English Literature For Boys And Girls by H.E. Marshall

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But shortly after this, Jonson, with two others, wrote a play in
which some things were said against the Scots. With a Scottish
king surrounded by Scottish lords, that was dangerous. All three
soon found themselves in prison and came near losing their noses
and ears. This was not the first time that Ben had been in
prison, for soon after Every Man in His Humour was acted, he
quarreled for some unknown reason with another actor. In the
foolish fashion of the day they fought a duel over it, and Ben
killed the other man. For this he was seized and put in prison,
and just escaped being hanged. He was left off only with the
loss of all his goods and a brand on the left thumb.

Now once more Jonson escaped. When he was set free, his friends
gave a great feast to show their joy. But Ben had not learned
his lesson, and at least once again he found himself in prison
because of something he had written.

But in spite of these things the King continued to smile upon Ben
Jonson. He gave him a pension and made him poet laureate, and it
was now that he began to write the Masques for which he became
famous. These Masques were dainty poetic little plays written
for the court and often acted by the Queen and her ladies. There
was much singing and dancing in them, and the dresses of the
actors were gorgeous beyond description. And besides this, while
the ordinary stage was still without any scenery, Inigo Jones,
the greatest architect in the land, joined Ben Jonson in making
his plays splendid by inventing scenery for them. This scenery
was beautiful and elaborate, and was sometimes changed two or
three times during the play. One of these plays called The
Masque of Blackness was acted by the Queen and her ladies in
1605, and when we read the description of the scenery it makes us
wonder and smile too at the remembrance of Wall and the Man in
the Moon of which Shakespeare made such fun a few years earlier,
and of which you will read in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Besides his Masques, Jonson wrote two tragedies, and a number of
comedies, as well as other poems. But for a great part of his
life, the part that must have been the easiest and brightest, he
wrote Masques for the King and court and not for the ordinary
stage. He knew his own power in this kind of writing well, and
he was not modest. "Next himself," he said, "only Fletcher and
Chapman could make a mask."* He found, too, good friends among
the nobles. With one he lived for five years, another gave him
money to buy books, and his library became his great joy and
pride.

*Conversation of Ben Jonson with Drummond of Hawthornden.

Ben Jonson traveled too. For a time he traveled in France with
Sir Walter Raleigh's son, while Sir Walter himself was shut up in
the Tower. But Jonson's most famous journey is his walk to
Scotland. He liked to believe that he belonged to a famous
Border family, and wished to visit the land of his forefathers.
So in the mid-summer of 1618 he set out. We do not know how long
he took to make his lengthy walk, but in September he was
comfortably settled in Leith, being "worthily entertained" by all
the greatest and most learned men of the day. He had money
enough for all his wants, for he was able to give a gold piece
and two and twenty shillings to another poet less well off than
himself. He was given the freedom of the city of Edinburgh and
more than 200 pounds was spent on a great feast in his honor.
About Christmas he went to pay a visit to a well-known Scottish
poet, William Drummond, who lived in a beautiful house called
Hawthornden, a few miles from Edinburgh. There he stayed two or
three weeks, during which time he and his host had many a long
talk together, discussing men and books. Drummond wrote down all
that he could remember of these talks, and it is from them that
we learn a good deal of what we know about our poet, a good deal,
perhaps, not to his credit. We learn from them that he was vain
and boastful, a loud talker and a deep drinker. Yet there is
something about this big blustering Ben that we cannot help but
like.

In January sometime, Jonson set his face homeward, and reached
London in April or May, having taken nearly a year to pay his
visit. He must have been pleased with his journey, for on his
return he wrote a poem about Scotland. Nothing of it has come
down to us, however, except one line in which he calls Edinburgh
"The heart of Scotland, Britain's other eye."

The years passed for Jonson, if not in wealth, at least in such
comfort as his way of life allowed. For we cannot ever think of
him as happy in his own home by his own fireside. He is rather a
king in Clubland spending his all freely and taking no thought
for the morrow. But in 1625 King James died, and although the
new King Charles still continued the poet's pension, his tastes
were different from those of his father, and Jonson found himself
and his Masques neglected. His health began to fail too, and his
library, which he dearly loved, was burned, together with many of
his unpublished manuscripts, and so he fell on evil days.

Forgotten at court, Jonson began once more to write for the
stage. But now that he had to write for bread, it almost seemed
as if his pen had lost its charm. The plays he wrote added
nothing to his fame. They were badly received. And so at last,
in trouble for to-morrow's bread, without wife or child to
comfort him, he died on 8th August, 1637.

He was buried in Westminster, and it was intended to raise a fine
tomb over his grave. But times were growing troublous, and the
monument was still lacking, when a lover of the poet, Sir John
Young of Great Milton, in Oxfordshire, came to do honor to his
tomb. Finding it unmarked, he paid a workman 1s. 6d. to carve
above the poet's resting-place the words, "O rare Ben Jonson."
And perhaps these simple words have done more to keep alive the
memory of the poet than any splendid monument could have done.

Chapter XLIX JONSON--"THE SAD SHEPHERD"

ALTHOUGH Ben Jonson's days ended sadly, although his later plays
showed failing powers, he left behind him unfinished a Masque
called The Sad Shepherd which is perhaps more beautiful and more
full of music than anything he ever wrote. For Ben's charm did
not lie in the music of his words but in the strength of his
drawing of character. As another poet has said of him, "Ben as a
rule--a rule which is proved by the exception--was one of the
singers who could not sing; though, like Dryden, he could intone
most admirably."*

*Swinburne.

The Sad Shepherd is a tale of Robin Hood. Here once more we find
an old story being used again, for we have already heard of Robin
Hood in the ballads. Robin Hood makes a great fest to all the
shepherds and shepherdesses round about. All are glad to come,
save one Aeglamon, the Sad Shepherd, whose love, Earine, has, he
believes, been drowned. But later in the play we learn that
Earine is not dead, but that a wicked witch, Mother Maudlin, has
enchanted her, and shut her up in a tree. She had done this in
order to force Earine to give up Aeglamon, her true lover, and
marry her own wretched son Lorel.

When the play begins, Aeglamon passes over the stage mourning for
his lost love.

"Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow,
The world may find the spring by following her,
For other print her airy steps ne'er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk!
But like the soft west wind she shot along,
And where she went the flowers took thickest root--
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot."

Robin Hood has left Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Little John, and all
his merry men to hunt the deer and make ready the feast. And
Tuck says:

"And I, the chaplain, here am left to be
Steward to-day, and charge you all in fee,
To don your liveries, see the bower dressed,
And fit the fine devices for the feast."

So some make ready the bower, the tables and the seats, while
Maid Marian, Little John and others set out to hunt. Presently
they return successful, having killed a fine stag. Robin, too,
comes home, and after loving greetings, listens to the tale of
the hunt. Then Marian tells how, when the huntsmen cut up the
stag, they threw the bone called the raven's bone to one that sat
and croaked for it.

"Now o'er head sat a raven,
On a sere bough, a grown great bird, and hoarse!
Who, all the while the deer was breaking up
So croaked and cried for it, as all the huntsmen,
Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous;
Swore it was Mother Maudlin, whom he met
At the day-dawn, just as he roused the deer
Out of his lair."

Mother Maudlin was a retched old witch, and Scathlock says he is
yet more sure that the raven was she, because in her own form he
has just seen her broiling the raven's bone by the fire, sitting
"In the chimley-nuik within." While the talk went on Maid Marian
had gone away. Now she returns and begins to quarrel with Robin
Hood. Venison is much too good for such folk as he and his men,
she says; "A starved mutton carcase would better fit their
palates," and she orders Scathlock to take the venison to Mother
Maudlin. Those around can scarce believe their ears, for

"Robin and his Marian are the sum and talk
Of all that breathe here in the green-wood walk."

Such is their love for each other. They are "The turtles of the
wood," "The billing pair." No one is more astonished than Robin
Hood, as he cries:

"I dare not trust the faith of mine own senses,
I fear mine eyes and ears: this is not Marian!
Nor am I Robin Hood! I pray you ask her,
Ask her, good shepherds, ask her all for me:
Or rather ask yourselves, if she be she,
Or I be I."

But Maid Marian only scolds the more, and at last goes away
leaving the others in sad bewilderment. Of course this was not
Maid Marian at all, but Mother Maudlin, the old witch, who had
taken her form in order to make mischief.

Meanwhile the real Maid Marian discovers that the venison has
been sent away to Mother Maudlin's. With tears in her eyes she
declares that she gave no such orders, and Scathlock is sent to
bring it back.

When Mother Maudlin comes to thank Maid Marian for her present,
she is told that no such present was ever intended, and so she in
anger curses the cook, casting spells upon him:

"The spit stand still, no broches turn
Before the fire, but let it burn.
Both sides and haunches, till the whole
Converted be into one coal.
The pain we call St. Anton's fire,
The gout, or what we can desire,
To cramp a cook in every limb,
Before they dine yet, seize on him."

Soon Friar Tuck comes in. "Hear you how," he says,
"Poor Tom the cook is taken! all his joints
Do crack, as if his limbs were tied with points.
His whole frame slackens; and a kind of rack,
Runs down along the spindils of his back;
A gout, or cramp, now seizeth on his head,
Then falls into his feet; his knees are lead;
And he can stir his either hand no more
Than a dead stump, to his office, as before."

He is bewitched, that is certain. And certain too it is that
Mother Maudlin has done it. So Robin and his men set out to hunt
for her, while Friar Tuck and Much the Miller's son stay to look
after the dinner in the poor cook's stead. Robin soon meets
Mother Maudlin who has again taken the form of Maid Marian. But
this time Robin suspects her. He seizes the witch by her
enchanted belt. It breaks, and she comes back to her own shape,
and Robin goes off, leaving her cursing.

Mother Maudlin then calls for Puck-hairy, her goblin. He
appears, crying:

"At your beck, madam."
"O Puck my goblin! I have lost my belt,
The strong thief, Robin Outlaw, forced it from me,"

wails Mother Maudlin. But Puck-hairy pays little attention to
her complaints.

"They are other clouds and blacker threat you, dame;
You must be wary, and pull in your sails,
And yield unto the weather of the tempest.
You think your power's infinite as your malice,
And would do all your anger prompts you to;
But you must wait occasions, and obey them:
Sail in an egg-shell, make a straw your mast,
A cobweb all your cloth, and pass unseen,
Till you have 'scaped the rocks that are about you.

MAUDLIN. What rocks about me?

PUCK. I do love, madam,
To show you all your dangers--when you're past them!
Come, follow me, I'll once more be your pilot,
And you shall thank me.

MAUDLIN. Lucky, my loved Goblin!"

And here the play breaks off suddenly, for Jonson died and left
it so. It was finished by another writer* later on, but with
none of Jonson's skill, and reading the continuation we feel that
all the interest is gone. However, you will be glad to know that
everything comes right. The good people get happily married and
all the bad people become good, even the wicked old witch, Mother
Maudlin.

*F. G. Waldron.

Chapter L RALEIGH--"THE REVENGE"

SOME of you may have seen a picture of a brown-faced sailor
sitting by the seashore, telling stories of travel and adventure
to two boy. The one boy lies upon the sand with his chin in his
hands listening but carelessly, the other with his hands clasped
about his knees listens eagerly. His face is rapt, his eyes the
eyes of a poet and a dreamer. This picture is called The Boyhood
of Raleigh, and was painted by one of our great painters, Sir
John Millais. In it he pictures a scene that we should like to
believe was common in Sir Walter Raleigh's boyhood, but we cannot
tell if it were really so or not. Beyond the fact that he was
born in a white-walled thatched-roofed farmhouse, near Budleigh
Salterton in Devonshire, about the year 1552, we know nothing of
Raleigh's childhood. But from the rising ground near Hayes
Barton, the house in which he was born, we catch sight of the
sea. It seems not too much to believe that many a time Walter
and his brother Carew, wandered through the woods and over the
common the two and a half miles to the bay. So that from his
earliest days Walter Raleigh breathed in a love and knowledge of
the sea. We like to think these things, but we can only make
believe to ourselves as Millais did when he went to Budleigh
Salterton and painted that picture.

When still quite a boy, Walter Raleigh went to Oriel College,
Oxford, but we know nothing of what he did there, and the next we
hear of him is that he is fighting for the Huguenots in France.
How long he remained in France, and what he did there beyond this
fighting, we do not know. But this we know, that when he went to
France he was a mere boy, with no knowledge of fighting, no
knowledge of the world. When he left he was a man and a tried
soldier, a captain and leader of men.

When next we hear of Raleigh he is in Ireland fighting the
rebels. There he did some brave deeds, some cruel deeds, there
he lived to the full the life of a soldier as it was in those
rough times, making all Ireland ring with his name. But although
Raleigh had won for himself a name among soldiers, he was as yet
unknown to the Queen; his fortune was still unmade.

You have all heard the story of how Raleigh first met the Queen.
The first notice we have of this story is in a book from which I
have already quoted more than once--The Worthies of England.

"This Captain Raleigh," says Fuller, "coming out of Ireland to
the English Court in good habit (his clothes being then a
considerable part of his estate), found the Queen walking, till,
meeting with a splashy place, she seemed to scruple going
thereon. Presently Raleigh cast and spread his new plush cloak
on the ground, whereon the Queen trod gently, rewarding him
afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender
of so fair a foot cloth."

Thomas Fuller, who wrote the book in which this story is found,
was only a boy of ten when Raleigh died, so he could not have
known the great man himself, but he must have heard many stories
about him from those who had, and we need not disbelieve this
one. It is one of those things which might very well have
happened even if it did not.

And whether Raleigh first came into Queen Elizabeth's notice in
this manner or not, after he did become known to her, he soon
rose in her favor. He rose so quickly that he almost feared the
giddy height to which he rose. According to another story of
Fuller's, "This made him write in a glasse window, obvious to the
Queen's eye,

'Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.'

"Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did underwrite:

'If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.'

"However he at last climbed up by the stairs of his own desert."

Honors and favors were heaped upon Raleigh, and from being a poor
soldier and country gentleman he became rich and powerful, the
lord of lands in five counties, and Captain of the Queen's Own
Body-Guard. Haughty of manner, splendid in dress, loving jewels
more than even a woman does, Raleigh became as fine a courtier as
he was a brave soldier. But soldier though Raleigh was, courtier
though he was, loving ease and wealth and fine clothes, he was at
heart a sailor and adventurer, and the sea he had loved as a boy
called to him.

Like many another of his age Raleigh, hearing the call of the
waves ever in his ears, felt the desire to explore tug at his
heart-strings. For in those days America had been discovered,
and the quest for the famous North-West passage had begun. And
Raleigh longed to set forth with other men to conquer new worlds,
to find new paths across the waves. But above all he longed to
fight the Spaniards, who were the great sea kings of those days.
Raleigh however could not be a courtier and a sailor at one and
the same time. He was meanwhile high in the Queen's favor, and
she would not let him go from her. So all that Raleigh could do,
was to venture his money, and fit out a ship to which he gave his
own name. This he sent to sail along with others under the
command of his step-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was setting
out upon a voyage of discovery. It was on this voyage that Sir
Humphrey found and claimed Newfoundland as an English possession,
setting up there "the Arms of England ingraven in lead and
infixed upon a pillar of wood."* But the expedition was
unfortunate, most of the men and ships were lost, Sir Humphrey
himself being drowned on his way home. He was brave and fearless
to the last. "We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land," he
said, a short time before his ship went down. One vessel only
"in great torment of weather and peril of drowning"* reached home
safely, "all the men tired with the tediousness of so
unprofitable a voyage to their seeming." Yet though they knew it
not they had helped to lay the foundation of Greater Britain.

*Hakluyt's Voyages.

Nothing daunted by this loss, six months later Raleigh sent out
another expedition. This time it was to the land south of
Newfoundland that the ships took their way. There they set up
the arms of England, and named the new possession Virginia in
honor of the virgin Queen. This expedition was little more
successful than Sir Humphrey Gilbert's, but nothing seemed to
discourage Raleigh. He was bent on founding a colony, and again
and yet again he sent out ships and men, spending all the wealth
which the Queen heaped upon him in trying to extend her dominions
beyond the seas. Hope was strong within him. "I shall yet live
to see it an English nation," he said.

And while Raleigh's captains tried to found a new England in the
New World, Raleigh himself worked at home to bring order into the
vast estates the Queen had given to him in Ireland. This land
had belonged to the rebel Earl of Desmond. At one time no doubt
it had been fertile, but rebellion and war had laid it waste.
"The land was so barren both of man and beast that whosoever did
travel from one end of all Munster . . . . he should not meet
man, woman, or child, saving in cities or towns, nor yet see any
beast, save foxes, wolves, or the ravening beasts." And barren
and desolate as it was when Raleigh received it, it soon became
known as the best tilled land in all the country-side. For he
brought workers and tenants from his old Devon home to take the
place of the beggared or slain Irish. He introduced new and
better ways of tilling, and also he brought to Ireland a strange
new root. For it is interesting to remember that it was in
Raleigh's Irish estates that potatoes were first grown in our
Islands.

Raleigh took a great interest in these estates, so perhaps it was
not altogether a hardship to him, finding himself out of favor
with his Queen, to go to Ireland for a time. And although they
had known each other before, it was then that his friendship with
Spenser began. Spenser read his Faery Queen to Raleigh, and
perhaps Raleigh read to Spenser his poem Cynthia written in honor
of Queen Elizabeth. But of that poem nearly all has been lost.
Elizabeth was not as yet very angry with Raleigh, still he felt
the loss of her favor, for Spenser tells us:--

"His song was all a lamentable lay,
Of great unkindness and of usage hard,
Of Cynthia, the Lady of the Sea,
Which from her presence faultless him debarred.
And ever and anon with singults* rife,
He cried out, to make his undersong,
'Ah! my love's Queen, and goddess of my life,
Who shall me pity when thou doest me wrong?'"**

*Sobs.
**"Colin Clout's come home again."

But Raleigh soon decided to return to court, and persuaded
Spenser

"To wend with him his Cynthia to see,
Whose grace was great and bounty most rewardful"*

*Colin Clout.

You know how Spenser was received and how he fared. But Raleigh
himself after he had introduced his friend did not stay long at
court. Quarrels with his rivals soon drove him forth again.

It was soon after this that he published the first writing which
gives him a claim to the name of author. This was an account of
the fight between a little ship called the Revenge and a Spanish
fleet.
Although with the destruction of the Invincible Armada the sea
power of Spain had been crippled, it had not been utterly broken,
and still whenever Spanish and English ships met on the seas,
there was sure to be battle. It being known that a fleet of
Spanish treasure-ships would pass the Azores, islands in the mid-
Atlantic, a fleet of English ships under Lord Thomas Howard was
sent to attack them. But the English ships had to wait so long
at the Azores for the coming of the Spanish fleet that the news
of the intended attack reached Spain, and the Spaniards sent a
strong fleet to help and protect their treasure-ships. The
English in turn hearing of this sent a swift little boat to warn
Lord Thomas. The warning arrived almost too late. Many of the
Englishmen were sick and ashore, and before all could be gathered
the fleet of fifty-three great Spanish ships was upon them.
Still Lord Thomas managed to slip away. Only the last ship, the
Revenge, commanded by the Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Grenville,
lost the wind and was caught between two great squadrons of the
Spanish. Whereupon Sir Richard "was persuaded," Sir Walter says,
"by the Master and others to cut his main-sail, and cast about,
and to trust to the sailing of the ship. . . . But Sir Richard
utterly refused to turn from the enemy, alleging that he would
rather choose to die, than to dishonour himself, his country, and
her Majesty's ship, persuading his company that he would pass
through the two squadrons, in despite of them."

For a little time it seemed as if Sir Richard's daring might
succeed. But a great ship, the San Philip, came between him and
the wind "and coming towards him, becalmed his sails in such
sort, as the ship could neither make way, nor feel the helm: so
huge and high-carged* was the Spanish ship. . . . The fight thus
beginning at three of the clock of the afternoon continued very
terrible all that evening. But the great San Philip having
received the lower tier of the Revenge, discharged with cross-bar
shot, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly
misliking her first entertainment. . . . The Spanish ships were
filled with companies of soldiers, in some two hundred, besides
the mariners; in some five, in other eight hundred. In ours
there were none at all beside the mariners, but the servants of
the commanders and some few voluntary gentlemen only." And yet
the Spaniards "were still repulsed, again and again, and at all
times beaten back into their own ships, or into the seas."

*The meaning of the word is uncertain. It may be high-charged.

In the beginning of the fight one little store ship of the
English fleet hovered near. It was small and of no use in
fighting. Now it came close to the Revenge and the Captain asked
Sir Richard what he should do, and "Sir Richard bid him save
himself, and leave him to his fortune." So the gallant Revenge
was left to fight alone. For fifteen hours the battle lasted,
Sir Richard himself was sorely wounded, and when far into the
night the fighting ceased, two of the Spanish vessels were sunk
"and in many other of the Spanish ships great slaughter was
made." "But the Spanish ships which attempted to board the
Revenge, as they were wounded and beaten off, so always others
came in their places, she having never less than two might
galleons by her sides and aboard her. So that ere the morning,
from three of the clock the day before, there had fifteen several
Armadas* assailed her. And all so ill approved their
entertainment, as they were, by the break of day, far more
willing to hearken to a composition** than hastily to make any
more assaults or entries.