BEN JONSON’S “Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter” are not essays in the same sense with Bacon’s. He is a quaint and entertaining prose writer, and it frequently happens that in rambling from subject to subject over the wide range of things which interest him, he finds something which results in an essay as complete in form as could be desired. Quite frequently, however, he prefers to gossip pleasantly, changing the subject as soon as he is tired of it, without regard to whether he has reached the end of it or not. In his lyric poems, he shows the artistic sense which belonged to his seasons of concentrated effort. His ode to the moon,—
| “Queen and huntress chaste and fair, | |
| Now the sun is laid to sleep,” |
He was born at Westminster, England, from obscure parentage. His stepfather was a bricklayer, but he was sent to school first to St. Martins-in-the-Fields, and afterwards to Westminster. In 1597 he is found working in London as a player and writer of plays. In 1598 his “Every Man in His Humor” was put on the stage at the Globe Theatre, and it is said that Shakespeare appeared as one of the actors in it. Jonson was popular as a playwright, and so great a favorite at court that he had a pension of £200 a year. He knew and valued Shakespeare, but, as one of the passages in his “Discoveries” shows, his admiration was not undiscriminating. In 1637, when Jonson died, the court was engaged in preparing for the life-and-death struggle which was to come with Cromwell’s Ironsides. The poet was forgotten after his burial in Westminster Abbey, until one of his admirers, Sir John Young, caused to be cut upon the tomb the celebrated epitaph, “O Rare Ben Jonson.”
