Edited by Hester Lees-Jeffries; introduction by Ian Donaldson.

Thomas Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England (published in 1662, following Fuller’s death in 1661) is generally regarded as the first dictionary of national biography to be attempted in England. The History is basically arranged, however, not on biographical but on geographical or (in the terminology of the day) chorographical principles, following the model set by William Camden’s Britannia and John Speed’s History of Great Britain. It provides a county-by-county description of England, with miscellaneous information concerning local wonders, commodities, manufactures, buildings, proverbs, and ‘memorable persons’, somewhat loosely defined as those who ‘are over, under, or beside the standard of common persons for strength, stature, fruitfulness, vivacity, or other observable eminence.’ On its structure and method, see Donaldson (2002b).

Fuller lists Ben Jonson amongst writers born in Westminster since the Reformation. His belief that Jonson ‘was born in this City’ (i.e. Westminster) has been challenged however by Mark Eccles: ‘As a matter of fact, wherever Jonson was born it was not in Westminster. Westminster then comprised only two parishes, St Margaret’s and St Martin’s, and the registers of neither contain any record on Jonson’s baptism. His connection with Westminster presumably began when his mother married the bricklayer who lived in Hartshorn Lane’ (Eccles (1936a), 262). Hartshorn (or Christopher) Lane, home of Jonson’s stepfather, the bricklayer Robert Brett, was an insalubrious alleyway that ran down to the Thames from the Strand, not far from Charing Cross. For its character, see Donaldson (2011), 67-8.

Evidence to support Fuller’s statement that Jonson ‘was Statutably admitted into Saint Johns-colledge in Cambridge’, sceptically received by earlier commentators (H&S, 1, 4-5, n. 1; Schoenbaum, 1970a) is advanced by Donaldson (2011), 85-7. On the possibility that Jonson helped with building work at Lincoln’s Inn, see ibid., 87-8.

Jonson’s lines to William Camden, which Fuller quotes here, are from Epigrams, 14; those ‘On My First Son’ are from Epigrams, 45. Fuller is mistaken in the year of Jonson’s death, which occurred in August 1637, not 1638.

Fuller’s vision of the so-called ‘wit-combats’ allegedly waged between Jonson and Shakespeare – taken from his account of Shakespeare, in the section of The History of the Worthies of England devoted to Warwickshire, 126 – is drawn largely from the imagination. Fuller was 8 years of age and living in Northamptonshire at the time of Shakespeare’s death in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, and had had no opportunity to ‘behold’ these supposed contests. Fuller’s account was none the less vividly remembered in later years by writers such as Carlyle (1898), 76, and became for some (e.g. Robert Cartwright, 1864) the basis for a theory of an imagined ‘warfare’ between the two writers. For Edmond Malone (1790), Fuller’s testimony served to confirm the notion of Jonson’s innate hostility towards Shakespeare: an idea vigorously contested by Gifford in ‘Proofs of Jonson’s Malignity From the Commentators on Shakespeare’ in the first volume of his edition of Jonson in 1816.

BENIAMIN JONSON was born in this City   . Though I cannot with all my industrious inquiry find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Harts-horn-lane near Charing-cross, where his Mother married a Bricklayer for her Second husband.
He was first bred in a private school in Saint Martins Church, then in Westminster school, witness his own *Epigram;
Camden, most reverend Head, to whom I owe
All that I am in Arts, all that I know.
Now nothing’s that, to whom my Country owes
The great renown and Name wherewith she goes, &c.
He was Statutably admitted into Saint Johns-colledge in Cambridge, (as many years after incorporated a honorary Member of Christ-church in Oxford, where he continued but few weeks for want of further maintenance, being fain to return to the trade of his father in law. And let not them blush that have, but those that have not a lawful calling. He help’d in the building of the new structure of Lincolns-Inn, when having a Trowell in his hand, he had a book in his pocket.
Some gentlemen pitying that his parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, did by their bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenuous inclinations. Indeed his parts were not so ready to run of themselves as able to answer the spur, so that it may be truly said of him, that he had an Elaborate wit wrought out by his own industry. He would sit silent in learned company, and suck in (besides wine) their several humors into his observation. What was ore in others, he was able to refine to himself.
He was paramount in the Dramatique part of Poetry, and taught the Stage an exact conformity to the laws of Comedians. His Comedies were above the Volge, (which are onely tickled with down right obscenity) and took not so well at the first stroke as at the rebound, when beheld the second time; yea they will endure reading, and that with due commendation, so long as either ingenuity or learning are fashionable in our Nation. If his later be not so spriteful and vigorous as his first pieces, all that are old will, and all that desire to be old, should excuse him therein.
He was not very happy in his children, and most happy in those which died first, though none lived to survive him. This he bestowed as part of an Epitaph on his eldest Son, dying in infancy.
*Rest in soft peace and Ask’d, say here doth lye,
Ben Johnson his best piece of Poetry.
He dyed Anno Domini 1638. And was buried about the Belfry in the Abby-church at Westminster.

[From the account of Shakespeare in the "Warwick-Shire" section]

He was an eminent instance of the truth of that Rule, Poeta non fit, sed nascitur, one is not made but born a Poet. Indeed his Learning was very little, so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any Lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so nature it self was all the art which was used upon him. Many were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Johnson , which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion, and an English man of War ; Master Johnson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid, but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear with the English-man of War , lesser in bulk , but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention.

Bibliography
Cartwright, R. (1864)
Donaldson, I. (2002b)
Donaldson, I. (2011)
Eccles, M. (1936a)
Shakespeare, W., ed. E. Malone (1790)
Schoenbaum, S. (1970a)