In the year 1621, his Majesty, by letters patent, gave to Jonson a reversionary grant of the office of master of the records, to he held by him and his assigns for life, from and after the date of the decease of Sir George Bue and Sir John Astley, the present masters, or as soon as the office should become vacant by resignation, forfeiture, or surren der. In contemp.ation, perhaps, of his speedy accession to this office, James was desirous of conferring upon our poet the honour of knighthood. Jonson, who was probably well aware that a distinction of this nature would only expose him to farther envy, shrunk from the meditated kindness of his sovereign, and persuaded some of his friends about the court to dissuade his royal master from the purpose. Jon son derived no advantage from the reversionary grant which has been mentioned; the patent, towards the conclusion of his life, was suffered by King Charles to be transferred to Jonson's son. From the year 1616 to 1625, our poet's la bours for the theatre were entirely suspended, although he produced, dining that period, some of the most beautiful of his masques and entertainments. Necessity at last drove him back to the stage. Profusion and thoughtlessness had now brought him to poverty, and sickness was superadded to his indigence. During the life of James we never hear of Jonson's poverty ; but, by the death of that monarch in 1625, he lost a most indulgent and liberal patron. He was attacked, towards the end of the same year, by the palsy, and his decaying constitution also betrayed a tenden cy to dropsy. While this decay was coming on, he wrote his play, The Staple of -Yews. Though the language of this comedy is forcible, and the satire well directed, its plot la bours under the same difficulties and defects as that of the plots of Aristophancs, which the poet had in view, namely, a confusion of real and allegorical characters. The gossip ing credulity of the age is, however, admirably held up to ridicule. While his wants and infirmities were increasing, he applied once more to the theatre, and produced his co medy of the Ncii, Inn in 1629-30. The fate of this drama was, to be driven by his enemies from the stage. An allu sion to the king and queen, which was made in the epi logue of this play, awoke the slumbering kindness of Charles, and he instantly sent him a present of 1001. The monarch also liberally acceded to our poet's petition," that he would be pleased to make the 100 marks of his father 1001. ;" and he added, unsolicited, to the grant, a tierce of Canary wine.
Notwithstanding this accession to his income, his cir ciimstances continued to decline together with his health. It is acknowledged, that he was utterly devoid of worldly prudence; what was liberally given him was lavishly spent. A dispute, in which he was involved with the architect Inigo Jones, contributed to embitter his last days, in which it appears that Jones was at least as vindictive as the of fended poet. Under these melancholy circumstances he was employed in writing his Magnetic Lady, which ap peared in 1632. It was indifferently received. There is, indeed, too much reason for acknowledging the remark of Dryden, " that Jonson's last plays were his dotage." The Tale of a Tub was his last comedy that was submitted to the public (in 1633.) it was not liked by the court, before whom it was represented. The mantle of his comic inspi ration was now worn to thinness. Still, with his faint and faultering tongue, he continued to pay his annual duty to his royal master, and to compose o casional interludes, One bright and sunny ray, says his biographer, yet broke through the cloud which hung over his closing hours. in this he produced the Sad Shepherd, a pastoral drama of exquisite beauty ; the better half of which, however, was unfortu nately lost in the confusion that followed his death. This was apparently the close of his labours. Among his pa pers w ere found the plot and opening of a domestic trage dy, on the story of Mortimer, Earl of March, together with the Da.scovcries and Grammar of the English Language.
His death took place on the 6th of August 1637, and he was buried on the 9th, in Westminster Abbey, in the north aisle, in the path of square stone, opposite to the scutchcon of Robertus de Ros. His friends designed to raise a noble monument to his memory by subscription, and, till this was ready, nothing more was required than to cover his ashes decently with the common pavement stone which had been removed. While this was doing, Aubrey tells us, Sir John Young, of Great Melton, in Oxfordshire, whom he fa miliarly calls Jack Young, chanced to pass through the abbey, and not enduring that the remains of so great a man should lie without a memorial, gave one of the workmen eighteen-pence to cut the words, " 0 rare Ben Jonson." The subscription was successful, but the troubles of the civil war prevented the execution of the monument ; and the money was returned to the subscribers. Jonson in his person was large and corpulent. He had, Aubrey says, been fair and smooth faced, but a scorbutic humour seems to have fallen at an early pet iod into his face, and to have seared it in a very perceptible degree. Randolph the poet, and others of his admirers, traced a reseThblance in him to the head of Menande•, as exhibited on ancient me dals.
Junson, whatever his last biographer may say of the can dour and amiableness of his chsposition, was certainly not endowed with the meekness and modesty which arc some times known to accompany transcendant talents, and which disarm the envy that naturally follows the possessor of great genius. Unfortunate as he sometimes was, in being embroiled with his contemporaries, he seems, however, upon the whole, to have been more fully and fairly appre ciated in his lifetime than he has generally been in the course of two succeeding centuries. He was deeply learn ed, and he was laborious in the execution of his art. An invidious conclusion has been too often drawn, that because he was learned, he was pedantic ; and that, because he wrote upon fixed principles, he must necessarily be for ever stiff and artificial. But the scholarship which he brought to our drama was in many respects subservient to tone purest objects of excellence. He brought the truth and simplicity of the ancient stage upon our own, at a time when cur dramatic poets had nothing but extravagance and absurdity in the scenes and incidents of their pieces, IN hich they generally drew from some novel or romance. His vein of humour was powerful and original ; his sense of moral truth keen and sagacious. The latter quality of his mind often predominated as the more dignified over his humour, and he often sacrifice ludicrous effect in his pieces, to give them the stern and severe graces of pro priety. He was happy in discriminating character by its slightest shades of difference, as well as in picturing it forth ih bold, broad, and pi ominentaforms. His plots have a masterly conformation, and their complex parts are ad justed with the firmest unity of design. His style on the stage is manly, though it is almost only in his shorter lyri cal effusions that we find him graceful and beautiful. It must, however, be deducted from his merits, that his se verity of manner too often leans to hardness; that, instead of interesting passions, he sometimes treats us to abstract displays or humours in human character, which are neither amusing nor edifying in their exposure ; and that he la bours too minutely on his important characters. His lyri cal poetry forms, perhaps, the most delightful part of his poetical character. In songs and masques, and interludes, his fancy has a wildness and sweetness that we should not expect hoar the seeerity of his dramatic taste. It cannot be said, indeed, that he is always free from metaphysical conceit, but language is Weighty with thought, and po lished with elegance. Upon the whole, his merits, atter every fair deduction, leave him in possession of a high nicne iu our uterature, and entitle him to be tanked (next to Shakspeare) as the most important benefactor ol our early drama. (4)