eather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the highway; and took'st
mad Jeronimo's part, to get service among the mimics," &c.

Dekker thus delineates Ben:--"That same Horace has the most ungodly
face, by my fan; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet apple,
when 'tis bruised. It's better than a spoonful of cinnamon water next my
heart, for me to hear him speak; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks
and rants like the poor fellows under Ludgate--to see his face make
faces, when he reads his songs and sonnets."

Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of his favourite,
Horace's--"You staring Leviathan! Look on the sweet visage of Horace;
look, parboil'd face, look--has he not his face punchtfull of
eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan?"

Ben Jonson's manner in a playhouse is thus sketched by Dekker:--"Not to
hang himself, even if he thought any man could write plays as well as
himself; not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests
stolen from the Temple's revels; not to sit in a gallery where your
comedies have entered their actions, and there make vile and bad faces
at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and to make players
afraid; not to venture on the stage when your play is ended, and
exchange courtesies and compliments with gallants, to make all the house
rise and cry--'That's Horace! That's he that pens and purges humours!'"

But, notwithstanding all his bitterness, Dekker could speak generously
of the old poet; for he thus sums up Ben Jonson's merits in the
following lines:--

"Good Horace! No! My cheeks do blush for thine,
As often as thou speakest so; where one true
And nobly virtuous spirit for thy best part
Loves thee, I wish one, ten; even from my heart!
I make account, I put up as deep share
In any good man's love, which thy worth earns,
As thou thyself; we envy not to see
Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy.
No, here the gall lies;--we, that know what stuff
Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk
On which thy learning grows, and can give life
To thy one dying baseness; yet must we
Dance anticks on your paper.
But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould,
I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold."

Charles Lamb, speaking of Dekker's share in Massinger's _Virgin Martyr_,
highly eulogises the impecunious poet. "This play," says Lamb, "has some
beauties of so very high an order, that with all my respect f