Informations to William Drummond | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

Edited by Ian Donaldson

INTRODUCTION

During the final stages of his journey to Scotland in 1618–19 (see Life, vol. 1), Jonson ventured seven miles south of Edinburgh to visit the poet and scholar William Drummond, Laird of Hawthornden, at his isolated home on the River Esk. Jonson probably arrived at Hawthornden Castle in late December 1618, and stayed with Drummond for just over a fortnight. A letter from Drummond of 17 January suggests his recent departure (Letter (f)). A few days later, Jonson began his long trek back to London, where he would finally arrive in early May (see Letter 13).

William Drummond (1585–1649) was a bachelor thirteen years junior to Jonson. He had originally trained in the law, graduating from ‘the Tounes College’ (the recently established Edinburgh University) in 1605, before proceeding to Paris and Bourges for further study. He was a learned and cultivated man, being widely read in French, Italian, English, and classical literature. On the death of his father in 1610, Drummond abandoned the Scottish bar and retired to Hawthornden Castle, devoting himself to poetry, scholarship, and harmless scientific pursuits. He assembled a remarkable collection of books (admirably studied by MacDonald, 1971), which would no doubt have attracted Jonson’s keenest interest. Many of the comments recorded in the Informations concern authors whose works Drummond is known to have possessed, which Jonson must have examined attentively during his time at Hawthornden.

It was once assumed that Jonson’s primary reason for journeying to Scotland was to meet with Drummond. Gifford in his edition of 1816 went so far as to suggest that Drummond had treacherously ‘lured’ Jonson to Hawthornden in order to ply him with drink, and to expose his most indiscreet opinions to the world. Jonson had other motives for undertaking the journey to Scotland, though his meeting with Drummond would certainly have been a highlight of his tour (Masson, 1873, 1893; Donaldson, 1993). He would have heard much about Drummond from his Scottish friends in London: from Sir Robert Aytoun, for example, poet and gentleman of King James’s bedchamber, with whom Jonson was on close and affectionate terms (Informations, 120 and n.), and from Drummond’s own brother-in-law, William Fowler, who, like Aytoun, had served as private secretary to Queen Anne, and been closely involved in arrangements for the performance of Jonson’s court masques. Drummond, who took an intense interest in contemporary writers in England as well as Scotland, would in turn have heard much about Jonson. He had purchased a 1607 quarto text of Volpone, and had somewhat mysteriously noted Jonson’s epigrams among the ‘books read by me, anno 1612’. There is no surviving edition of the Epigrams prior to their appearance in Jonson’s 1616 folio, but it is conceivable that the two men had met in London, which Drummond visited in 1610, and that Drummond had read Jonson’s epigrams in manuscript.

The Informations are Drummond’s private record of the anecdotes and opinions delivered by his famous guest during his stay at Hawthornden. The notes were probably made during Jonson’s visit, and shortly after his departure. They are loosely arranged by topics into nineteen sections, the last of which contains a couple of poems sent by Jonson as a thank-you gift after leaving Hawthornden, and a final eloquent assessment by Drummond of the character of his departed guest. That they were not intended for publication is implied by Drummond’s compressed and at times ambiguous syntax, by the general casualness of their arrangement, which involves frequent repetition, and by the inclusion of a number of anecdotes of a kind that Drummond would hardly have judged suitable for wider distribution. His occasionally sceptical notes on Jonson’s more forceful opinions (‘All this was to no purpose, for he neither doth understand French nor Italian’, 53, etc.) sound more like private murmurings than considered verdicts intended for delivery to a wider public. In 1619 Jonson was Britain’s most celebrated writer, and represented an important link with the London literary world and the court circle. Drummond stood to gain little from trumpeting such personal reflections to the world.

As his alternative titles jotted on the surviving outer leaf of the original manuscript suggest (see collations), Drummond was interested not merely in Jonson’s ‘informations’ – his gossip and opinions – but in his manners as well: a word used in a now-obsolete sense, stronger than its standard modern meaning: ‘A person’s habitual behaviour or conduct, especially in reference to its moral aspect; moral character; morals’ (OED, Manners n. 4 †a). Yet for the most part Drummond keeps his own opinions well out of view. The title bestowed upon these notes in more recent times, Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden, is not only at variance with Drummond’s own (alternative) titles, but misleading in its suggestion that the notes record a dialogue or exchange of views between the two men. The opinions noted are unvaryingly those of Jonson himself, though the narrative voice, strongly coloured by Scotticisms – ‘Informations’, ‘insisted in’ (74), ‘intend a suit’ (162), ‘delated’ (207), ‘mistered’ (361), ‘side’ (383) – is clearly that of Drummond. (The Scottish voice is more audible in the unmodernized text, which begins, ‘that he hath ane jntention to perfect ane Epicke Poem . . .’.)

Conversations (and contentions) there must certainly have been during Jonson’s stay at Hawthornden, but they are not explicitly evident in Drummond’s record. The two men had much in common: a love of classical and contemporary literature, of books, gossip, jokes, anecdotes, imprese (457n.), and curiosities of scholarship. Their surviving correspondence shows their continuingly affectionate mutual regard. But there were also sharp temperamental differences between them, differences that are partly explicable in terms of nationality and location. To Drummond, Jonson was too little interested in Scottish literary achievement, thinking ‘nothing well but what either he himself or some of his friends and countrymen hath said or done’ (558–9). Jonson for his part seems to have thought Drummond out of touch with the literary fashions of London, and beguiled by the wrong poetic models. His verses ‘smelled too much of the schools, and were not after the fancy of the time’ (76–7). A keen admirer and adaptor of Petrarch’s verse, Drummond had come to be known as ‘the Scottish Petrarch’. To Jonson, the Italian vogue was passé, and his comments on Petrarch as recorded by Drummond are all determinedly negative. (For the larger context of this cultural argument, see Jack, 1986, 13–21.) In A Character of Several Authors, written c. 1612–16, Drummond had reckoned Sir Philip Sidney as the greatest of British poets, followed by Sir William Alexander and Samuel Daniel (‘for sweetness in rhyming, second to none’). Though Jonson too held a high opinion of Sidney’s work (see Discoveries, 651–2, 1274–6, 1813ff, Epigr. 103, Forest 2.13–14, Forest 14.41–2, etc.), he chose at Hawthornden to speak limitingly of Sidney’s writing – and even of his personal appearance, ‘his face being spoiled with pimples’ (173–4) – as if to modify Drummond’s uncritical exuberance. Jonson commented adversely on other writers whom Drummond favoured: Samuel Daniel (‘a good honest man . . . but no poet’, 16) and Sir William Alexander (who ‘was not half kind unto him, and neglected him, because a friend to Drayton’, 118–19) and spoke coolly about the work of Michael Drayton himself, whose Poly-Olbion Drummond had extravagantly praised as ‘the only epic poem England, in my judgement, hath to be proud of; to be the author of which I had rather have the praise than, as Aquinas said of his Fathers’ commentaries, to have the seignory of Paris’ (Newdigate, 1941, 183). Drummond was a warm admirer of the learned George Buchanan, sometime tutor to the young James Ⅵ and Ⅰ. Jonson deflatingly remarked that he himself had told King James that ‘his master, Mr G. Buchanan, had corrupted his ear when young, and learned him to sing verses when he should have read them’ (442–3).

Many of Jonson’s literary opinions as reported in the Informations may best be regarded not as fixed and final positions, but as ripostes or provocations uttered in the course of more lengthy discussions between the two men. The notorious remark ‘That Shakespeare wanted art’ (35) was regarded with outrage by many readers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as an envious comment by Jonson on his great contemporary (J. Dennis, Critical Works, ed. Hooker, 1943, 2.428–31). It is more plausibly seen as a particular conversational moment within a larger debate about Shakespeare’s qualities, whose larger context Drummond chooses not to record (Donaldson, 1997a, ch. 2). Jonson’s fuller views of the quality of Shakespeare’s genius were to be set out more spaciously in the great poem to his memory prefixed to the 1623 First Folio, where Shakespeare’s art is singled out for specific praise (‘Shakes. Beloved’ (5.636–42), lines 55ff.).

Drummond’s notes did not see the light of day for nearly a century after Jonson’s visit to Scotland, being finally published in a severely abridged and re-ordered form in the 1711 folio edition of Drummond’s verse and prose, edited by Bishop John Sage and Thomas Ruddiman. The original manuscript has vanished, and may well have perished in a fire at Penicuik House in 1899 (Bland, 2005b; see Textual Essay). Some time between 1828 and 1832, however, David Laing discovered in the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh a transcript of the Informations among the papers of the Scottish antiquary and physician Sir Robert Sibbald (1641–1722). The genuineness of this transcript, which Sibbald appears to have made around 1700–2, is not in doubt (Simpson, 1926, Hett, 1932). It is almost three times the length of the text in the 1711 folio, and is organized in a quite different manner, often presenting significantly different readings. The transcript includes, especially in the later sections, a large number of jokes, anecdotes, and apophthegms (or pithy sayings) that are not to be found in the folio text. Drummond chose to keep another record of several of these items (with further textual variants) in a separate notebook of miscellaneous lore, now in the National Library of Scotland, which he entitled Democritie: A Labyrinth of Delight. Transcriptions and/or photographic reproductions of all these texts can be found in the Electronic Edition. A detailed analysis of their character and relationship is provided in the Textual Essay (also in the Electronic Edition), together with an account of the procedures followed in this edition. The present text is taken from Sir Robert Sibbald’s manuscript (‘Sibbald’), with occasional emendations from the 1711 edition of Drummond’s Works (‘Sage’) and Democritie.

The Informations are a remarkable repository of (often unique) facts and gossip about the life of Jonson and his contemporaries. The laconic and at times ambiguous nature of Drummond’s remarks also frequently presents formidable difficulties of interpretation, as indicated from time to time in the notes. To present the Informations in a modernized text is inevitably to close off certain interpretative possibilities; readers wishing to savour the full complexity of the text are advised also to consult the discussions and texts provided in the Electronic Edition.

A dramatized version of the Informations – entitled ‘Conversations with Ben Jonson’ – was presented by members of the National Theatre, London, before performances of Bartholomew Fair in the Olivier Theatre in February 1989 (see Walker, 1989).

INFORMATIONS TO WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN

1. That he had an intention to perfect an epic poem, entitled Heroologia, of the

worthies of his country roused by fame, and was to dedicate it to his country. It is

all in couplets, for he detesteth all other rhymes. Said he had written a discourse

of poesy both against Campion and Daniel, especially this last, where he proves

couplets to be the bravest sort of verses, especially when they are broken, like 5

hexameters; and that cross-rhymes and stanzas – because the purpose would lead

him beyond eight lines to conclude – were all forced.

2. He recommended to my reading Quintilian (who, he said, would tell me the

faults of my verses as if he had lived with me) and Horace, Plinius Secundus’

Epistles, Tacitus, Juvenal, Martial, whose epigram Vitam quae faciunt beatiorem etc.10

he hath translated.

3. His censure of the English poets was this: that Sidney did not keep a decorum

in making everyone speak as well as himself.

Spenser’s stanzas pleased him not, nor his matter, the meaning of which

allegory he had delivered in papers to Sir Walter Ralegh. 15

Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, had no children, but no poet.

That Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, if he had performed what he promised,

to write the deeds of all the worthies, had been excellent. His long verses pleased

him not.

That Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas was not well done, and that he wrote 20

his verses before it ere he understood to confer.

Nor that of Fairfax his.

That the translations of Homer and Virgil in long Alexandrines were but

prose.

That John Harington’s Ariosto under all translations was the worst. 25

That when Sir John Harington desired him to tell the truth of his epigrams,

he answered him that he loved not the truth, for they were narrations, and not

epigrams.

That Warner, since the King’s coming to England, had marred all his Albion’s

England. 30

That Donne’s Anniversary was profane, and full of blasphemies. That he told

Mr Donne, if it had been written of the Virgin Mary it had been something; to

which he answered that he described the idea of a woman, and not as she was.

That Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging.

That Shakespeare wanted art. 35

That Sharpham, Day, Dekker, were all rogues, and that Minsheu was one.

That Abraham Fraunce in his English hexameters was a fool.

That next himself only Fletcher and Chapman could make a masque.

4. His judgement of stranger poets was:

That he thought not Bartas a poet but a verser, because he wrote not 40

fiction.

He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like

that tyrant’s bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long

cut short.

That Guarini in his Pastor Fido kept not decorum in making shepherds speak 45

as well as himself could.

That Lucan, taken in parts, was good divided; read altogether, merited not

the name of a poet.

That Bonefonius’ Vigilium Veneris was excellent.

That he told Cardinal Duperron (at his being in France, anno 1613) who show 50

him his translations of Virgil, that they were naught.

That the best pieces of Ronsard were his odes.

All this was to no purpose, for he neither doth understand French nor Italian.

5. He read his translation of that ode of Horace, Beatus ille qui procul negotiis, etc.,

and admired it. 55

Of an epigram of Petronius, Foeda et brevis est Veneris voluptas, concluding it was

better to lie still and kiss than spend.

To me he read the preface of his Art of Poesy, upon Horace’s Art of Poesy, where

he hath an apology of a play of his, St Bartholomew’s Fair. By Criticus is understood

Donne. There is an epigram of Sir Edward Herbert’s before it. That, he said, he 60

had done in my Lord Aubigny’s house ten years since, anno 1604.

The most commonplace of his repetition was a dialogue pastoral between a

shepherd and a shepherdess about singing; another, Parabosco’s Parian with his

letter; that epigram ‘Of Gut’; my Lady Bedford’s buck; his verses of drinking,

‘Drink to me but with thine eyes’, ‘Swell me a bowl’, etc.; his verses of a kiss: 65

But kiss me once, and, faith, I will be gone;

And I will touch as harmless as the bee

That doth but taste the flower, and flee away.

That is but half a one;

What should be done but once should be done long. 70

He read a satire of a lady come from the bath; verses on the pucelle of the

court, Mistress Bulstrode, whose epitaph Donne made; a satire, telling there was

no abuses to write a satire of, in which he repeateth all the abuses in England and

the world. He insisted in that of Martial’s, Vitam quae faciunt beatiorem.

6. His censure of my verses was that they were all good, especially my epitaph of 75

the Prince, save that they smelled too much of the schools, and were not after the

fancy of the time; for a child, says he, may write after the fashion of the Greeks

and Latin verses in running; yet that he wished, to please the King, that piece of

‘Forth Feasting’ had been his own.

7. He esteemeth John Donne the first poet in the world in some things. His verses 80

of the lost chain he hath by heart; and that passage of ‘The Calm’, that dust and

feathers do not stir, all was so quiet. Affirmeth Donne to have written all his best

pieces ere he was twenty- five years old.

Sir Edward Wotton’s verses of a happy life he hath by heart, and a piece of

Chapman’s translation of the thirteenth of The Iliads, which he thinketh well 85

done.

That Donne said to him he wrote that epitaph on Prince Henry, ‘Look to me,

faith’, to match Sir Ed. Herbert in obscureness.

He hath by heart some verses of Spenser’s Calendar, about wine, between Colin

and Percy. 90

8. The conceit of Donne’s ‘Transformation’ or μετεμψυχοσις was that he sought

the soul of that apple which Eva pulled, and thereafter made it the soul of a bitch,

then of a she-wolf, and so of a woman. His general purpose was to have brought

in all the bodies of the heretics from the soul of Cain, and at last left it in the

body of Calvin. Of this he never wrote but one sheet, and now, since he was made 95

doctor, repenteth highly, and seeketh to destroy all his poems.

9. That Petronius, Plinius Secundus, Tacitus speak best Latin; that Quintilian’s

sixth, seventh, eighth books were not only to be read, but altogether digested.

Juvenal, Persius, Horace, Martial, for delight; and so was Pindar. For health,

Hippocrates. 100

Of their nation, Hooker’s Ecclesiastical History (whose children are now beggars)

for church matters. Selden’s Titles of Honour for antiquities here; and one book of

The Gods of the Gentiles, whose names are in the scripture, of Selden’s.

Tacitus, he said, wrote the secrets of the council and senate, as Suetonius did

those of the cabinet and court. 105

10. For a heroic poem, he said, there was no such ground as King Arthur’s fiction,

and that Sir P. Sidney had an intention to have transformed all his Arcadia to the

stories of King Arthur.

11. His acquaintance and behaviour with poets living with him.

Daniel was at jealousies with him. 110

Drayton feared him, and he esteemed not of him.

That Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his own verses.

That Sir John Roe loved him; and when they two were ushered by my Lord

Suffolk from a masque, Roe wrote a moral epistle to him which began, ‘That next

to plays, the court and the state were the best. God threateneth kings, kings lords, 115

and lords do us.’

He beat Marston, and took his pistol from him.

Sir W. Alexander was not half kind unto him, and neglected him, because a

friend to Drayton.

That Sir R. Aytoun loved him dearly. 120

Nat Field was his scholar, and he had read to him the satires of Horace, and

some epigrams of Martial.

That Markham, who added his English Arcadia, was not of the number of the

faithful, i.e. poets, and but a base fellow.

That such were Day and Middleton. 125

That Chapman and Fletcher were loved of him.

Overbury was first his friend, then turned his mortal enemy.

12. Particulars of the actions of other poets, and apophthegms.

That the Irish, having robbed Spenser’s goods and burnt his house and a little

child new-born, he and his wife escaped, and after he died for lack of bread in 130

King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, and said

he was sorry he had no time to spend them.

That in that paper Sir W. Ralegh had of the allegories of his Faerie Queene, by

the Blating Beast the puritans were understood; by the false Duessa, the Queen

of Scots. 135

That Southwell was hanged; yet so he had written that piece of his, ‘The

Burning Babe’, he would have been content to destroy many of his.

Frank Beaumont died ere he was thirty years of age.

Sir John Roe was an infinite spender, and used to say, when he had no more to

spend he could die. He died in his arms of the pest, and he furnished his charges, 140

£20; which was given him back.

That Drayton was challenged for entitling one book Mortimeriados.

That Sir J. Davies played in an epigram on Drayton, who in a sonnet concluded

his mistress might have been the ninth worthy; and said he used a phrase like

Dametas in Arcadia, who said for wit, his mistress might be a giant. 145

Donne’s grandfather on the mother side was Heywood the epigrammatist.

That Donne himself, for not being understood, would perish.

That Sir W. Ralegh esteemed more of fame than conscience. The best wits of

England were employed for making of his History. Ben himself had written a piece

to him of the Punic War, which he altered and set in his book. Sir W. hath written 150

the life of Queen Elizabeth, of which there is copies extant.

Sir P. Sidney had translated some of the psalms which went abroad under the

name of the Countess of Pembroke.

Marston wrote his father-in-law’s preachings, and his father-in-law his

comedies. 155

Shakespeare in a play brought in a number of men saying they had suffered

shipwreck in Bohemia, where there is no sea near by some hundred miles.

Daniel wrote Civil Wars, and yet hath not one battle in all his book.

The Countess of Rutland was nothing inferior to her father, Sir P. Sidney, in

poesy. Sir Th. Overbury was in love with her, and caused Ben to read his Wife to 160

her, which he, with an excellent grace, did, and praised the author. That the morn

thereafter he discorded with Overbury, who would have him to intend a suit that

was unlawful. The lines my lady kept in remembrance, ‘He comes too near, who

comes to be denied.’ Beaumont wrote that elegy on the death of the Countess of

Rutland, and in effect her husband wanted the half of his – in his travels. 165

Owen is a poor pedantic schoolmaster, sweeping his living from the posteriors

of little children, and hath nothing good in him, his epigrams being bare

narrations.

Chapman hath translated Musaeus in his verses like his Homer.

Fletcher and Beaumont ten years since hath written The Faithful Shepherdess, a 170

tragicomedy well done.

Dyer died unmarried.

Sir P. Sidney was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being spoiled with

pimples, and of high blood, and long. That my Lord Lisle (now Earl of Worcester)

his eldest son resembleth him. 175

13. Of his own life, education, birth, actions.

His grandfather came from Carlisle, and he thought from Annandale to it; he

served King Henry Ⅷ, and was a gentleman. His father lost all his estate under

Queen Mary; having been cast in prison and forfeited, at last turned minister.

So he was a minister’s son. He himself was posthumous born, a month after 180

his father’s decease; brought up poorly, put to school by a friend (his master,

Camden); after taken from it, and put to another craft (I think was to be a wright

or bricklayer), which he could not endure. Then went he to the Low Countries, but

returning soon he betook himself to his wonted studies. In his service in the Low

Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy and taken opima 185

spolia from him; and since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he

had killed his adversary, which had hurt him in the arm, and whose sword was

ten inches longer than his; for the which he was imprisoned, and almost at the

gallows. Then took he his religion by trust of a priest who visited him in prison.

Thereafter he was twelve years a papist. 190

He was Master of Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his study.

He married a wife who was a shrew yet honest. Five years he had not bedded

with her, but remained with my Lord Aubigny.

In the time of his close imprisonment under Queen Elizabeth, his judges

could get nothing of him to all their demands but ‘ay’ and ‘no’. They placed two 195

damned villains to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertised by

his keeper. Of the spies he hath an epigram.

When the King came in England, at that time the pest was in London. He being

in the country at Sir Robert Cotton’s house with old Camden, he saw in a vision his

eldest son, then a child and at London, appear unto him with the mark of a bloody 200

cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword; at which, amazed, he

prayed unto God; and in the morning he came to Mr Camden’s chamber to tell

him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy, at which he

should not be disjected. In the mean time comes there letters from his wife of the

death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him, he said, of a manly shape, 205

and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the Resurrection.

He was delated by Sir James Murray to the King for writing something

against the Scots in a play, Eastward Ho!, and voluntarily imprisoned himself with

Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. The report was that

they should then had their ears cut and noses. After their delivery he banqueted 210

all his friends: there was Camden, Selden, and others. At the midst of the feast his

old mother drank to him, and show him a paper which she had, if the sentence

had taken execution, to have mixed in the prison among his drink, which was

full of lusty strong poison. And that she was no churl, she told she minded first

to have drunk of it herself. 215

He had many quarrels with Marston: beat him, and took his pistol from him;

wrote his Poetaster on him. The beginning of them were that Marston represented

him in the stage.

In his youth given to venery. He thought the use of a maid nothing in comparison

to the wantonness of a wife, and would never have another mistress. He 220

said two accidents strange befell him: one, that a man made his own wife to court

him, whom he enjoyed two years ere he knew of it, and one day finding them by

chance, was passingly delighted with it; another, lay divers times with a woman

who show him all that he wished except the last act, which she would never agree

unto. 225

Sir W. Ralegh sent him governor with his son, anno 1613, to France. This youth,

being knavishly inclined, among other pastimes (as the setting of the favour of

damsels on a cod-piece), caused him to be drunken and dead drunk, so that he

knew not where he was; thereafter laid him on a car which he made to be drawn

by pioneers through the streets, at every corner showing his governor stretched 230

out, and telling them that was a more lively image of the crucifix than any they

had; at which sport young Ralegh’s mother delighted much, saying, his father

young was so inclined; though the father abhorred it.

He can set horoscopes, but trusts not in them. He, with the consent of a friend,

cozened a lady with whom he had made an appointment to meet an old astrologer 235

in the suburbs, which she kept; and it was himself disguised in a long gown and

a white beard at the light of dim-burning candle, up in a little cabinet reached

unto by a ladder.

Every first day of the new year he had £20 sent him from the Earl of Pembroke

to buy books. 240

After he was reconciled with the church and left off to be a recusant, at his first

communion, in token of true reconciliation, he drank out all the full cup of wine.

Being at the end of my Lord Salisbury’s table with Inigo Jones, and demanded

by my lord why he was not glad, ‘My lord’, said he, ‘You promised I should dine

with you, but I do not’, for he had none of his meat. He esteemed only that his 245

meat which was of his own dish.

He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about

which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his

imagination.

Northampton was his mortal enemy for brawling, on a St George’s Day, one 250

of his attenders. He was called before the Council for his Sejanus, and accused both

of popery and treason by him.

Sundry times he hath devoured his books, i.e. sold them all for necessity.

He hath a mind to be a churchman, and so he might have favour to make one

sermon to the King, he careth not what thereafter should befall him; for he would 255

not flatter, though he saw death.

At his hither coming, Sir Francis Bacon said to him he loved not to see poesy

go on other feet than poetical dactylus and spondaius.

14. His narrations of great ones.

He never esteemed of a man for the name of a lord. 260

Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass; they

painted her, and sometimes would vermilion her nose. She had always, about

Christmas evens, set dice that threw sixes or five (and she knew not they were

other) to make her win and esteem herself fortunate. That she had a membrana on

her which made her uncapable of man, though for her delight she tried many. At 265

the coming over of Monsieur, there was a French surgeon who took in hand to cut

it, yet fear stayed her, and his death. King Philip had intention by dispensation

of the Pope to have married her.

Sir P. Sidney’s mother, Leicester’s sister, after she had the little pox never show

herself in court thereafter but masked. 270

The Earl of Leicester gave a bottle of liquor to his lady which he willed her to

use in any faintness; which she, after his return from court, not knowing it was

poison, gave him; and so he died.

Salisbury never cared for any man longer nor he could make use of him.

My Lord Lisle’s daughter, my Lady Wroth, is unworthily married on a jealous 275

husband.

Ben one day being at table with my Lady Rutland, her husband coming in,

accused her that she kept table to poets; of which she wrote a letter to him, which

he answered. My lord intercepted the letter, but never challenged him.

My lord chancellor of England wringeth his speeches from the strings of his 280

band, and other councillors from the picking of their teeth.

Pembroke and his lady discoursing, the Earl said the women were men’s

shadows, and she maintained them. Both appealing to Jonson, he affirmed it

true; for which my lady gave a penance to prove it in verse; hence his epigram.

Essex wrote that epistle or preface before the translation of the last part of 285

Tacitus, which is A.B. The last book the gentleman durst not translate for the evil

it contains of the Jews.

The King said Sir P. Sidney was no poet; neither did he see ever any verses in

England to the Sculler’s.

It were good that half of the preachers of England were plain ignorants, for 290

that either in their sermons they flatter, or strive to show their own eloquence.

15. His opinion of verses.

That he wrote all his first in prose, for so his master Camden had learned him.

That verses stood by sense without either colours or accent; which yet other

times he denied. 295

A great many epigrams were ill because they expressed in the end what should

have been understood by what was said: that of Sir John Davies.

Some loved running verses, plus mihi comma placet.

He imitated the description of a night from Bonefonius’s Vigilium Veneris.

He scorned such verses as could be transponed: 300

Where is the man that never yet did hear

Of fair Penelope, Ulysses’ queen?

Of fair Penelope, Ulysses’ queen,

Where is the man that never yet did hear?

16. Of his works. 305

That the half of his comedies were not in print.

He hath a pastoral entitled The May-lord. His own name is Alken; Ethra,

the Countess of Bedford’s; Mogibell, Overbury; the old Countess of Suffolk, an

enchantress; other names are given to Somerset’s lady, Pembroke, the Countess

of Rutland, Lady Wroth. In his first story, Alken cometh in mending his broken 310

pipe. Contrary to all other pastorals, he bringeth the clowns making mirth and

foolish sports.

He hath intention to write a fisher or pastoral play, and set the stage of it in

the Lomond Lake.

That epithalamium that wants a name in his printed Works was made at the 315

Earl of Essex’s marriage.

He is to write his foot pilgrimage hither, and to call it A Discovery.

In a poem he calleth Edinburgh ‘The heart of Scotland, Britain’s other eye’.

A play of his upon which he was accused, The Devil Is an Ass: according to comedia

vetus in England, the devil was brought in either with one Vice or other; the play 320

done, the devil carried away the Vice. He brings in the devil so overcome with the

wickedness of this age that thought himself an ass. Παρϱερϱγως is discoursed of the

Duke of Drownland. The King desired him to conceal it.

He hath commented and translated Horace, Art of Poesy. It is in dialogue ways;

by Criticus he understandeth Dr Donne. The old book that goes about, The Art 325

of English Poesy, was done twenty years since, and kept long in writ as a secret.

He had an intention to have made a play like Plautus’ Amphitruo, but left it

off for that he could never find two so like others that he could persuade the

spectators they were one.

17. Of his jests and apophthegms. 330

At what time Henry the Fourth turned Catholic, Pasquil had in his hand a

book, and was asked by Morphorius what it was. He told him it was grammar.

‘Why do ye study grammar, being so old?’ asked Morphorius. ‘Because’, answered

he, ‘I have found a positive that hath no superlative, and a superlative that wants

a positive: the King of Spain is Rex Catholicus, and is not Catholicissimus; and 335

the French King Christianissimus, yet is not Christianus.’

When they drank on him, he cited that of Pliny, that they had called him ad

prandium, non ad poenam et notam.

One said of that panegyrist who wrote panegyrics in acrostics, windows,

crosses, that he was homo miserrimae patientiae. 340

He scorned anagrams, and had ever in his mouth

Turpe est difficiles amare nugas,

Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.

A cook who was of an evil life, when a minister told him he would to hell,

asked what torment was there. Being answered ‘Fire’ – ‘Fire!’ said he, ‘that is my 345

play-fellow.’

A lord playing at tennis, and having asked those in the gallery whether a stroke

was chase or loss, a brother of my Lord Northumberland’s answered it was loss.

The lord demanded if he did say it. ‘I say it’, said he; ‘what are you?’ ‘I have played

your worth!’ said the lord. ‘Ye know not the worth of a gentleman!’ replied the 350

other. And it proved so, for ere he died he was greater than the other. Another

English lord lost all his game if he had seen a face that liked him not; he struck

his balls at that gallery.

An Englishman who had maintained Democritus’ opinion of atoms, being

old wrote a book to his son, who was not then six years of age, in which he left him 355

arguments to maintain and answer objections for all that was in his book; only if

they objected obscurity against his book, he bid him answer that his father, above

all names in the world, hated most the name of Lucifer; and all open writers were

Luciferi.

Butler excommunicated from his table all reporters of long poems, wilful 360

disputers, tedious discoursers. The best banquets were those where they mistered

no musicians to cherish them.

The greatest sport he saw in France was the picture of our Saviour with the

Apostles eating the paschal lamb that was all larded.

At a supper where a gentlewoman had given him unsavoury wild-fowl, and 365

thereafter, to wash, sweet water, he commended her that she gave him sweet

water, because her flesh stinked.

He said to Prince Charles of Inigo Jones, that when he wanted words to express

the greatest villain in the world, he would call him an Inigo.

Jones having accused him for naming him behind his back a fool, he denied 370

it; but, says he, ‘I said he was an arrant knave, and I avouch it.’

One who fired a tobacco pipe with a ballad the next day having a sore head,

swore he had a great singing in his head, and he thought it was the ballad. A poet

should detest a ballad-maker.

He saw a picture painted by a bad painter of Esther, Haman, and Ahasuerus; 375

Haman, courting Esther in a bed after the fashion of ours, was only seen by one leg.

Ahasuerus’ back was turned, with this verse over him: ‘And wilt thou, Haman, be

so malicious as to lie with mine own wife in mine house?’

He himself being once so taken, the goodman said, ‘I would not believe ye

would abuse my house so.’ 380

In a profound contemplation a student of Oxford ran over a man in the fields,

and walked twelve miles ere he knew what he was doing.

One who wore side hair being asked of another who was bald why he suffered

his hair to grow so long, answered it was to see if his hair would grow to seed, that

he might sow of it on bald pates. 385

A painter who could paint nothing but a rose, when an innkeeper had advised

with him about an ensign, said that a horse was a good one, so was a hare, but a

rose was above them all.

A little man drinking Prince Henry’s health between two tall fellows said he

made up the H. 390

Sir Henry Wotton, before His Majesty’s going to England, being disguised

at Leith on Sunday when all the rest were at church, being interrupted of his

occupation by another wench who came in at the door, cried out, ‘Pox on thee,

for thou hast hindered the procreation of a child’, and betrayed himself.

A justice of peace would have commanded a captain to sit first at a table, 395

‘Because’, says he, ‘I am a justice of peace.’ The other, drawing his sword, commanded

him: ‘For’, saith he, ‘I am a justice of war.’

What is that, that the more you out of it groweth still the longer? – A ditch.

He used to say that they who delight to fill men extraordinary full in their

own houses loved to have their meat again. 400

A certain puritan minister would not give the communion save unto thirteen

at once, imitating (as he thought) our Master. Now when they were set, and one

bethinking himself that some of them must represent Judas, that it should not

be he, returned, and so did all the rest, understanding his thought.

A gentlewoman fell in such a fantasy or frenzy with one Mr Dod, a puritan 405

preacher, that she requested her husband that, for the procreation of an angel or

saint, he might lie with her; which having obtained, it was but an ordinary birth.

Scaliger writes an epistle to Casaubon, where he scorns the English speaking

of Latin, for he thought he had spoken English to him.

A gentleman reading a poem that began with 410

Where is that man that never yet did hear

Of fair Penelope, Ulysses’ queen?

– calling his cook, asked if he had ever heard of her, who answering ‘No’,

demonstrate to him,

Lo, there the man that never yet did hear 415

Of fair Penelope, Ulysses’ queen!

A waiting-woman, having cockered with muscadel and eggs her mistress’ page

for a she-meeting in the dark, his mistress invaded; of whom she would of such

boldness have a reason. ‘Faith, lady’, said he, ‘I have no reason, save that such was

the good pleasure of muscadel and eggs.’ 420

A judge coming along a hall and being stopped by a throng, cried, Dominum

cognoscite vestrum! One of them there said they would if he durst say the beginning

of that verse (for he had a fair wife): Actaeon ego sum! cried he, and went on.

A packet of letters which had fallen overboard was devoured of a fish that was

ta’en at Flushing, and the letters were safely delivered to him to whom they were 425

written at London.

He scorned that simplicity of Cardan about the pebble-stones of Dover, which

he thought had that virtue, kept between one’s teeth, as to save him from being

sick.

A scholar expert in Latin and Greek, but nothing in the English, said of hot 430

broth that he would ‘make the danger of it’; for it could not be ill English that

was good Latin, facere periculum.

A translator of the Emperors’ Lives translated Antonius Pius ‘Anthony Pie’.

The word ‘harlot’ was taken from ‘Arlott’, who was the mother of William the

Conqueror; a ‘rogue’ from the Latin erro, by putting a ‘g’ to it. 435

Sir Josceline Percy asked the Mayor of Plymouth whether it was his own beard

or the town’s beard that he came to welcome my lord with, for he thought it was

so long that he thought everyone of the town had eked some part to it.

That he struck at Sir Jerome Bowes’ breast, and asked him if he was within.

An epitaph was made upon one who had a long beard, ‘Here lies a man at a 440

beard’s end’, etc.

He said to the King his master, Mr G. Buchanan, had corrupted his ear when

young, and learned him to sing verses when he should have read them.

Sir Francis Walsingham said of our King, when he was ambassador in Scotland,

Hic nunquam regnabit super nos. 445

Of all his plays he never gained two hundred pounds.

He had oft this verse, though he scorned it:

So long as we may, let us enjoy this breath,

For naught doth kill a man so soon as death.

One Mr Grys told the King of a man who, being consumed, occupied his wife 450

with a dildo, and she never knew of it till one day he all sleepery had there left

his –

Heywood the epigrammatist, being apparelled in velvet by Queen Mary, with

his cap on in the presence in spite of all the gentlemen, till the Queen herself

asked him what he meant, and then he asked her if he was Heywood, for she had 455

made him so brave that he almost had misknown himself.

His impresa was a compass with one foot in centre, the other broken; the word,

deest quod duceret orbem.

Essex, after his brother’s death (Mr Devereux) in France, at tilt had a black

shield void; the word, par nulla figura dolori. Another time, when the Queen was 460

offended at him, a diamond with its own ashes with which it is cut; about it the

word, dum formas minuis.

He gave the Prince fax gloria mentis honestae.

He said to me that I was too good and simple, and that oft a man’s modesty

made a fool of his wit. 465

His arms were three spindles or rhombi; his own word about them, percontabor

or perscrutator.

His epitaph, by a companion written, is:

Here lies Benjamin Jonson dead,

And hath no more wit than goose in his head; 470

That as he was wont, so doth he still

Live by his wit, and evermore will.

Another:

Here lies honest Ben

That had not a beard on his chin. 475

18. Miscellanies.

John Stow had monstrous observations in his Chronicle, and was of his craft a

tailor.

He and I walking alone, he asked two cripples what they would have to take

him to their order. 480

In his Sejanus he hath translated a whole oration of Tacitus.

The first four books of Tacitus ignorantly done in English.

J. Selden liveth on his own, is the law-book of the judges of England, the

bravest man in all languages; his book, Titles of Honour, written to his chamber-fellow

Hayward. 485

Taylor was sent along here to scorn him.

Camden wrote that book Remains of Britain.

Joseph Hall the harbinger to Donne’s Anniversary.

The epigram of Martial In verpum he vaunts to expone.

Lucan, Sidney, Guarini make every man speak as well as themselves, forgetting 490

decorum; for Dametas sometimes speaks grave sentences.

Lucan, taken in parts, excellent; altogether, naught.

He dissuaded me from poetry, for that she had beggared him, when he might

have been a rich lawyer, physician, or merchant.

Questioned about English ‘them’, ‘they’, ‘those’: ‘they’ is still the nominative, 495

‘those’ accusative, ‘them’ neuter; collective not ‘them men’, ‘them trees’, but ‘them’

by itself referred to many. ‘Which’, ‘who’, be relatives, not ‘that’. ‘Floods’,

‘hills’, he would have masculines.

He was better versed, and knew more in Greek and Latin, than all the poets in

England, and quintessenceth their brains. 500

He made much of that epistle of Plinius where ad prandium, non ad notam is,

and that other of Messalinus, who Pliny made to be removed from the table; and

of the gross turbot.

One wrote an epigram to his father, and vaunted he had slain ten; the quantity

of decem being false, another answered the epigram, telling that decem was false. 505

Sir J. Davies’ epigram of the whore’s c– compared to a cowl.

Of all styles he loved most to be named honest, and hath of that an hundred

letters so naming him.

He had this oft:

Thy flattering picture, Phryne, is like thee 510

Only in this, that ye both painted be.

In his merry humour he was wont to name himself The Poet.

He went from Leith homeward the 25 of January 1619, in a pair of shoes which,

he told, lasted him since he came from Darnton, which he minded to take back

that far again; they were appearing like Coryate’s. The first two days he was all 515

excoriate.

If he died by the way, he promised to send me his papers of this country, hewn

as they were.

I have to send him descriptions of Edinburgh borough-laws, of the Lomond.

That piece of the pucelle of the court was stolen out of his pocket by a gentleman 520

who drank him drowsy, and given Mistress Bulstrode; which brought him great

displeasure.

19. He sent to me this madrigal:

On a lover’s dust, made sand for an hour-glass

Do but consider this small dust here running in the glass, 525

By atoms moved:

Could thou believe that this the body ever was

Of one that loved?

And in his mistress’ flaming, playing like the fly,

Turned to cinders by her eye? 530

Yes; and in death, as life, unblest,

To have it expressed

Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

And this, which is, as he said, a picture of himself:

I doubt that Love is rather deaf than blind, 535

For else it could not be

That she

Whom I adore so much should so slight me,

And cast my suit behind;

I’m sure my language to her is as sweet, 540

And all my closes meet

In numbers of as subtle feet,

As makes the youngest he

That sits in shadow of Apollo’s tree.

Oh, but my conscious fears, 545

That fly my thoughts between,

Prompt me that she hath seen

My hundred of grey hairs,

Told six-and-forty years,

Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace 550

My mountain belly, and my rocky face;

And all these through her eyes have stopped her ears.

January 19, 1619

He is 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 555

those about him (especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which

he liveth), a dissembler of ill parts which reign in him, a bragger of some good

that he wanteth, thinketh nothing well but what either he himself or some of his

friends and countrymen hath said or done. He is passionately kind and angry,

careless either to gain or keep, vindicative, but, if he be well answered, at himself. 560

For any religion, as being versed in both. Interpreteth best sayings and deeds

often to the worst. Oppressed with fantasy, which hath ever mastered his reason,

a general disease in many poets. His inventions are smooth and easy; but above

all he excelleth in a translation.

When his play of a silent woman was first acted, there was found verses after 565

on the stage against him, concluding that that play was well named The Silent

Woman: there was never one man to say plaudite to it.

FINIS

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

Informations to William Drummond of Hawthornden (1619)

Edited by Ian Donaldson

INTRODUCTION

INFORMATIONS TO WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN