"Jonson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for an epitaph on Mary Sidney, afterwards Countess of Pembroke, but not inscribed upon any monumental stone? They are almost universally attributed to Ben Jonson, and are included amongst his poems. But this is not conclusive evidence, as we also there find the epitaph on Drayton, which was written by Quarles. In Aubrey's MS. Memoires of Naturall Remarques in Wilts, these verses are said to have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... for this purpose, as, on St. Agnes' night, 21st day of Jannary, take a row of pins, and pull out every one, one after another, saying a Pater Noster, or (Our Father) sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will dream of him, or her, you shall marry. Ben Jonson in one of his Masques ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... which could be dug out of the rich mines of English poetry; and when we say that the first division treats of Carols from the Anglo-Norman period to the time of the Reformation; that these are followed by Christmas Poems of the Elizabethan period, by Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and their great cotemporaries; that to these succeed Herrick's Poems, and so on, till we have the Christmas verses of our own century, by Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, Shelley, Tennyson, &c., we have done more than all ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... arises from hypocrisy, than when from vanity; for to discover any one to be the exact reverse of what he affects, is more surprizing, and consequently more ridiculous, than to find him a little deficient in the quality he desires the reputation of. I might observe that our Ben Jonson, who of all men understood the Ridiculous the best, hath ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... of memory were so great as to astonish even those eminently gifted in the same manner. In reading, he involuntarily committed to memory, whether of prose or poetry. He seemed to have memorized the Bible, Shakspeare, Dryden, Ben Jonson, Byron, and many others of the modern poets. The whole range of literature was at his command: to read once, was always to remember. This capacity to acquire was so great that he would in a month master as much as most men ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... there is no human sentiment better than that which unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would literature or art be without such associations? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Shakespeare explained by our author would fill a volume like this itself. Other writers, again, simply "lift" the book wholesale. Chester and Du Bartas write page after page of rhyme, all but versified direct from Bartholomew. Jonson and Spenser, Marlowe and Massinger, make ample use of him. Lyly and Drayton owe him a heavy debt. Considerations of space forbid their insertion, but for every extract made here, the Editor has collected several passages ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... Esquire, the admired Miser of these latter days. Sir Basil Hopwood was the rather of the same complexion of Entrails with that Signor Volpone whom we have all seen—at least such of us as be old Boys—in Ben Jonson's play of the Fox. He Money-grubbed, and Money-clutched, and Money-wrung, ay, and in a manner Money-stole, that he might live largely, and ruffle it among his brother Cits in surpassing state and splendour. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... at the old Odeon. Francis Beaumont did not more pleasantly recall the things that he and Ben Jonson had seen done at the Mermaid than an old Brook Farmer remembers the long walks, eight good miles in and eight miles out, to see the tall, willowy Schmidt swaying with his violin at the head of the orchestra, to hear the airy ripple of Auber's 'Zanetta,' the swift passionate ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... our fairy king and queen We chant our moonlight minstrelsies. When larks 'gin sing, Away we fling, And babes new-born we steal as we go, And elf in bed We leave instead, And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho!"—BEN JONSON. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Ben Jonson's old plays: "When I once take the humor of a thing, I am like your tailor's needle—I go through ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... erected, the middle of Elizabeth's reign, fifty dramatic poets appeared, many of the first order. Some were distinctly irreligious, as were many of the people whose lives they touched. Such men as Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, Webster, Beaumont, and Fletcher stand like a chorus around Shakespeare and Ben Jonson as leaders. As Taine puts it: "They sing the same piece together, and at times the chorus is equal to the solo; but only at times."[1] Cultured people to-day know the names of most of these writers, but not much else, and it does not heavily serve our argument to say that they felt ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... be no doubt that in the main contention of his manifesto, as of his book, Mr Arnold was absolutely right. It was true that England, save for spasmodic and very partial appearances of it in a few of her great men of letters—Ben Jonson, Dryden, Addison, Johnson—had been wonderfully deficient in criticism up to the end of the eighteenth century; and that though in the early nineteenth she had produced one great philosophical critic, another even greater on the purely literary side, and a third of unique ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... paper, did attempt English prose, and not seldom achieved it. But take up any elaborate History of English Literature and read, and, as you read, ask yourselves, 'How can one of the rarest delights of life be converted into this? What has happened to merry Chaucer, rare Ben Jonson, gay Steele and Prior, to Goldsmith, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... many others, including Kings and Queens of England for centuries. In the Poets' Corner are monuments to Coleridge, Southey, Shakespeare, Burns, Tennyson, Milton, Gray, Spencer, and others, and one bearing the inscription "O Rare Ben Jonson." There is also a bust of Longfellow, the only foreigner accorded a memorial in the Abbey. The grave of David Livingstone, the African explorer and missionary, is covered with a black stone of some kind, which forms a part ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... Elizabethan age, enabled intellects of average force to take rank in the company of the noblest. Ford, Massinger, Heywood, Decker, Webster, Fletcher, Tourneur, Marston, are seated round the throne at the feet of Shakspere, Marlowe, and Jonson. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of the British Poets from Ben Jonson to Beattie. New Edition; with Biographical and Critical Prefaces, and Selections ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... and Fletcher: a few of their plays. But I can't stand most of the Elizabethans; I can't stand Ben Jonson at all." ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Monday last. Sit down, I'll tell you how it was. Set down the coffee, Mrs Jones, and just look in upon the patient, will you? Sugar and cream? You know my weakness for the dead wall in Lincoln's Inn Fields.' (Jack never refuses a beggar backed by that wall, for the love of Ben Jonson, who, he devoutly believes, had a hand in building it.) 'Well, I met with her there on Monday last. She asked for nothing, but held out her hand, and as she did so the tears streamed from her eyes on the pavement. The poor creature, it was plain enough, was then dying; and I ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... O rare Ben Jonson, you should see The draught that I may sup: How sweet the drink, her kiss within. The ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... rosemary was called Rosmarinus coronarium, because the women made crowns and garlands of it. Ben Jonson says that it was customary for the bridesmaids to present the bridegroom next morning with a bunch of rosemary. And Brand says that as late as 1698 the custom still prevailed in England of decking the bridal bed with sprigs ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... we must, for Reputation! What honest man can either fear his own, Or else will hurt another's reputation? Fear to do base unworthy things is valour; If they be done to us, to suffer them Is valour too.— BEN JONSON, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... leave," she drove to Roslin Chapel, where twenty "barons bold" of the house of St. Clair wear shirts of mail for shrouds, then went on to storied Hawthornden—a wooded nest hung high over the water, where the poet Drummond entertained his English brother-of-the-pen, Ben Jonson. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Shakespeare—to mention one only—must have possessed a Plutarch, a Stowe, a Montaigne, and a Bible, and probably half a dozen other books of less moment. And yet, with this poor show, he was as genuine a book-lover as Ben Jonson or my Lord Verulam. Lord Burleigh, Grotius, and Bonaparte are said to have carried their libraries in their pockets, and doubtless Shakespeare could have carried his ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... BEN JONSON.—Ben Jonson, classical, exact, pretty faithful imitator of the writers of antiquity, interested in unusual characters and customs, gifted with a ready and lively imagination in both comedy and tragedy like Shakespeare, succeeded especially in comedy (Every Man in his Humour, The ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... somewhat hoarse, and never so musical when he sang as when he spoke, yet so touching in its dramatic tenderness that soon the noise fell away, and the roisterers sat quietly to listen. It was not the first time Ben Jonson's song had ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Gale Fairy Songs William Shakespeare Queen Mab Ben Jonson The Elf and the Dormouse Oliver Herford "Oh! Where Do Fairies Hide Their Heads?" Thomas Haynes Bayly Fairy Song Leigh Hunt Dream Song Richard Middleton Fairy Song John Keats Queen Mab Thomas Hood The Fairies of the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... write thee as to the contention which hath arisen among our stock actors and supes of the Globe. Nicholas Bottom, whom you brought from the Parish workhouse in Stratford, is in ill humor with thee in especial. He says when he played with you in Ben Jonson's comedy, "Every Man in his Humor," he was by far the better actor and did receive the plaudits of all; despite which he now receives but 6 shillings each week, while you are become a man of great wealth, having gotten, ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... of culture, which are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave. We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends. Ben Jonson specifies in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... when it is a remarkable thing if an author has his pocket picked, or narrowly escapes being in a ship that is wrecked, or takes poison when he is young, even the outline of Borrow's life is attractive. Like Byron, Ben Jonson, and Chaucer, he reminds us that an author is not bound to be a nun with a beard. He depicts himself continually, at all ages, and in all conditions of pathos or pride. Other human beings, with few exceptions, he depicts only in relation to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... one of several hundreds of poems of Hafiz contains his name thus interwoven more or less closely with the subject of the piece. It is itself a test of skill, as this self-naming is not quite easy. We remember but two or three examples in English poetry: that of Chaucer, in the "House of Fame"; Jonson's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... is that he has given us his masterpieces. Perhaps it is just as well that we know so little about the facts in his life. We have all the more time to study his works. About their quality there is little of disagreement. Three hundred years ago Ben Jonson wrote ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... divinely replenished from within, and affords us a miraculous delight. He asks why it should seem altogether impossible that Heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be the most correct and fair? And Jonson, he tells us, was very learned, as Samson was very strong, to his own hurt. Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it. Is this "care's incumbent cloud," or "the frozen obstructions of age?" In this letter Pope is ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... established, and owed its origin to Sir Walter Raleigh, who had here instituted a meeting of men of wit and genius, previously to his engagement with the unfortunate Cobham. This society comprised all that the age held most distinguished for learning and talent, numbering amongst its members Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Sir Walter Raleigh, Donne, Cotton, Carew, Martin, and many others. There it was that the "wit-combats" took place between Shakspeare and Ben Johson, to which, probably, Beaumont alludes with so much ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... —Sagen Sie ja nicht, dass er auch dieses zu nutzen gesucht, wie sein 'Cato' es beweise. Denn eben dieses, dass er den Addisonschen 'Cato' fr das beste englische Trauerspiel hlt,[5] zeiget deutlich, dass er hier nur mit den Augen der Franzosen gesehen und damals keinen Shakespeare, keinen Jonson, keinen Beaumont und Fletcher u.s.w. gekannt hat, die er hernach aus Stolz auch ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... that the scene "An Ale-house Room" in Goldsmith's comedy She Stoops to Conquer is the "Three Pigeons" at Brentford, as this remarkable hostel dates its origin from the days of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. It is frequently mentioned by the early dramatists, and appears at one time to have been in some repute, having had for its landlord the celebrated tragedian, John Lowin, cotemporary of Shakspeare, and one of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... the facetious Mr Bibber being the original of the latter personage. The character of Trice, at least his whimsical humour of drinking, playing at dice by himself, and quarrelling as if engaged with a successful gamester, is imitated from the character of Carlo, in Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," who drinks with a supposed companion, quarrels about the pledge, and tosses about the cups and flasks in the imaginary brawl. We have heard similar frolics related of a bon-vivant of the last generation, inventor of a game called solitaire, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Italian masks are quite well known to the authors of that period. Thus Thomas Heywood mentions all these doctors, zanies, pantaloons, and harlequins, in which the French, and still more the Italians, distinguished themselves. In Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and in Ben Jonson's The Case is Altered, mention is made of the Italian improvised comedy, and a few of the well-known types of character in the dramatic literature of the time bear distinct traces of having been influenced by Italian masks, e.g., Ralph Roister Doister in Udall's comedy of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... grace whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask and antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild. And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... sarcasm for fear of startling the "genteel" classes and Mrs. Grundy. He never aped aristocracy in his household. He would go to a tavern for his oysters and a glass of punches simply as they did in Ben Jonson's days; and I have heard of his doing so from a sensation of boredom at a very great house indeed,—a house for the sake of an admission to which, half Bayswater would sell their grandmothers' bones to a surgeon. This kind of thing stamped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... absinthe or ver- mouth of the last musical comedy. The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything. Analysts with their problems, and teachers with their systems, are soon as old-fashioned as the pharmacopœia of Galen, — look at Ibsen and the Germans — but the best plays of Ben Jonson and Molière can no more go out of fashion than the black- berries on the hedges. Of the things which nourish the imagination humour is one of the most needful, and it is dangerous to limit or destroy it. Baudelaire calls laughter the greatest ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... being delightfully ignorant I had the great interest of reading the same period (Henry VIII) in Holinshed, and in finding Katharine's and Wolsey's speeches there! Then I have tried a little Ben Jonson and Lord Chesterfield's letters. What a worldling, and what a destroyer of a young mind that man was. Can you tell me how the son turned out? I cannot find any information about him. The language is delightful, and I wish I could remember ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... have sinned in this matter still more boldly than they did. Yet the chastening power of classical models may be easily overrated. And we cannot but notice that it was precisely where the classical influence was strongest that the force of imagination was the least under control. Jonson apart, there were no more ardent disciples of the ancients than Marlowe and Chapman. And no poets of that age are so open to the charge of extravagance as they. It is with Milton that the chastening influence of the ancients first ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, "O rare Ben Jonson!" and remembered the story of stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright,—not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but because standing-room was all that could ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... would have thought of treating it in an English history,—but not a whit less considerable, because it was cheap, and of no account, like a baker's shop. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field; Kyd, Marlow, Greene,[531] Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to have crowded his books together without regard to any system of classification. He had a habit of mixing his books around with fishing-tackle, and his charming biographer tells us it was no uncommon thing to find the "Wealth of Nations," "Boxiana," the "Faerie Queen," Jeremy Taylor, and Ben Jonson occupying close quarters with fishing-rods, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... had been removed for the advantage of greater space in the previous century. And the view from Ramsay's shop—from which by this time the wigs had entirely disappeared, and which was now a refined and cultured bookseller's, adorned outside with medallions of two poets, Scotch and English, Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden—was bounded by the gate of the Netherbow with its picturesque tower, and glimpses through the open roadway, of the Canongate beyond, and the cross lines of busy traffic leading to Leith. It was thus ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Collection; two Mary Queen of Scots, by Messrs. Warren and Cooper.——From pictures of the old and modern Masters, are capital Portraits of celebrated characters of former and present times; of Mrs. Siddons, of Cicero, M. Angelo, Parmigiano, Fenelon, Raleigh, A. Durer, Erasmus, Cromwell, Ben Jonson, Selden, Swift, Gay, Sterne, Garrick, &c. of Byron, Bonaparte, West, Kenible, young Napoleon, of nearly all the English Royal Family, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the paradox is easily explained, we find much more similarity when we compare the Norwegian drama with that tragedy of Catiline which Ben Jonson published in 1611. Needless to state, Ibsen had never read the old English play; it would be safe to lay a wager that, when he died, Ibsen had never heard or seen the name of Ben Jonson. Yet there is an odd sort of resemblance, founded on the fact that each poet keeps very close to the incidents ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... footing of equality with my Lady This and Lady That, and certainty that nothing would come into the hands of dear Kate and Mary and Maggie that they might not read, and all for two guineas a year. English fiction became pure, and the garlic and assafœtida with which Byron, Fielding and Ben Jonson so liberally seasoned their works, and in spite of which, as critics say, they were geniuses, have disappeared from our literature. English fiction became pure, dirty stories were to be heard no more, were no longer ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... dramatist, was thrown into this prison. This poet of the great Elizabethan race was one of Ben Jonson's great rivals. He thus rails at Shakespeare's special friend, who had made "a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face upon it. Thou hast forgot how thou ambled'st in leather-pilch, by ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... memorable space in our history. He was born in the year of the victory over the Armada; he died in 1679 at the age of ninety-two, only nine years before the Revolution. His ability soon made itself felt, and in his earlier days he was the secretary of Bacon, and the friend of Ben Jonson and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. But it was not till the age of fifty-four, when he withdrew to France on the eve of the great Rebellion in 1642, that his speculations were made known to the world in his treatise ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... articles intended for personal use. We have the absurd name pocket handkerchief, i.e., pocket hand-cover-head, for a comparatively modern convenience, the earlier names of which have more of the directness of the Artful Dodger's "wipe." Ben Jonson calls it a muckinder. In 1829 the use of the word mouchoir in a French adaptation of Othello caused a riot at the Comedie Francaise. History repeats itself, for, in 1907, a play by J. M. Synge ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... if by sleep or fev'rous fit assail'd.] O Rome! thy head Is drown'd in sleep, and all thy body fev'ry. Ben Jonson's Catiline. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... give a most satisfactory account of the somewhat crucial point—how they came by the manuscripts, with all the amendments and corrections, and pass lightly over the fact that those manuscripts had disappeared. 'Rare Ben Jonson' in the witness-box is a masterpiece of dramatic invention; he demolishes Bacon's advocate with magnificent vitality. John Selden makes a stately witness, and Francis Meres a very useful one. Generally speaking, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... doubt," adds Mr. Collier, "that the lines are genuine, as well as many other songs and poems attributed to Ben Jonson, Sir W. Raleigh, H. Constable, Dr. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... like Jonson's "loathed stage"? Verses 2, 3, and 4 are so bad, also the last line. But there is a fine movement and feeling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stones and turfs: say, what will he clem me and my followers?"—Jonson, Poetaster, Act I. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... "Master Stephen." A character of Ben Jonson's already referred to—he who wished for a stool ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... As In Ben Jonson's translation from Philostratus; and Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea, "that you may at once ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Jonson's Alchemist gives a curious clue to the derivation of the popular term "scab" found in No. VI. Webster's forcible picture in ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... very different footing from that of Hariot as to emoluments and responsible position. They were, however, companions of both the Earl and Sir Walter, and, if tradition is to be believed, they were sometimes joined by Ben Jonson, Dr Burrill, Rev. Gilbert Hawthorne, Hugh Broughton, the poet Hoskins ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... KEIGHTLEY considers this word to mean press or restrain, and quotes three passages from Massinger and Jonson in support of his opinion; admitting, however, that it is usually rendered starve. Now, whatever may have been the root of this word, or whencesoever it may have been derived, I think it must be admitted that starve is the correct meaning of the word in these passages. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... vice," and calling down the judgment of God upon the cost and the monstrosities of the dress of both men and women; while the town roared on its way, warned by sermons, and instructed in its chosen path by such plays and masques as Ben Jonson's "Pleasure reconciled to Virtue." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... places of Jonson, clem is usually rendered starve; but it appears to me, from the kindred of the term, that it is used elliptically. Perhaps, instead of "Till famine cling thee" (Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.), Shakspeare wrote "Till ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... ridiculed the affectations of contemporary language in "Love's Labour Lost." Among the characters of Ben Jonson are some good Euphuists. In "Every Man out of his Humour," Fallace says (act v, sc. x), "O, Master Brisk, as 'tis said in Euphues, Hard is the choice, when one is compelled, either by silence to die with grief, or by speaking ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... society; and, as private war died down, so the status of the page became impaired, until in the reign of Elizabeth we find him a pampered domestic, whose pert air and gaudy dress represented all that was left of a formidable troop armed with sword and buckler. Ben Jonson deplores and ridicules the transformation in lines with which the present volume may well close. The host in the play has refused his son as page to Lord Lovel, saying that he would hang him sooner than "damn him to that desperate course ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Ben Jonson owed his first introduction to dramatic fame. The young poet had presented "Every Man in his Humour," to one of the leading players of the company to which Shakespeare belonged, and the comedian upon reading it, determined to refuse it. Jonson's fate ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... modestly inquired what plays he had read. I found by George's reply that he had read Shakspeare, but that was a good while since: he calls him a great but irregular genius, which I think to be an original and just remark. (Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ben Jonson, Shirley, Marlowe, Ford, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection,—he confessed he had read none of them, but professed his intention of looking through them all, so as to be able to touch upon them in his book.) So Shakspeare, Otway, and I believe ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Elizabethan poetry that Donne set himself to correct. He began with metre, and invented a system of prosody which has many merits, and would have had more in less arbitrary hands. 'Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging,' said Ben Jonson, who was nevertheless his friend and admirer. And yet, if one will but read him always for the sense, for the natural emphasis of what he has to say, there are few lines which will not come out in at all events the way that he meant ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... spiritual, reached such a degree of expansion as they had never before reached in the history of the world,— that great age, I say, the age of Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Bacon, Raleigh, Hooker, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Chapman, Dekker, Ford, Herbert, Heywood, Massinger (and this list of great names might be continued),—that great age, I say, was regarded by the men of the Restoration period as barbarous in comparison ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Golden Age of English literature. Not only did Spenser and Shakespeare live then, but a large number of minor poets also rendered the period illustrious. Among the dramatic poets Christopher Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote together, and Ben Jonson hold an honorable position. The most noted lyric poets of the day were George Herbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Philip Sidney. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, the greatest of English poets, was born at Stratford-on-Avon ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... crowded and various careers. Of Sir Philip Sidney his earliest biographer says, "The truth is his end was not writing, even while he wrote, but both his wit and understanding bent upon his heart to make himself and others not in words or opinion but in life and action good and great." Ben Jonson was in turn a soldier, a poet, a bricklayer, an actor, and ultimately the first poet laureate. Lodge, after leaving Oxford, passed through the various professions of soldiering, medicine, playwriting, and fiction, and he wrote his novel Rosalind, on which Shakespeare based As You Like It while ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Washingtons were frequent guests there. The hospitality of this seat has been renowned. The Queen of James I. and the Prince Henry, on their way to London, in 1603, were welcomed there in an entertainment, memorable for a masque from the vigorous muse of Ben Jonson (Ben Jonson's Works, vol. vi. p. 475). Charles I. was at Althorp, in 1647, when he received the first intelligence of the approach of those pursuers from whom he never escaped until his life had been laid down upon the scaffold. In 1698, King William was there for a ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... and General Butler, and Mr. Atkinson, who writes in 'The Spiritualist,' and Mrs. Gallup, and Judge Webb, Mr. Smith rested, first, on Shakespeare's lack of education, and on the wide learning of the author of the poems and plays. Now, Ben Jonson, who knew both Shakespeare and Bacon, averred that the former had 'small Latin and less Greek,' doubtless with truth. It was necessary, therefore, to prove that the author of the plays had plenty of Latin and Greek. Here Mr. John Churton ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Version of the Bible; Edmund Spenser's graceful Faerie Queene; [Footnote: For its scenery and mechanism, the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto furnished the framework; and it similarly shows the influence of Tasso.] the supreme Shakespeare; Ben Jonson and Marlowe; Francis Bacon and Richard Hooker; Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Taylor; and the somber ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... discourse and uncomeatable in business. But he, having no understanding in his polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers, rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakespeare's heroes and Jonson's humorists.] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of his human relationships. He is described as "gentle." Had he been not gentle we should know more of him. Ben Jonson "loved the man," and says that "he was, indeed, honest and of an open and free nature." John Webster speaks of his "right happy and copious industry." An actor who wrote more than thirty plays during twenty years of rehearsing, acting, and theatre management, can ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... ignoble sarcasm gave Sheridan an opportunity of retorting with great felicity. "After what I have seen and heard to-night," he said, "I really feel strongly tempted to venture on a competition with so great an artist as Ben Jonson, and to bring on the stage a second Angry Boy." On a division, the address proposed by the supporters of the government was rejected by ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dedication to James I. of England, it is fair to infer that it was written shortly after the visit of that monarch to Scotland, subsequent to his accession to the throne of the southern kingdom, that is, in the year 1617. This would make it contemporaneous with Ben Jonson's researches on the English Grammar; for we find, in 1629, James Howell (Letters, Sec. V. 27) writing to Jonson that he had procured Davies' Welch Grammar for him, "to add to those many you have." The grammar that Jonson had prepared for the press was destroyed in ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... ever been understood," said a burly man, who carried his head humorously and obstinately a little on one side—I think he was Ben Jonson—"It hath ever been understood, consule Jacobo, under our King James and her late Majesty, that such good and hearty customs were fallen sick, and like to pass from the world. This grey beard most surely was no lustier when ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... "Evert Jonson His book God Give him Grase thair in to look not only to looke but to understand that Larning is better than Hous or Land When Land is Gon & Gold is spent then larning is most Axelant When I am dead & Rotton If this you see Remember me Though ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... thought; and this was another bond between us. His Radicalism was not very formidable; it amounted to little more, indeed, than a turn for humorous paradox. Our discussion reminded me of Fuller's description of the wit-combats between Ben Jonson and Shakespeare at the "Mermaid." I was the Spanish galleon, my Fascinating Friend was the English man-of-war, ready "to take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." An hour sped away delightfully, the only ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... history of the term from the Oxford Dictionary. Bodies, said Davies, are transformed to spirit "by sublimation strange," and Ben Jonson in Cynthia's Revels spoke of a being "sublimated and refined"; Purchas and Jackson, early in the same seventeenth century, referred to religion as "sublimating" human nature, and Jeremy Taylor, a little later, to "subliming" marriage into a sacrament; Shaftesbury, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... humor. We should say that this was rather a pedigree of satire. For what trace of wrath is there in the humor of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Fielding, or Thackeray? The absence of wrath is the characteristic of all of them. Ben Jonson says that ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... christenings and at marriages; and those who could not afford a complete set, gave one or two, as their circumstances might permit. Some presented a spoon with the figure of the saint after whom the child was baptized, or to whom it was dedicated. In his "Bartholomew Fair," Ben Jonson has a character to say, "And all this for a couple of apostle-spoons and a cup to eat caudle in." Likewise in the "Noble Gentleman," by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... [62] Ben Jonson, in his Discourses, gives the following eulogy on this illustrious author:—"No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... Churchyard, Chapman, Daniel, Ford, Cower, Lydgate, Lyly, Massinger, Nashe, Quarles, Suckling, Surrey, and Sylvester. Among those that add more than they borrow are the notices of Beaumont and Fletcher, Chaucer, Cleveland, Corbet, Donne, Drayton, Phineas Fletcher, Greene, Greville, Jonson, Lodge, Lovelace, Middleton, More, Randolph, Shakespeare, Sidney, ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... religion into one for the pleasure of the Dukes that were to come of his family. In 1619, King James paid a visit to Welbeck, and Charles I. was entertained there, when "there was such excess in feasting as had scarcely ever been known in England," and Ben Jonson was present at the invitation of the Duke to enliven the festivities with ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... restful antiquity.' (Extract from one of Aunt Celia's letters.) Among the great men who have studied here are the Prince of Wales, Duke of Wellington, Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, Sir Philip Sidney, William Penn, John Locke, the two Wesleys, Ruskin, Ben Jonson, and Thomas ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Pembroke and Daniel. Princess Elizabeth and Descartes. Caroline of Brunswick and Leibnitz. Lady Jane Grey and Elmer. Elizabeth Robinson and Middleton. Hester Salusbury and Dr. Collier. Blanche of Lancaster and Chaucer. Venetia Digby and Ben Jonson. Countess of Bedford and Ben Jonson. Countess Ranelagh and Milton. Duchess of Queensbury and Gay. Relations with Women, of Sophocles, Virgil, Frauenlob, Bernadin St. Pierre, Rousseau, and Jean Paul Richter. Rahel Levin and her Friendships with Men. Madame Recamier ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... knew Ben Jonson: But my Lord of Winton knew him very well; and says, he was in the 6th, that is, the uppermost fforme in Westminster scole, at which time his father dyed, and his mother married a brickelayer, who made him ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... narrative which follows the Amazon is proved to be the stronger monster of the two. Traces of the mother monster survive in English folklore, especially in the traditions about the mythical "Long Meg of Westminster", referred to by Ben Jonson in his masque of the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... his licence to be extreme. "In affecting the ancients," said Ben Jonson, "he writ no language." Daniel writes sarcastically, soon after the Faery Queen ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... this is, 'Herse is the solemne obsequie in funeralles.' Cp. also Ben Jonson's 'Epitaph on the ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... the prevailing foot is iambic, but the first foot is trochaic. In the following beautiful lines by Ben Jonson, there ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Eyton-upon-Severn is seen on the right, and on an eminence close by is the "Old Hall," built by Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Bromley. It was the birthplace of Lord Herbert of Chirbury, of whom Ben Jonson wrote:— ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... mutton roasted Dry to be grated! and that driven down With beer and butter-milk, mingled together. It is against my freehold, my inheritance. Wine is the word that glads the heart of man, And mine's the house of wine. Sack, says my bush, Be merry and drink Sherry, that's my posie. Ben Jonson's New Inn. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... blithe measures, passing in manuscript from hand to hand, had brought him faintly to light as a poet. The Dog and the Triple Tun were not places devoted to worship, unless it were to the worship of "rare Ben Jonson," at whose feet Herrick now sat, with the other blossoming young poets of the season. He was a faithful disciple to the end, and addressed many loving lyrics to the master, of which not the least graceful is ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... so bad, I had valued the honour of having so many and such friends as eminently appeared for me, above that of excelling the most admirable Jonson, if it were possible to be done ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Jonson's scull, and fill't with sack, Rich as the same he drank, when the whole pack Of jolly sisters pledged, and did agree It was no sin to be as drunk ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... first printed in Nos. v. and vii. of "The Intelligencer" (Dublin, 1728). In that periodical it bore the title: "A Description of what the World calls Discretion;" and had the following lines from Ben Jonson ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... in his Works, "The English Grammar, made by Ben Jonson, for the Benefit of all Strangers, out of his Observation of the English Language, now spoken and in use:" London, 1634: 8vo, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... see of the plans of Providence, an entanglement of our globe with a comet may take place any day, with consequences incalculably damaging for the meantime, though not conclusively destructive, and perhaps necessary as a step towards an improved system of things—the bringing in of what Ben Jonson calls 'an age of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... Gay—sleep fitly in our care here. Yet even Pope—though one of such in style and heart—preferred the parish church of the then rural Twickenham, and Gray the lonely graveyard of Stoke Pogis. Ben Jonson has a right to lie with us. He was a townsman to the very heart, and a court-poet too. But Chaucer, Spenser, Drayton—such are, to my mind, out of place. Chaucer lies here, because he lived hard by. Spenser through bitter need and woe. But I should have rather buried ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... this volume was obviously collected by a Scotchman, and it includes pieces by Ben Jonson, Wither, Dr. Donne, &c. It must have been made in the latter part of the reign of Charles I. The second portion of the volume is a later production; a humourous poem, called a Whig's Supplication, by {54} S. C., in which there is a remarkable notice of Cleveland, Donne, and 'Bass Divine.' ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... ridiculous way in which Shakespeare was often patronised last century, and 'brought into notice.' She says:—'Mrs. Montagu is a little jealous for poor Shakespeare, for if Mr. Garrick often acts Kitely, Ben Jonson will eclipse his fame.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... begun yet," she said, as she got out and walked slowly across the pavement, warmly wrapped up in a marvellous black sable coat. "Have you got your card, Jonson?" ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Jonson was one of their hardest enemies; and his Zeal-of-the-Land-busy, Justice Over-doo, and Dame Pure-craft, have never been surpassed in masterly delineation of puritanic cant. The dramatists of that era certainly did their best to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli |
