden generously relieved him; Thomas Sutton, who, having

bought the Charter House from Lord Suffolk, nobly devoted it to an

hospital and school, “the master-piece of Protestant charity,” as

Lord Bacon styled it,--also, according to some accounts, consoled,

and compassionated, and assisted Jonson. It has even been said that

“Ben” was engaged to attend the eldest son of Sir Walter Ralegh, as

a tutor; but of this no certainty exists. All that is absolutely

known is, that he was sick of the trowel and the hod, whilst his

mind was running on Horace and Virgil; and that to escape what he

deemed degradation, he enlisted, went off to the Low Countries, and

served a campaign in that scene of war, which was a sort of school

to the young English soldier.

His heart went, to a certain extent, along with this new profession.

“Let not those blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful

calling,” says Fuller,--and Jonson seems to have thought so

likewise. He returned, however, at nineteen, poor as ever, with the

same scholastic tastes; and the master-bricklayer being dead, he

repaired to his mother’s house.

He next tried the stage. It has been, in all times, the refuge of

the unthrifty. But Jonson’s appearance was unfavourable to that

attempt. His very ugliness, one would have thought, might have been

an advantage. Mr. Gifford repels with fury the imputation on Jonson,

that his hero was frightful; yet the description he gives himself of

Ben Jonson is by no means attractive. His complexion, which had been

clear and smooth in boyhood, was disfigured by a scorbutic humour,

and ultimately by scars, from what the Germans are pleased to call

the “Englische Krankheit.” His features are said not to have been

irregular or unpleasing, but appear in his portraits to be large and

coarse. One eye looked askance; his forehead was, however, noble;

his person was broad and corpulent--after forty it became unwieldy;

and his gait, he himself owned, “ungracious.” In early youth his

worst points were not, probably, prominent; he had a delightful

voice and emphasis. “I never,” said the Duchess of Newcastle, "heard

any man read well but my husband; and I have heard him say, 'he

never heard any man read well but Ben Jonson, and yet he hath heard

many in his time.’"[201]

Footnote 201:

Gifford, from the Duchess of Newcastle’s Letters.

Nevertheless, “Ben” was not a good actor. Critics differ as to the

nature and duration of his theatrical employ. And Gifford, who takes

every question relative to his hero as a personal matter, is

indignant at the statement that he was a strolling player, or ambled

by the side of a waggon, and took _mad Jeronymo’s_ part; but, as

most companies were then itinerant, and, as even now, first-rate

actors and actresses make provincial tours, there seems little call

for the venom and wrath poured out by the indefatigable biographer,

who points, with satisfaction, to the bulky figure of Jonson, and

asks how he could possibly act “little _Jeronymo_,” that "inch of

Spain"?[202]

Footnote 202:

From the First Part of “Jeronymo,” a popular play.

Whatever was his position--whether, as Anthony Wood says, “he did

recede to a nursery or obscure playhouse, called the _Green

Curtain_,” in Shoreditch; or whether, as Gifford declares, that

statement is a mere fable, and that his aims were higher--seemed now

of little moment, perhaps, to Jonson himself; for his efforts were

interrupted by a duel. His antagonist is supposed to have been a

brother-player, who brought to the field a sword ten inches longer

than poor Ben’s. They fought, and Ben killed the gentleman with the

long sword, but was himself severely wounded in the arm; he was sent

to prison, and brought, as he described it, “near to the gallows.”

Poor Ben was now, probably, fain to cry out with _Antonio_ in the

“Maid of Honour”:--

“But redeem me

From this captivity, and I’ll vow

Never to draw a sword, or cut my meat hereafter

With a knife that has an edge or point; I’ll starve first.”[203]

Footnote 203:

Massinger’s Works, p. 200.

This imprisonment had a signal effect on Jonson’s destiny; he fell

into melancholy, and was visited in his despondency by a Romanist

priest, who applied himself to his consolation first, and to his

conversion afterwards. Jonson had been religiously brought up, and

it was not from indifference that he renounced the faith of his

parents and entered the Romish Church. Such conversions were

frequent in the early days of the Reformation. Jonson was no

controversialist; wiser men than he fell into the same error, and,

like such, atoned for it. The great light of our Church, Jeremy

Taylor, became for some time a Romanist, but returned to the

Anglican faith; Chillingworth and others wandered also, and also

returned. The readiest converts are often those of deep and earnest

feelings, which act on excitable minds, only superficially informed

on the great doctrines of Scripture.[204] Jonson’s imprisonment was

aggravated in its misery by a system of espionage which the

necessities of the times induced. The plots against Elizabeth’s life

usually originated in the seminaries of the priests. Jonson was

warned by his gaoler that he was watched.

Footnote 204:

Gifford, p. 7, note.

He was eventually released, but by what agency does not appear.

He quitted prison, and married a young woman of his new persuasion;

and there appears to have been no great reason to repent his choice.

His wife was shrewish, but respectable; and the poet’s prosperity

commenced with his marriage.

From this time until the period when the Court festivities brought

him into frequent collision with Villiers, Jonson’s productions were

successive occasions of triumph. Nevertheless, money did not flow

into his coffers; and he was continually obliged to pledge, as

Massinger did, the labour of his brain--two sums of four pounds, and

twenty shillings, being advanced to him by Henslowe, the

father-in-law of Alleyn, the player, upon the plots of two plays

being presented and approved. Still poor Jonson had his enemies and

traducers. The scene of “Every Man in his Humour” was originally

laid in Thrace; the names were Italian, but wishing still further to

ensure its success, Jonson changed them, and brought the scenes to

London. Nevertheless, he was still attacked about his Italian story.

There seems, then, to have been as great an objection to works of

imagination based on foreign plots as in the present day. In

“Volpone,” Jonson carefully avoided introducing any material not

purely English.

He was still a struggling author, with few friends except players

and playwrights, and with many enemies, owing to his vehemence of

temper and imprudence of speech. But of his animosity to Shakspeare,

and of the poet’s alienation from him, there seems no proof; and

indeed Shakspeare is reported to have stood godfather to one of his

children--although the improbable anecdote connected with that act

is discredited by Gifford.

Jonson’s acquaintance with Shakspeare is stated by Rowe to have

begun with “a remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature on the

part of the immortal bard.” Jonson, who was then, as Rowe observes,

“entirely unknown to the world,” had offered “Every Man in his

Humour” for representation; it was carelessly looked over, and

returned in a supercilious manner by the person who had read it,

with the uncourteous answer “that it would be of no use to the

company.” Happily, however, Shakspeare chanced to cast his eyes on

the manuscript, and found in the play something that powerfully

engaged his attention. Generous, as well as gifted, he recommended

both Jonson and his drama to the attention of the actors, and to

that of the public also.[205]

Footnote 205:

Rowe’s “Life of Shakspeare,” p. xxxiii.

The old play, with the Italian names, the scene laid at Florence,

had been first brought out at the Rose Theatre; and it was,

apparently, the amended drama, which, from the numerous alterations,

had become again Jonson’s property, according to the custom of the

time, that attracted the notice of Shakspeare.[206] Be that as it

may, “Every Man in his Humour” was acted at Blackfriars in 1598, and

Shakspeare’s name appears at the head of it as one of the

performers. This was about sixteen years before the Bard of Avon

sought for repose on the banks of his beloved river, and in his

native town.

Footnote 206:

Gifford, p. 2.

Henceforth the literary world was divided by the factions which

penetrate even into the studies of the lettered; and a sort of

rivalship was set up, in which, it appears, the partisans of the two

great dramatists were far more rife than the parties concerned.

The contending critics endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense

of the other. Pope observes, “It is ever the nature of parties to be

in extremes; and nothing is so probable as that, because Ben Jonson

had much the more learning, it was said on the one hand that

Shakspeare had none at all; and because Shakspeare had much the most

wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other that Jonson wanted both;

because Shakspeare borrowed nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson

borrowed everything; because Jonson did not write extempore, he was

reproached with being a year about every piece; and because

Shakspeare wrote with ease and facility, they cry’d he never once

made a blot.”[207]

Footnote 207:

Pope’s “Essay on Shakespere,” prefixed to the Oxford edition, p.

xix., 1745.

Yet, without attempting to enter into a controversy long since

passed away, and doubtful in origin and extent, it is satisfactory

to find Jonson’s vindication from unworthy motives in his famous

lines, “To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William

Shakespere, and what he hath left us:” in which he truly calls him

the “Soul of the Age.”

Jonson’s “Every Man in his Humour” was honoured, after it had been

played several times, by the presence of Queen Elizabeth, who was

one of Jonson’s earliest patrons. Nevertheless, in “Cynthia’s

Revels,” which was brought out during the following year, the poet

satirized the formal and affected manners of the Court.

Whitehall was never gay after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots;

the joyousness of Elizabeth’s nature, which she had inherited from

her father, was gone.

When mirth went out, pedantry came in. Euphüism was for a time in

vogue; the Queen, pensive one hour, fretful the next, looked

passively on the change; but to her courtiers--among whom Jonson now

began to mix--the satire in “Cynthia’s Revels” was, probably, highly

acceptable. Among the most reprehensible usages of the day was that

of bringing up children to perform on the public stage, as well as

in the Court. In 1609 authority was given to “William Shakespeare,

Robert Daborne, Nathaniel Field, and Robert Kirkham,” to provide and

instruct a certain number of children to perform in tragedies,

comedies, or masques, within the Blackfriars, or in “the realm of

England.” Shakspeare, who soon withdrew from the superintendence of

this juvenile company, has referred to them in “Hamlet,” thus

marking his disapprobation of the system.[208]

“But there is, sir, an aviary of children, little eyases that cry

out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapp’d for

it. These are now the fashion, and so besottle the common stages (so

they call them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of

goose-quills, and scarce dare come thither.”

These children were, in some respects, well cared for. They were

selected from the young choristers in the Royal Chapel, and, by an

order, so early as the reign of Edward IV., they were to be sent to

Oxford or Cambridge, on the King’s foundation, at the age of

eighteen, should their voices be changed, or the number of

choristers be over-full. “Many good people,” observes Hartley

Coleridge,[209] “who are scandalized at the Latin plays of

Westminster, will be surprised that in the pious days of England, in

the glorious morning of the Reformation, in ‘great Eliza’s golden

time,’ under Kings and Queens that were the nursing fathers and

nursing mothers, the public acting of plays should be, not the

permitted recreation, but the compulsory employment of children

devoted to sing the praises of God--of plays too, the best of which

children may now only read in a ‘family’ edition of some, whose very

titles a modern father would scruple to pronounce before a woman or

a child.”

Footnote 208:

Introduction to Massinger’s Works, p. xxxiv.

Footnote 209:

Page xxxvi.

These children were first impressed from the cathedrals by Richard

III.; and even Queen Elizabeth issued a warrant, under the

sign-manual, “authorizing Thomas Gyles,” the master of the children

of Paul’s, “to bring up any boys in cathedrals or collegiate

churches, in order to be instructed for the entertainment of the

Court.” The children of the Queen’s Chapel must, therefore,

henceforth form a principal feature in the representations of Ben

Jonson’s masques, as we picture them to our minds, either in

Whitehall--consumed by fire long since--or at Althorpe, or at

Burleigh-on-the-Hill, or in the stately Castle of Belvoir. Under

those vaulted roofs their young voices warbled the exquisite poetry

of Jonson to the music of Lawes, or--be it not recorded without

shame, nevertheless--were obliged to utter words of raillery,

bitterness, and indelicacy, which were usually, as Heywood in his

apology for actors confesses, allotted to the unconscious children

to deliver.

Greatly as Ben Jonson hailed the accession of James I., he had soon

reason to regret the wise though parsimonious Queen Elizabeth. In

conjunction with Chapman and Marston, he had written a play called

"Eastward Hoe." It was well received; but there was a passage in it

reflecting on the Scotch. The two authors were arrested; Jonson had

not any share in writing the piece, but, being accessory to its

production, he honourably and “voluntarily” accompanied his two

friends to prison, thus surrendering himself to justice. No very

severe punishment was ever contemplated, but a report prevailed that

the three delinquents were to have their ears and noses cut. Jonson

is said to have been released owing to the intercession of Camden

and Selden; and they are declared to have been present when, after

his liberation, he gave an entertainment. On that occasion his

mother “drank to him, and showed him a paper which she designed, if

the sentence had taken effect, to have been mixed with his drink,

and it was a strong and hasty poison.” To show “that she was no

churl,” Jonson, in relating this story, added, “she designed to have

first drank of it herself.”

He escaped from some other personal attack which, in common with

Chapman, he made on some individual, with only a second and also

temporary imprisonment;[210] and from this time was in such constant

requisition by the Court, that his imprudence went unnoticed. The

“Masque of Darkness” was composed by the express command of Anne of

Denmark, who appeared in it as a negress, surrounded with the dark

beauties of her supposed African Court. The Queen, and the

“Daughters of Night,” as the noble dames who acted in that pageant

were called, were placed in a concave shell, seated one above

another in tiers; from the top of the shell, which represented

mother-of-pearl, hung a cheveron of light, which cast a bright beam

on these ladies; the shell was moving up and down upon the sea, and

in the billows appeared varied forms of sea-monsters, twelve in

number, each bearing a torch on his back. The Queen was attired in

azure and silver, with a curious head-dress of feathers, fastened

with ropes of pearl, which showed well as the loops fell on the

blackened throats of the masquers, who also wore ropes of pearl on

their arms and wrists. Inigo Jones is conjectured to have written

the directions for the costume of this masque.[211] Jonson now

received periodical sums, not only from the Court, but from public

bodies and private patrons. A year seldom passed without a Royal

progress; and we have seen how essential the poet had become to the

often impromptu revelries in which James I. continually indulged.

Yet Jonson wrote his plays and masques slowly. The “Fox” took him a

year to complete. His notion was that “a good poet’s made as well as

born.”[212] He worked out his own success, and his labours were

incessant. He had a practice of committing to his commonplace book

remarkable passages that struck him. Lord Falkland, one of the most

accomplished of the cavaliers, expressed his astonishment at the

variety and extreme copiousness of Jonson’s knowledge. If a pedantic

display of learning be imputed to Jonson, it must be remembered that

it was, probably, in compliance with the taste of his royal patron,

James, who delighted in exhibiting his classical proficiency; and

who, even on his death-bed, as we have seen, answered the learned

Prelate near him in Latin. It was during the first years of King

James’s reign that Jonson justified these classic allusions in his

“Masque and Barriers,” at the nuptials of the Earl of Essex to the

faithless bride, also married afterwards to Somerset. “Some,” he

says, “may squeamishly cry out, that all endeavours of learning and

sharpness in these transitory devises, where it steps beyond their

little (or let me not wrong them) no brain at all, is superfluous. I

am contented these fastidious stomachs should leave my full tables,

and enjoy at home their clean empty trenchers, fitted for such airy

tastes, where perhaps a few Italian herbs, picked up, and made into

a sallad, may find sweeter acceptance than all the sound meat of the

world.”

Footnote 210:

Gifford, p. 23. See note by Mr. Dyce, p. 23.

Footnote 211:

Introduction to Massinger, p. xv.

Footnote 212:

“Lines on Shakespere,” p. 552; Ben Jonson’s Works.

These beautiful masques had the great advantage of being set to

music by Henry Lawes, the composer who secured immortality to his

name by the music of “Comus,” composed by him. Lawes was beginning

his career of fame when Buckingham first entered the Court. The son

of a vicar choral in Salisbury Cathedral, he rose to be first a

gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and afterwards Clerk of the Chapel,

and conductor of the private music of Charles I. Henry Lawes

sometimes took a part in the masques which he composed; and acted

the attendant spirit in “Comus.” His “ayres” and dialogues have

disappointed posterity. Yet he appears to have been almost the

father of English vocal music; and, as Milton declares--

“Taught our English music how to space

Word with just note and accent.”

Music, like all the other delights of peace, languished during the

troublous times of the Rebellion, or flourished only on the

battle-field. Lawes was obliged to teach singing during that period;

but he lived to compose the coronation anthem for Charles II., and

to have a place of interment assigned to him in Westminster Abbey.

His brother, less happy, though a skilful musician also, and often

employed in conjunction with Henry Lawes, took up arms for Charles

I., in whose service he also lived, and to whom he was devoted, and

fell, fighting for his sovereign, at the siege of Chester.

It was then the custom for certain great families to receive

musicians, as well as men of letters, in their houses, and to employ

them in their especial line--sometimes in hymeneal festivities,

sometimes in composing requiems. Thus the arts and sciences, poetry,

music, painting, and scenic decoration, were united, during the

life-time of George Villiers, in a degree never before or since

known in this country. Massinger, Ben Jonson, Lawes, Inigo Jones,

were at the service of the rich and noble, and awaited their

bidding. Shakspeare died just after George Villiers had received the

first public proof of Royal favour--the honour of knighthood;[213]

and the era of masques and revels began. Still, “a craving for

mental enjoyment,”[214] as well as that derived from the senses, was

diffused.

Footnote 213:

In 1615. Shakspeare died in 1616.

Footnote 214:

Hartley Coleridge’s “Life of Massinger.”

The religious changes and controversies in the preceding reigns had

improved the intellect of the higher orders in England, by making

some portion of learning necessary to those either engaged in

polemical disputes, or who, conscientious, though unassuming, wished

to form their own opinions. There was an earnestness in the awakened

minds of that period. “It was a time of much vice, much folly, much

trouble--but it was an age of much energy.”[215] When, after the

middle of Elizabeth’s reign, the thirst for controversy abated, the

desire for cultivation, the love of poetry, and the taste for art

remained, took another direction, and tended to the improvement and

enlightenment of social life. The higher classes did much to exalt

these dawning predilections, until the rebellion came; after that

fearful convulsion, the diversions of the great were henceforth

debased in character, and their minds in taste.

Footnote 215:

Gifford’s “Life of Ben Jonson,” p. 59.

Mary Countess of Pembroke was one of the earliest and most admired

of Ben Jonson’s friends. To her son William, the early adviser of

the Duke of Buckingham, Ben Jonson dedicated his “Book of Epigrams.”

It is therefore almost certain that, before Jonson had appeared in

public, as the composer of masques for the express entertainment of

the great favourite at Burleigh, he had met Villiers at Wilton, in

the society of their common friend, Lord Pembroke--“a man,” Lord

Clarendon writes, “very well-bred, and of excellent parts, and a

graceful speaker upon any subject, having a good proportion of

learning, and a ready wit to apply and enlarge upon it.” When we add

to this that the Earl was no cold, haughty, and pompous host, but

facetious, affable, generous, magnificent, as disinterested and

independent with the rich and great as he was unaffected and

courteous to the humble; when we remember what Wilton even then

was--the pride of the nation; when we reflect what and who were the

men who were welcomed to its hospitality--men, as Clarendon

observes, “of the most pregnant parts and understanding;” when we

think of Ben Jonson there--probably received as a guest--whilst

Massinger was still only the son of a retainer; when we picture

Inigo Jones with his pencil--the sketches which he drew, praised by

Vandyck; or hear the voices of the two brothers Henry and William

Lawes, singing to soft airs the verses of Ben Jonson--we must

believe that George Villiers had in such scenes, before he lost the

friendship of Pembroke, many delights greater than the wearisome

partiality of James, or even a communion with the then unformed mind

of Charles.

A Platonic admiration for Christian, Countess of Devonshire, called

forth in verses the romantic gallantry of the Earl of Pembroke. One

cannot help rejoicing that Lawes set to music what Pembroke wrote:--

"Wrong not, dear Empress of my heart,

The merits of true passion,

With thinking that he feels no smart

Who sues for no compassion.

. . . . . . Silence in love betrays more woe

Than words, though ne’er so witty.

The beggar that is dumb, you know,

May challenge double pity."[216]

Footnote 216:

“Royal and Noble Authors,” vol. ii., p. 268.

From the society of Wilton, Villiers went forth imbued with those

tastes which never yielded wholly to the grosser diversions in which

his Royal patron indulged. Whilst he retained the friendship of Lord

Pembroke, Villiers was, in all probability, learning to estimate the

conversation and works of Ben Jonson; and henceforth, the efforts of

the dramatist must, to a certain degree, be associated with the

influence and protection of the favourite.

London, in spite of the repeated proclamations of King James,

tending to restrain its extent, and to keep the provincial gentry in

their homes, was now generally crowded at certain seasons. A number

of small theatres were erected in various parts of the city, in

order to supply entertainments to those who would have turned with

disgust, since a finer taste had been introduced by the Reformation,

from the old moralities. Shakspeare, happily, formed an engagement

to produce his pieces at one theatre, but Jonson was obliged to

carry his productions to various minor houses, until the success of

his masques enabled him to form a higher estimate of the value of

his powers. His lighter pieces are marked by grace and sweetness;

but these characteristics he “laid aside,” says Mr. Gifford,

“whenever he approached the stage, and put on the censor with the

sock.”[217] The excellence of the masque in Ben Jonson’s time, the

great and gifted actors by whom it was performed, the fancy which

was suffered to expand itself in these pieces, the scenic effect to

which so vast an expense was devoted, incline us to think, with

Gifford, “that all our ‘most splendid shows are at best but beggarly

parodies,’ in comparison with those in which the Cliffords and

Arundels, the Stanleys, the Russells, the Veres, and the Wroths;

‘danced in the fairy rings, in the gay and gallant circles of those

enchanting devices.’”[218]

Footnote 217:

“Life of Ben Jonson,” p. 63.

Footnote 218:

Ibid., p. 67.

After the death of Shakspeare, Jonson received, by patent, a pension

of a hundred marks a-year from James. It is supposed that the honour

of the laureateship chiefly or solely belonged to him. Hitherto the

title seems to have been merely honorary, adopted at pleasure by any

poet who was appointed to write for the Court. It had been borne by

Daniel in the time of Elizabeth. It was on this occasion that Jonson

applied to Selden for information concerning the origin of the title

of laureate; and that Selden drew up expressly, and introduced into

the second part of his “Titles of Honours,” a long chapter on the

custom of giving crowns of laurel to poets; at the conclusion of

which he says, “Thus have I, by no unseasonable digression,

performed a promise to you, my beloved Ben Jonson--your curious

learning and judgment may correct where I have erred;” and adds,

“where my notes and memory have left me short.” A graceful and

enviable compliment from such a man.

The triumphs of Jonson’s genius were interrupted by his journey to

Edinburgh in 1618--a journey which he performed _on foot_. Here he

was the guest of Drummond, the poet of Hawthornden--under whose roof

he passed the April of 1619. This journey was regarded as the

greatest misfortune of Jonson’s life; not only because during his

stay in Scotland his wife died, but because Drummond, amongst other

injuries, gave the following character of Ben Jonson to the

world:--[219]

“For,” he says, “Ben Jonson was a great lover and praiser of

himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a

friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about

him, especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which

he lived; a dissembler of the parts which reigned in him, a bragger

of some good that he wanted, thinketh nothing well done but what

either he himself or some of his friends have said or done. He is

passionately kind or angry, careless either to gain or keep;

vindictive, if he be well answered as himself; interprets best

sayings and deeds often to the worst. He was for any religion, as

being versed in both.”

Footnote 219:

Gifford’s “Ben Jonson,” p. 37.

The conduct of Drummond, styled by Mr. Gifford, “a cankered

hypocrite,”[220] has been justified by others; his very hospitality

to Jonson is termed by the infuriated biographer, “decoying him into

his house.” Drummond acted, in a very slight degree, in the same

capacity to Jonson as that which Boswell, a century and a half

afterwards, undertook in regard to the more fortunate Samuel

Johnson, who found in _his_ listener an admirer, and not a foe. Both

these great men had the calamity of having every idle expression set

down for the curiosity of an after-age; and “old Ben,” as his

contemporaries called him in their jovial meetings at the Mermaid,

did not stand the test so well as “Old Samuel.” We cannot, however,

regard the visit to Scotland as the great misfortune of Ben Jonson’s

life, as the impassioned Gifford pronounces it.[221]

Footnote 220:

In Laing’s Preface to notes of Ben Jonson’s Conversation.

Footnote 221:

Note by Dyce; Gifford, p. 38.

Jonson, however, returned to London, unconscious of all that after

his death so agitated the literary world in the eighteenth century

on his account. He met, as he wrote to Drummond, with a “most

Catholic welcome from King James,” who was then, like Jonson, a not

disconsolate widower. The poet was writing a poem for the funeral of

Queen Anne, who had just died, but was unburied. He was very keenly

engaged in beginning the “Discovery,” which was to contain a

description of Scotland; and he signed himself Drummond’s “true

friend and lover.” He received, in return, two letters full of

kindness and compliment from Drummond, whom Gifford himself,

incapable of an act of insincerity, styles thereupon, “hypocrite to

the last.”

Ben Jonson was now invited by Bishop Corbet to Christ Church,

Oxford, where he was created Master of Arts. Thence he passed to

Burleigh-on-the-Hill and to Windsor, to see the performance of his

"Gypsies Metamorphosed"--and to introduce little compliments in each

piece, as the _dramatis personnæ_ were varied or augmented by the

accession of fresh actors and actresses. About this time he wrote

his poem on the “Ladies of England.” It was lost--a mischance which,

in the weakness of one’s nature, one is apt to regret more than the

destruction of a vast body of philological notes, the fruit of

twenty years’ labour, for which Mr. Gifford calls for especial

sympathy.