me,
which is to show the general movement at the same time as the individual
developments of the literature of 1560-1660. In one sense Shakespere might
be included in any one of three out of the four chapters which we have here
devoted to the Elizabethan dramatists. His earliest known, and probably
much of his unknown work coincides with the period of tentative; and his
latest work overlaps very much of that period of ripe and somewhat
over-ripe performance, at the head of which it has here been thought good
to set Beaumont and Fletcher. But there is a group of four notable persons
who appear to have especial rights to be classed with him, if not in
greatness, yet in character of work, and in the influences which played on
that work. They all, like him, took an independent part in the marvellous
wit-combat of the last decade of Elizabeth, and they all like him survived,
though for different lengths of time, to set an example to the third
generation. They are all, even the meanest of them, distinctly great men,
and free alike from the immaturity, visible even in Lyly and Marlowe, which
marked some of their older contemporaries, and from the decadence, visible
even in Fletcher and Massinger, which marred their younger followers.
Furthermore, they were mixed up, as regards one another, in an inextricable
but not uninteresting series of broils and friendships, to some part of
which Shakespere himself may have been by no means a stranger. These
reasons have seemed sufficient for separating them from the rest, and
grouping them round the captain. They are Benjamin Jonson, George Chapman,
John Marston, and Thomas Dekker.

The history of Ben Jonson (the literary history that is to say, for the
known facts of his life are simple enough) is curious and perhaps unique.
Nothing is really known of his family; but as, at a time when Scotchmen
were not loved in England, he maintained his Annandale origin, there should
be, especially after Mr. Symonds's investigations as to his career, no
doubt that he at least believed himself to be of Border extraction, as was
also, it may be remembered, his great disciple, panegyrist, slanderer, and
(with the substitution of an easy for a rugged temper), analogue, John
Dryden. The fact of these two typical Englishmen being of half or whole
Scotch descent will not surprise any one who does not still ignore the
proper limits of England. Nobody doubts that his father (or rather
stepfather, for he was a