Ben Jonson"--

"_Let Digby, Carew, Killigrew_ and _Maine,
Godolphin, Waller_, that inspired train--
Or whose rare pen beside deserves the grace
Or of an equal, or a neighbouring place--
Answer thy wish, for none so fit appears
To raise his Tomb, as who are left his heirs."

In each case "Carey" scans admirably, while "Carew" gives the line an
intolerable limp.

Mr. Ebsworth's championship.

This mistake of Mr. Ebsworth's is the less easy to understand inasmuch
as he has been very careful to clear up the popular confusion of our
poet Thomas Carew, "gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Charles I.,
and cup-bearer to His Majesty," with another Thomas Gary (also a
poet), son of the Earl of Monmouth and groom of His Majesty's
bed-chamber. But it is one thing to prove that this second Thomas Gary
is the original of the "medallion portrait" commonly supposed to be
Carew's: it is quite another thing to saddle him, merely upon
guess-work, with Carew's reputed indiscretions. Indeed, Mr. Ebsworth
lets his enthusiasm for his author run clean away with his sense of
fairness. He heads his Introductory Memoir with the words of Pallas in
Tennyson's "OEnone"--

"Again she said--'I woo thee not with gifts:
Sequel of guerdon could not alter me
To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am,
So shalt thou find me fairest.'"--

from which I take it that Mr. Ebsworth claims his attitude towards
Carew to be much the same as Thackeray's towards Pendennis. But in
fact he proves himself a thorough-going partisan, and anyone less
enthusiastic may think himself lucky if dismissed by Mr. Ebsworth
with nothing worse than a smile of pity mingled with contempt. Now,
so long as an editor confines this belligerent enthusiasm to the
defence of his author's writings, it is at worst but an amiable
weakness; and every word he says in their praise tends indirectly to
justify his own labor in editing these meritorious compositions. But
when he extends this championship over the author's private life, he
not unfrequently becomes something of a nuisance. We may easily
forgive such talk as "There must assuredly have been a singular
frankness and affectionate simplicity in the disposition of Carew:"
talk which is harmless, though hardly more valuable than the
reflection beloved of local historians--"If these grey old walls could
speak, what a tale might they not unfold!" It is less easy to forgive
such a note