Jonson, in fact, the only dramatist who could be regarded as in any manner the rival of Shakespeare, appears to have had the honor of being his earliest as well as his warmest and his most judicious eulogist. His well-known lines " to the memory of his beloved Shakespeare and what he hath left us,” worthy at once of the author and of the object, will stand an enduring monument to the fame of both, and to the disgrace of those calumniators of Jonson who have delighted to reproach him with a malignant and envious hostility against his great contemporary.

It would be at once superfluous and presumptuous to enter in this place on such a theme as the perfections of our illustrious poet; but a few remarks on such passages of his works as tend to illustrate his individual character, and the sentiments entertained by him on the principal topics of contemporary interest, may be regarded as not inappropriate.

That the silence of Shakespeare respecting the merits of other writers proceeded neither from envy nor from a cynical austerity, may safely be inferred from the amenity, the air of benevolence mingled with gaiety, which pervades his pieces and forms one of their most delightful characteristics. At the same time, the traits of ridicule which he often lances against the absurdities of the elder dramatists, and the parodies with which he amuses himself, evince a quick sense of the ludicrous, and a taste which disdained the efforts of laborious mediocrity and pedantic affectation; and he must undoubtedly be

classed

classed as a satirist, though the most playful and goodhumored of the tribe. His general freedom from the vice of adulation, is equally striking and honorable. Even in the dedication of his early poems to lord Southampton, he dared to rise above the servility of the times. The few The few passages of compliment to queen Elizabeth interspersed in his plays are modest, tasteful, and probably the sincere dictate of his feelings. The eulogy of her successor, which appears as if compulsorily inserted in Cranmer's prophetic speech, has at least the merit, or the excuse, of insisting very little on the personal qualities of the monarch. But there was a native generosity of soul in Shakespeare which would not permit him to content himself with negative merits. There can be little doubt that in the direction which sir Toby, in the play of Twelfth Night, gives to sir Andrew Aguecheek for his challenge; "Taunt him with the license of ink; if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss;" he designed to express his esteem for the injured Raleigh, and to stigmatise the arrogance of Coke, who had insulted him on his trial with this identical expression of contempt. The desire of the same idiotical sir Andrew to beat Malvolio for "no exquisite reason," but because he is told that he is a puritan, and the horror with which he speaks of a Brownist, are keen strokes of satire on the intolerance of the time, which, under all the circumstances, deserve high praise. The puritans were at once objects of detestation to king James, the patron of the poet, and implacable enemies to

the

the stage and all connected with it; and the treatment which they were in the habit of receiving from the dramatic writers in return, may best be learned from Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair" and various contemporary pieces.

On the other hand, Shakespeare has so sedulously abstained throughout his works from that ridicule of the catholic mysteries, and those satirical representations of the manners of their clergy, the favorite common places of the protestant poets, that he has been strongly suspected of cherishing a secret attachment to the ancient communion. But the energetic protest against papal domination in the play of King John, seems incompatible with this opinion, and the forbearance must be attributed not to his faith but his candor. The invective of Shakespeare was chiefly pointed against pride, cruelty, treachery and oppression; and his ridicule lashed the foreign and fantastical affectations in speech and behaviour, the sententious pedantry, the tiresome ceremonial, and the rage for complimenting, which infected the manners of that transition-age between gothic barbarism and the refinements of modern Europe.

In the number, the variety, the exquisite beauty of his portraitures of female character, no writer of his own time and language,-or perhaps of any other, can sustain a comparison with Shakespeare, excepting Spenser, the object of his early admiration, from whom it seems no improbable conjecture that his first vivid impressions of the " good and

fair" might be in great measure derived. It has been remarked, that in all the plays of Ben Jonson only three respectable female characters are found, and of these, Celia, in the Fox, is the only one to which the slightest degree of interest is attached. Beaumont and Fletcher and Massinger are more bountiful to the sex of virtues and of graces; they have sometimes even attempted to pourtray a heroine: but female delicacy was a quality of which these writers could never attain to the most remote conception; and those who have endured the disgust of studying their characters of women, can alone appreciate the obligations of the sex and of society to him whose soul was capable of conceiving, and his hand of delineating, such models of purity and loveliness as Imogen and Cordelia and Desdemona ;such an enchantress as Rosalind. In conclusion, the trespasses against decorum, and in some respects against morals, which defile and degrade too many scenes of our great dramatist, must not, cannot, be disguised or palliated; but there never was a writer of whom it might with more truth be said, that his vices were those of his age, his preponderating virtues and inimitable excellencies peculiar and his

own.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER XV.

1616.

Disgrace of Coke.—Various causes of it assigned.—Enmity of Coke and Bacon.-Bacon's letter of expostulation to Coke. His letters to the king reflecting on Coke.-Case of Peacham,-of Oliver St. John.-Dispute between the king's-bench and chancery.-Affair of commendams.-The judges summoned before the privy-council.—Coke's spirited conduct, and dismissal.—Charles created prince of Wales.— Plan for his marriage to a French princess.—Lord Hay's embassy, his pomp and prodigality.-James congratu lates Louis XIII. on the murder of marshal d'Ancre.— Cautionary towns given up to the Dutch.

THE disgrace of lord-chief-justice Coke, almost immediately after the termination of his labors in the prosecution of Overbury's murderers, was an event which excited general attention, and the causes of which have been stated with considerable diversity by contemporary writers. Some have affirmed, that in his examinations of the papers of the earl of Somerset, he made certain discoveries deeply affecting the character of the king himself. It has been added, that on the trials he threw out hints concerning the supposed manner of prince Henry's death which James could never forgive. Others have ascribed his loss of the royal favor to his vigorous defence of the common law against what he regarded as the encroachments of the court of chan

cery ;