that, as he explained apologetically, was when an hon. member, talking about Nootka Sound, exclaimed, "Mr. Speaker, it is impossible at this moment to look at the north-east without at the same time taking a glance at the south-west." "I bit my lips," said Lord Sidmouth, at the "Hear, hears" which greeted this sentence; but, overhearing some one behind the chair soliloquising, "By Jove, no one in the House but Wilkes could do that," I could keep my countenance no longer. I burst into a very undignified laugh. The House held its breath in horror, and I hid my blushes in my wig as well as I could." Mr. Manners Sutton, too, confessed to laughing once. It was when, in the midst of an intensely personal debate, a large rat crept out from under the Opposition Benches, and walked across the House to the Treasury Bench. "I could not resist this," said the stateliest of all the Speakers. "I broke into a horse-laugh. But I never did it again."

"SCRUTATOR," in a brochure which has attracted a good deal of attention, asks, "Who is responsible for the War?" and answers the question. His reply is able and forcible, and SYLVANUS URBAN congratulates him upon the strong case he has made out against Prussia, whom SYLVANUS thinks the future historian will call severely to account for the part she played in the initiation as well as in the ending of this most awful and cruel war. But SYLVANUS URBAN, in the "Story of the War" which he related in the Gentleman's Annual, published three months earlier than this pamphlet, and in various articles in this Magazine, had anticipated "Scrutator" in some of his strongest points. The ten items in the left-hand column below are the positions which "Scrutator" seeks to establish. The quotations in the righthand column are from the Gentleman's Magazine and the Gentleman's Annual.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

con

"We have not discovered what tingent alliances Count Bismarck may have formed, but we know that, having caused Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to be elected Hospodar of Roumania, four years ago, and having surrounded that prince with a strong army, furnished with needle-guns and officered by Prussians, he set about contriving, some months since, that the Hospodar's brother, Prince Leopold, should be nominated to the throne of Spain. Prince Leopold's wife is sister to the present King of Portugal, Prince Leopold's sister was wife to the late King of Portugal, and the young king now reigning at Lisbon married a daughter of Victor Emmanuel, Prussia's ally in the last war. There was a neat family and diplomatic combination. Italy bears the Emperor no good will, but she was not strong enough to fight her battle alone and to expel the French soldiers from Rome. But with Spain and Portugal on their side, and with Prussia in arms on the shores of the Rhine, the enemies of Napoleon might do what they pleased in Italy, and the position of France would be almost as critical as that of Austria at the beginning of the war of 1866.' -"Bismarck's Prussia," September, 1870.

In passages too long to quote, the "Story of the War" shows that Prussia had nothing to do with the withdrawal of the Leopold candidature, describes the abortive scheme of the French Emperor (through the instrumentality of the late Lord Clarendon) to enter with Prussia upon an agreement for the reduction of armaments, and sets forth the determination of the Count von Bismarck to treat the bellicose language of the Duc de Grammont as a casus belli. But SYLVANUS URBAN does not go the whole length with "Scrutator" in removing blame from the shoulders of the French Emperor and France.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

MAY, 1871.

ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF ENGLAND.

BY CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE.

II. BEN JONSON.*

HE prevailing, if not the peculiar, characteristic of Ben
Jonson's genius appears to have been that of an extreme

even a formal-correctness, and strict propriety of language and personation in his productions. I do not mean "propriety" in the modern, conventional sense of the term; (for he is morally coarse in his language), but that he is distinguished by appropriateness rather, and a perfect conformity with Academic rules, and the established forms of art. This peculiarity of his intellectual construction is correctly estimated in Dr. Johnson's lines :

"Then Jonson came, instructed from the school;

To please by method, and invent by rule!
His studious patience, and laborious art,
With regular approach essay'd the heart;
Cold approbation gave the lingering bays,

And they who durst not censure, scarce could praise."

* With an author like the subject of the present essay,—whose works are not at hand in every private library, and, if they were, are of a prolixity and a grossness more objectionable to modern popular taste than to that which prevailed when Ben Jonson wrote,-it is not probable that readers will search for passages illustrating the opinions, the customs, and manners that are here presented. I therefore preface it by stating that I mean to give these illustrative quotations in rather unusual number and length, by way of saving the reader trouble in reference, and thus presenting him with the "best bits " ready picked out for him that serve to confirm my remarks.

VOL. VI., N.S. 1871.

T T

This constant presence, and, it may be, tyranny of correctness and propriety induced him even to alter the scene of his "Every Man in his Humour," one of his earliest productions. When originally represented, the scene of this comedy was laid at Florence, and the dramatis persone were all Italians; but feeling that the gulls and bullies, who comprise the under personages in this play, were rather drawn from home models, and had in fact little to do with the conventional habits and manners of Italy (though, in conformity with the fashion then prevalent, he had adopted that locality), he subsequently printed them under English names, and changed the scene to London, as the play now stands.

Honest Ben was, by tradition, an excessive self-estimator, if not self-worshipper. He had surrounded himself with a scholastic bulwark impregnable to any contemporary who might venture to approach him as Fluellen would say, "according to the disciplines of the Roman wars, the wars of the ancients "—and, like many another secluded and learned pedant, he not only magnified his acquired knowledge, as compared with the instinctive knowledge of mankind in other geniuses of his own age; but he would make it the "be-all and the end-all" of intellectual accomplishment. As compared with Shakespeare, for instance, Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," when speaking of the two men at the Mermaid in Fleet Street, has described them with his own graphic dexterity in the well-known passage: "Many (he says) were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English manof-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning -solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, like an 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."

A curious corroboration of Jonson's precision of character and egoistical minuteness of method and order, displaying also the high estimation in which he himself held his works, may be witnessed in his play of "Every Man out of his Humour." He has prefixed to it an analysis, what he calls "the characters of the persons," wherein he gives a sort of intellectual map or portrait of each individually. For instance, "Fastidious Brisk, a neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears his clothes well and in fashion, practiseth by his glass how to salute, speaks good remnants (notwithstanding the bass viol and tobacco), swears tersely, and with variety; cares not what lady's favour he belies, or great man's familiarity; a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man's horse to

praise, and backs him as his own; or, for a need, on foot can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the jingle of his spur, and the jerk of his wand." Another programme of a character is"Saviolina, a Court lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit; admired by herself, and one more, her servant, Brisk."

These prefaces to his dramatis personæ, though doubtless sprightly and amusing, savour somewhat of the pedantry spoken of; and, indeed, they hardly exempt the author from the charge of coxcombry. In this point of his character he reminds one of Richardson, the eminent novelist, who, Narcissus-like, so passionately contemplated his own productions, so petted, and polished, and refined them, that he supplied a minute index to each letter in his "Clarissa ;" and not only did he furnish a correct catalogue of all the personages who figure in his "Grandison," but he actually made out an alphabetical list of all the similes, allusions, and striking sentiments that occur throughout the work. How different is all this anxiety of authorship, lest a waif or stray thought should be lost to the world, from the modest unconsciousness and intellectual prodigality of Shakespeare, who was content to wait till the world should estimate his genius!

In addition to his accumulated store of classical attainments, Ben Jonson possessed a gigantic memory. Whalley, in his life of him, says "he was laborious and indefatigable in his studies; his reading was copious and extensive; his memory so tenacious and strong, that when turned of forty, he could have repeated all he ever wrote." This last expression, by the way, is again confirmatory of what I have remarked respecting his self-estimation.

Ben Jonson has been regarded as the first person who has done much in settling the "grammar of the English language." This merit is duly awarded to him, and Pope gives him the credit of having brought critical learning into vogue; also of having instructed both actors and spectators in what was the proper province of the dramatic Muse.

His prose style, however, is a transcript of his laborious and painstaking mind, ostentatiously correct, and frequently forcible, with commonly a satisfactory felicity of epithet; but his sentences never appear to be extemporaneous, but always studied, and as being one result of the primeval curse, for he seems to have produced both his thoughts and his language "by the sweat of his brow." In various phases of his mind it must be confessed that Jonson was really a great man, for he made himself all that he was; and that must ever command our respect and esteem, although we may not intellectually sympathise with his conventional order of mind. In allusion to him, as