became ambitious to signalize his reign by some fitting tribute to
literature. A petition from Ben Jonson pointed out the way. The
Laureate office was made a patentable one, in the gift of the Lord
Chamberlain, as purveyor of the royal amusements. Ben was confirmed
in the office. The salary was raised from one hundred marks to one
hundred pounds, an advance of fifty per cent, to which was added
yearly a tierce of Canary wine,--an appendage appropriate to the
poet's convivial habits, and doubtless suggested by the mistaken
precedent of Chaucer's daily flagon of wine. Ben Jonson was certainly,
of all men living in 1630, the right person to receive this honor,
which then implied, what it afterward ceased to do, the primacy of the
diocese of letters. His learning supplied ballast enough to keep the
lighter bulk of the poet in good trim, while it won that measure of
respect which mere poetical gifts and graces would not have
secured. He was the dean of that group of "poets, poetaccios,
poetasters, and poetillos," [11] who beset the court. If a display of
erudition were demanded, Ben was ready with the heavy artillery of the
unities, and all the laws of Aristotle and Horace, Quintilian and
Priscian, exemplified in tragedies of canonical structure, and
comedies whose prim regularity could not extinguish the most
delightful and original humor--Robert Burton's excepted--that
illustrated that brilliant period. But if the graceful lyric or
glittering masque were called for, the boundless wealth of Ben's
genius was most strikingly displayed. It has been the fashion, set by
such presumptuous blunderers as Warburton and such formal prigs as
Gifford, to deny our Laureate the possession of those ethereal
attributes of invention and fancy which play about the creations of
Shakspeare, and constitute their exquisite charm. This arbitrary
comparison of Jonson and Shakspeare has, in fact, been the bane of the
former's reputation. Those who have never read the masques argue,
that, as "very little Latin and less Greek," in truth no learning of
any traceable description, went to the creation of _Ariel_ and
_Caliban_, _Oberon_ and _Puck_, the possession of Latin, Greek, and
learning generally, incapacitates the proprietor for the same happy
exercise of the finer and more gracious faculties of wit and fancy.
Of this nonsense Jonson's masques are the best refutation. Marvels of
ingenuity in plot and construction, they abound in "dainty invention,"