uld not set a good face upon it, and so
was cashiered. Besides, if we admit that satire to be built on facts,
we learn further, that he performed the part of Zuliman at the Paris
Garden in Southwark, and ambled by a play-waggon on the high-way,
and took mad Jeronymo's part to get service amongst the mimicks[2].'
Shakespear is said to have first introduced him to the world, by
recommending a play of his to the stage, at the time when one of the
players had rejected his performance, and told him it would be of no
service to their company[3]. His first printed dramatic performance
was a Comedy, entitled Every Man in his Humour, acted in the year
1598, which being soon followed by several others, as his Sejanus, his
Volpone, his Silent Woman, and his Alchymist, gained him so high a
reputation, that in October 1619, upon the death of Mr. Samuel Daniel
he was made Poet Laureat to King James I. and on the 19th of July, the
same year, he was created (says Wood) Master of Arts at Oxford, having
resided for some time at Christ Church in that university. He once
incurred his Majesty's displeasure for being concerned with Chapman
and Marston in writing a play called Eastward-Hoe, wherein they were
accused of having reflected upon the Scotch nation. Sir James Murray
represented it to the King, who ordered them immediately to be
imprisoned, and they were in great danger of losing their ears and
noses, as a correction of their wantonness; nor could the most partial
have blamed his Majesty, if the punishment had been inflicted; for
surely to ridicule a country from which their Sovereign had just
come, the place of his nativity, and the kingdom of his illustrious
forefathers, was a most daring insult. Upon their releasement from
prison, our poet gave an entertainment to his friends, among whom were
Camden and Selden; when his aged mother drank to him[4] and shewed
him a paper of poison which she had designed, if the sentence of
punishment had been inflicted, to have mixed with his drink after she
had first taken a potion of it herself.

Upon the accession of Charles I. to the crown, he wrote a petition
to that Prince, craving, that as his royal father had allowed him an
annual pension of a hundred marks, he would make them pounds. In the
year 1629 Ben fell sick, and was then poor, and lodged in an obscure
alley; his Majesty was supplicated in his favour, who sent him ten
guineas. When the messenger delivered the sum, Ben took it in his