6 and that whole passage is a compliment very properly brought in, and very handsomely applied to her. She was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff, in The Two Parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love. This is said to be the occasion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. How well she was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. Upon this occa sion it may not be improper to observe, that this part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle:" some of that family being then remaining, the Queen was pleased to command him to alter it; upon which he made use of Falstaff. The present offence was indeed avoided; but I do not know whether the author may not have been somewhat to blame in his second choice, since it is certain that Sir John Falstaff, who was a knight of the garter, and a lieutenant-general, was a name of distinguished merit in the wars in France in Henry the Fifth's and Henry the Sixth's times. What grace soever the Queen conferred upon him, it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of 6 she commanded him to continue it for one play more,] This anecdote was first given to the publick by Dennis, in the Epistle Dedicatory to his comedy entitled The Comical Gallant, 4to. 1702, altered from The Merry Wives of Windsor. MALONE. 7 this part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle;] See the Epilogue to Henry the Fourth. POPE. In a note subjoined to that Epilogue, and more fully in Vol. XI. p. 194. n. 3, the reader will find this notion overturned, and the origin of this vulgar error pointed out. Mr. Rowe was evidently deceived by a passage in Fuller's Worthies, misunderstood. MALONE. 8 his wit made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. It was to that noble lord that he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. There is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profuse generosity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian singers. What particular habitude or friendships he contracted with private men, I have not been able to learn, more than that every one, who had a true taste of merit, and could distinguish men, had ge nerally a just value and esteem for him. His exceeding candour and good-nature must certainly have inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him, as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him. His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a from the Earl of Southampton,] Of this amiable nobleman such memoirs as I have been able to collect, may be found in the tenth volume, [i. e. of Mr. Malone's edition] prefixed to the poem of Venus and Adonis. MALone. 9 he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis,] To this nobleman also he dedicated his Rape of Lucrece, printed in 4to. in 1594. MALONE, remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature; Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured an.. swer, that it would be of no service to their company; when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the publick.' to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the publick.] In Mr. Rowe's first edition, after these words was inserted the following passage: "After this, they were professed friends; though I do not know whether the other ever made him an equal return of gentleness and sincerity. Ben was naturally proud and insolent, and in the days of his reputation did so far take upon him the supremacy in wit, that he could not but look with an evil eye upon any one that seemed to stand in competition with him. And if at times he has affected to commend him, it has always been with some reserve; insinuating his uncorrectness, a careless manner of writing, and want of judgment. The praise of sel dom altering or blotting out what he writ, which was given him by the players, who were the first publishers of his works after his death, was what Jonson could not bear: he thought it im possible, perhaps, for another man to strike out the greatest thoughts in the finest expression, and to reach those excellencies of poetry with the ease of a first imagination, which himself with infinite labour and study could but hardly attain to." I have preserved this passage because I believe it strictly true, except that in the last line, instead of but hardly, I would read -never. Dryden, we are told by Pope, concurred with Mr. Rowe in thinking Jonson's posthumous verses on our author sparing and invidious.-See also Mr. Steevens's note on those verses. Before Shakspeare's death Ben's envious disposition is mentioned by one of his own friends; it must therefore have been even then notorious; though the writer denies the truth of the charge: Jonson was certainly a very good scholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakspeare; though at "To my well accomplish'd friend, Mr. Ben. Jonson. "Such censurers must have." Scourge of Folly, by J. Davies, printed about 1611. The following lines by one of Jonson's admirers will sufficicently support Mr. Rowe in what he has said relative to the slowness of that writer in his compositions: "Scorn then their censures who gave out, thy wit "As elephants bring forth, and that thy blots "And niendings took more time than FORTUNE-PLOTS; The writer does not deny the charge, but vindicates his friend by saying that, however slow, "He that writes well, writes quick-." Verses on B. Jonson, by Jasper Mayne. So also, another of his Panegyrists: "Admit his muse was slow, 'tis judgment's fate To move like greatest princes, still in state." In The Return from Parnassus, 1606, Jonson is said to be 66 so slow an enditer, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying." The same piece furnishes us with the earliest intimation of the quarrel between him and Shakspeare: "Why here's our fellow Shakspeare put them [the university poets] all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. O, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakspeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Fuller, who was a diligent inquirer, and lived near enough the time to be well informed, confirms this account, asserting in his Worthies, 1662, that “ many were the wit-combats" between Jonson and our poet. It is a singular circumstance that old Ben should for near two centuries have stalked on the stilts of an artificial reputation; and that even at this day, of the very few who read his works, scarcely one in ten yet ventures to confess how little entertainment they afford. Such was the impression made on the publick by the extravagant praises of those who knew more of books than the same time I believe it must be allowed, that what nature gave the latter, was more than a ba of the drama, that Dryden in his Essay on Dramatick Poesie, written about 1667, does not venture to go further in his elogium on Shakspeare, than by saying," he was at least Jonson's equal, if not his superior;" and in the preface to his Mock Astrologer, 1671, he hardly dares to assert, what, in my opinion, cannot be denied, that "all Jonson's pieces, except three or four, are but crambe bis cocta; the same humours a little varied, and written worse." Ben, however, did not trust to the praise of others. One of his admirers honestly confesses, "Of whom I write this, has prevented me, No other pen need any trophy raise." In vain, however, did he endeavour to bully the town into approbation by telling his auditors, " By G-'tis good, and if you like't, you may ;" and by pouring out against those who preferred our poet to him, a torrent of illiberal abuse; which, as Mr. Walpole justly observes, some of his contemporaries were willing to think wit, because they were afraid of it; for, notwithstanding all his arrogant boasts, notwithstanding all the clamour of his partizans both in his own life-time and for sixty years after his death, the truth is, that his pieces, when first performed, were so far from being applauded by the people, that they were scarcely endured; and many of them were actually damned. 66 the fine plush and velvets of the age "Did oft for sixpence damn thee from the stage," says one of his eulogists in Jonsonius Virbius, 4to. 1638. Jonson himself owns that Sejanus was damned. "It is a poem, says he, in his Dedication to Lord Aubigny," that, if I well remember, in your lordship's sight suffered no less violence from our people here, than the subject of it did from the rage of the people of Rome." His friend E. B. (probably Edmund Bolton speaking of the same performance, says,— But when I view'd the people's beastly rage, Again, in his Dedication of Catiline to the Earl of Pembroke, the author says, "Posterity may pay your benefit the honour and |