Chapter 1

Transcribed from the 1892 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email [email protected]

CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

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DISCOVERIES _MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER_ AND SOME POEMS

BY BEN JOHNSON.

[Picture: Decorative graphic]

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: _LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_. 1892.

INTRODUCTION

BEN JONSON’S “Discoveries” are, as he says in the few Latin words prefixed to them, “A wood—Sylva—of things and thoughts, in Greek ‘ὕλη’” [which has for its first meaning material, but is also applied peculiarly to kinds of wood, and to a wood], “from the multiplicity and variety of the material contained in it. For, as we are commonly used to call the infinite mixed multitude of growing trees a wood, so the ancients gave the name of Sylvæ—Timber Trees—to books of theirs in which small works of various and diverse matter were promiscuously brought together.”

In this little book we have some of the best thoughts of one of the most vigorous minds that ever added to the strength of English literature. The songs added are a part of what Ben Jonson called his “Underwoods.”

Ben Jonson was of a north-country family from the Annan district that produced Thomas Carlyle. His father was ruined by religious persecution in the reign of Mary, became a preacher in Elizabeth’s reign, and died a month before the poet’s birth in 1573. Ben Jonson, therefore, was about nine years younger than Shakespeare, and he survived Shakespeare about twenty-one years, dying in August, 1637. Next to Shakespeare Ben Jonson was, in his own different way, the man of most mark in the story of the English drama. His mother, left poor, married again. Her second husband was a bricklayer, or small builder, and they lived for a time near Charing Cross in Hartshorn Lane. Ben Jonson was taught at the parish school of St. Martin’s till he was discovered by William Camden, the historian. Camden was then second master in Westminster School. He procured for young Ben an admission into his school, and there laid firm foundations for that scholarship which the poet extended afterwards by private study until his learning grew to be sworn-brother to his wit.

Ben Jonson began the world poor. He worked for a very short time in his step-father’s business. He volunteered to the wars in the Low Countries. He came home again, and joined the players. Before the end of Elizabeth’s reign he had written three or four plays, in which he showed a young and ardent zeal for setting the world to rights, together with that high sense of the poet’s calling which put lasting force into his work. He poured contempt on those who frittered life away. He urged on the poetasters and the mincing courtiers, who set their hearts on top-knots and affected movements of their lips and legs:—

“That these vain joys in which their wills consume Such powers of wit and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men; And for the practice of a forcéd look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study the native frame of a true heart, An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge, And spirit that may conform them actually To God’s high figures, which they have in power.”

Ben Jonson’s genius was producing its best work in the earlier years of the reign of James I. His _Volpone_, the _Silent Woman_, and the _Alchemist_ first appeared side by side with some of the ripest works of Shakespeare in the years from 1605 to 1610. In the latter part of James’s reign he produced masques for the Court, and turned with distaste from the public stage. When Charles I. became king, Ben Jonson was weakened in health by a paralytic stroke. He returned to the stage for a short time through necessity, but found his best friends in the best of the young poets of the day. These looked up to him as their father and their guide. Their own best efforts seemed best to them when they had won Ben Jonson’s praise. They valued above all passing honours man could give the words, “My son,” in the old poet’s greeting, which, as they said, “sealed them of the tribe of Ben.”

H. M.

SYLVA

_Rerum et sententiarum quasi Ὕλη dicta a multiplici materia et varietate in iis contentá_. _Quemadmodùm enim vulgò solemus infinitam arborum nascentium indiscriminatim multitudinem Sylvam dicere: ità etiam libros suos in quibus variæ et diversæ materiæ opuscula temere congesta erant_, Sylvas _appellabant antiqui_: Timber-trees.

TIMBER; OR, DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER, AS THEY HAVE FLOWED OUT OF HIS DAILY READINGS, OR HAD THEIR REFLUX TO HIS PECULIAR NOTION OF THE TIMES.

_Tecum habita_, _ut nôris quam sit tibi curta supellex_ {11}

PERS. Sat. 4.

_Fortuna_.—Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not. I therefore have counselled my friends never to trust to her fairer side, though she seemed to make peace with them; but to place all things she gave them, so as she might ask them again without their trouble, she might take them from them, not pull them: to keep always a distance between her and themselves. He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity. Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man. Contraries are not mixed. Yet that which happens to any man may to every man. But it is in his reason, what he accounts it and will make it.

_Casus_.—Change into extremity is very frequent and easy. As when a beggar suddenly grows rich, he commonly becomes a prodigal; for, to obscure his former obscurity, he puts on riot and excess.

_Consilia_.—No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise but may easily err, if he will take no others’ counsel but his own. But very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself {12} had a fool to his master.

_Fama_.—A Fame that is wounded to the world would be better cured by another’s apology than its own: for few can apply medicines well themselves. Besides, the man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him. He is not easily emergent.

_Negotia_.—In great affairs it is a work of difficulty to please all. And ofttimes we lose the occasions of carrying a business well and thoroughly by our too much haste. For passions are spiritual rebels, and raise sedition against the understanding.

_Amor patriæ_.—There is a necessity all men should love their country: he that professeth the contrary may be delighted with his words, but his heart is there.

_Ingenia_.—Natures that are hardened to evil you shall sooner break than make straight; they are like poles that are crooked and dry, there is no attempting them.

_Applausus_.—We praise the things we hear with much more willingness than those we see, because we envy the present and reverence the past; thinking ourselves instructed by the one, and overlaid by the other.

_Opinio_.—Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing; settled in the imagination, but never arriving at the understanding, there to obtain the tincture of reason. We labour with it more than truth. There is much more holds us than presseth us. An ill fact is one thing, an ill fortune is another; yet both oftentimes sway us alike, by the error of our thinking.

_Impostura_.—Many men believe not themselves what they would persuade others; and less do the things which they would impose on others; but least of all know what they themselves most confidently boast. Only they set the sign of the cross over their outer doors, and sacrifice to their gut and their groin in their inner closets.

_Jactura vitæ_.—What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better part of life in! in scattering compliments, tendering visits, gathering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter-love in a dark corner.

Hypocrita.—_Puritanus Hypocrita est Hæreticus_, _quem opinio propriæ perspicaciæ_, _quâ sibi videtur_, _cum paucis in Ecclesiâ dogmatibus errores quosdam animadvertisse_, _de statu mentis deturbavit: unde sacro furore percitus_, _phrenetice pugnat contra magistratus_, _sic ratus obedientiam præstare Deo_. {14}

_Mutua auxilia_.—Learning needs rest: sovereignty gives it. Sovereignty needs counsel: learning affords it. There is such a consociation of offices between the prince and whom his favour breeds, that they may help to sustain his power as he their knowledge. It is the greatest part of his liberality, his favour; and from whom doth he hear discipline more willingly, or the arts discoursed more gladly, than from those whom his own bounty and benefits have made able and faithful?

_Cognit. univers_.—In being able to counsel others, a man must be furnished with a universal store in himself, to the knowledge of all nature—that is, the matter and seed-plot: there are the seats of all argument and invention. But especially you must be cunning in the nature of man: there is the variety of things which are as the elements and letters, which his art and wisdom must rank and order to the present occasion. For we see not all letters in single words, nor all places in particular discourses. That cause seldom happens wherein a man will use all arguments.

_Consiliarii adjunct_. _Probitas_, _Sapientia_.—The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel are the opinion of his honesty and the opinion of his wisdom: the authority of those two will persuade when the same counsels uttered by other persons less qualified are of no efficacy or working.

_Vita recta_.—Wisdom without honesty is mere craft and cozenage. And therefore the reputation of honesty must first be gotten, which cannot be but by living well. A good life is a main argument.

_Obsequentia_.—_Humanitas_.—_Solicitudo_.—Next a good life, to beget love in the persons we counsel, by dissembling our knowledge of ability in ourselves, and avoiding all suspicion of arrogance, ascribing all to their instruction, as an ambassador to his master, or a subject to his sovereign; seasoning all with humanity and sweetness, only expressing care and solicitude. And not to counsel rashly, or on the sudden, but with advice and meditation. (_Dat nox consilium_. {17a}) For many foolish things fall from wise men, if they speak in haste or be extemporal. It therefore behoves the giver of counsel to be circumspect; especially to beware of those with whom he is not thoroughly acquainted, lest any spice of rashness, folly, or self-love appear, which will be marked by new persons and men of experience in affairs.

_Modestia_.—_Parrhesia_.—And to the prince, or his superior, to behave himself modestly and with respect. Yet free from flattery or empire. Not with insolence or precept; but as the prince were already furnished with the parts he should have, especially in affairs of state. For in other things they will more easily suffer themselves to be taught or reprehended: they will not willingly contend, but hear, with Alexander, the answer the musician gave him: _Absit_, _o rex_, _ut tu meliùs hæc scias_, _quàm ego_. {17b}

_Perspicuitas_.—_Elegantia_.—A man should so deliver himself to the nature of the subject whereof he speaks, that his hearer may take knowledge of his discipline with some delight; and so apparel fair and good matter, that the studious of elegancy be not defrauded; redeem arts from their rough and braky seats, where they lay hid and overgrown with thorns, to a pure, open, and flowery light, where they may take the eye and be taken by the hand.

_Natura non effæta_.—I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed that she can bring forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like herself; and when she collects her strength is abler still. Men are decayed, and studies: she is not.

_Non nimiùm credendum antiquitati_.—I know nothing can conduce more to letters than to examine the writings of the ancients, and not to rest in their sole authority, or take all upon trust from them, provided the plagues of judging and pronouncing against them be away; such as are envy, bitterness, precipitation, impudence, and scurrilous scoffing. For to all the observations of the ancients we have our own experience, which if we will use and apply, we have better means to pronounce. It is true they opened the gates, and made the way that went before us, but as guides, not commanders: _Non domini nostri_, _sed duces fuêre_. {19a} Truth lies open to all; it is no man’s several. _Patet omnibus veritas_; _nondum est occupata_. _Multum ex illâ_, _etiam futuris relicta est_. {19b}

_Dissentire licet_, _sed cum ratione_.—If in some things I dissent from others, whose wit, industry, diligence, and judgment, I look up at and admire, let me not therefore hear presently of ingratitude and rashness. For I thank those that have taught me, and will ever; but yet dare not think the scope of their labour and inquiry was to envy their posterity what they also could add and find out.

_Non mihi credendum sed veritati_.—If I err, pardon me: _Nulla ars simul et inventa est et absoluta_. {19c} I do not desire to be equal to those that went before; but to have my reason examined with theirs, and so much faith to be given them, or me, as those shall evict. I am neither author nor fautor of any sect. I will have no man addict himself to me; but if I have anything right, defend it as Truth’s, not mine, save as it conduceth to a common good. It profits not me to have any man fence or fight for me, to flourish, or take my side. Stand for truth, and ’tis enough.

_Scientiæ liberales_.—Arts that respect the mind were ever reputed nobler than those that serve the body, though we less can be without them, as tillage, spinning, weaving, building, &c., without which we could scarce sustain life a day. But these were the works of every hand; the other of the brain only, and those the most generous and exalted wits and spirits, that cannot rest or acquiesce. The mind of man is still fed with labour: _Opere pascitur_.

_Non vulgi sunt_.—There is a more secret cause, and the power of liberal studies lies more hid than that it can be wrought out by profane wits. It is not every man’s way to hit. There are men, I confess, that set the carat and value upon things as they love them; but science is not every man’s mistress. It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

_Honesta ambitio_.—If divers men seek fame or honour by divers ways, so both be honest, neither is to be blamed; but they that seek immortality are not only worthy of love, but of praise.

_Maritus improbus_.—He hath a delicate wife, a fair fortune, a family to go to and be welcome; yet he had rather be drunk with mine host and the fiddlers of such a town, than go home.

_Afflictio pia magistra_.—Affliction teacheth a wicked person some time to pray: prosperity never.

_Deploratis facilis descensus Averni_.—_The devil take all_.—Many might go to heaven with half the labour they go to hell, if they would venture their industry the right way; but “The devil take all!” quoth he that was choked in the mill-dam, with his four last words in his mouth.

_Ægidius cursu superat_.—A cripple in the way out-travels a footman or a post out of the way.

_Prodigo nummi nauci_.—Bags of money to a prodigal person are the same that cherry-stones are with some boys, and so thrown away.

_Munda et sordida_.—A woman, the more curious she is about her face is commonly the more careless about her house.

_Debitum deploratum_.—Of this spilt water there is a little to be gathered up: it is a desperate debt.

_Latro sesquipedalis_.—The thief {22} that had a longing at the gallows to commit one robbery more before he was hanged.

And like the German lord, when he went out of Newgate into the cart, took order to have his arms set up in his last herborough: said was he taken and committed upon suspicion of treason, no witness appearing against him; but the judges entertained him most civilly, discoursed with him, offered him the courtesy of the rack; but he confessed, &c.

_Calumniæ fructus_.—I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavoured and taken pains to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.

_Impertinens_.—A tedious person is one a man would leap a steeple from, gallop down any steep lull to avoid him; forsake his meat, sleep, nature itself, with all her benefits, to shun him. A mere impertinent; one that touched neither heaven nor earth in his discourse. He opened an entry into a fair room, but shut it again presently. I spoke to him of garlic, he answered asparagus; consulted him of marriage, he tells me of hanging, as if they went by one and the same destiny.

_Bellum scribentium_.—What a sight it is to see writers committed together by the ears for ceremonies, syllables, points, colons, commas, hyphens, and the like, fighting as for their fires and their altars; and angry that none are frighted at their noises and loud brayings under their asses’ skins.

There is hope of getting a fortune without digging in these quarries. _Sed meliore (in omne) ingenio animoque quàm fortunâ_, _sum usus_. {23}

“Pingue solum lassat; sed juvat ipse labor.” {24a}

_Differentia inter doctos et sciolos_.—Wits made out their several expeditions then for the discovery of truth, to find out great and profitable knowledges; had their several instruments for the disquisition of arts. Now there are certain scioli or smatterers that are busy in the skirts and outsides of learning, and have scarce anything of solid literature to commend them. They may have some edging or trimming of a scholar, a welt or so; but it is no more.

_Impostorum fucus_.—Imposture is a specious thing, yet never worse than when it feigns to be best, and to none discovered sooner than the simplest. For truth and goodness are plain and open; but imposture is ever ashamed of the light.

_Icunculorum motio_.—A puppet-play must be shadowed and seen in the dark; for draw the curtain, _et sordet gesticulatio_. {24b}

_Principes et administri_.—There is a great difference in the understanding of some princes, as in the quality of their ministers about them. Some would dress their masters in gold, pearl, and all true jewels of majesty; others furnish them with feathers, bells, and ribands, and are therefore esteemed the fitter servants. But they are ever good men that must make good the times; if the men be naught, the times will be such. _Finis exspectandus est in unoquoque hominum_; _animali ad mutationem promptissmo_. {25a}

_Scitum Hispanicum_.—It is a quick saying with the Spaniards, _Artes inter hæredes non dividi_. {25b} Yet these have inherited their fathers’ lying, and they brag of it. He is a narrow-minded man that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence knows none.

_Non nova res livor_.—Envy is no new thing, nor was it born only in our times. The ages past have brought it forth, and the coming ages will. So long as there are men fit for it, _quorum odium virtute relictâ placet_, it will never be wanting. It is a barbarous envy, to take from those men’s virtues which, because thou canst not arrive at, thou impotently despairest to imitate. Is it a crime in me that I know that which others had not yet known but from me? or that I am the author of many things which never would have come in thy thought but that I taught them? It is new but a foolish way you have found out, that whom you cannot equal or come near in doing, you would destroy or ruin with evil speaking; as if you had bound both your wits and natures ’prentices to slander, and then came forth the best artificers when you could form the foulest calumnies.

_Nil gratius protervo lib_.—Indeed nothing is of more credit or request now than a petulant paper, or scoffing verses; and it is but convenient to the times and manners we live with, to have then the worst writings and studies flourish when the best begin to be despised. Ill arts begin where good end.

_Jam literæ sordent_.—_Pastus hodiern. ingen_.—The time was when men would learn and study good things, not envy those that had them. Then men were had in price for learning; now letters only make men vile. He is upbraidingly called a poet, as if it were a contemptible nick-name: but the professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap—railing and tinkling rhymers, whose writings the vulgar more greedily read, as being taken with the scurrility and petulancy of such wits. He shall not have a reader now unless he jeer and lie. It is the food of men’s natures; the diet of the times; gallants cannot sleep else. The writer must lie and the gentle reader rests happy to hear the worthiest works misinterpreted, the clearest actions obscured, the innocentest life traduced: and in such a licence of lying, a field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be matter wanting to his laughter? Hence comes the epidemical infection; for how can they escape the contagion of the writings, whom the virulency of the calumnies hath not staved off from reading?

_Sed seculi morbus_.—Nothing doth more invite a greedy reader than an unlooked-for subject. And what more unlooked-for than to see a person of an unblamed life made ridiculous or odious by the artifice of lying? But it is the disease of the age; and no wonder if the world, growing old, begin to be infirm: old age itself is a disease. It is long since the sick world began to dote and talk idly: would she had but doted still! but her dotage is now broke forth into a madness, and become a mere frenzy.

_Alastoris malitia_.—This Alastor, who hath left nothing unsearched or unassailed by his impudent and licentious lying in his aguish writings (for he was in his cold quaking fit all the while), what hath he done more than a troublesome base cur? barked and made a noise afar off; had a fool or two to spit in his mouth, and cherish him with a musty bone? But they are rather enemies of my fame than me, these barkers.

_Mali Choragi fuere_.—It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing; that though the nakedness would show deformed and odious, the suiting of it might draw their readers. Some love any strumpet, be she never so shop-like or meretricious, in good clothes. But these, nature could not have formed them better to destroy their own testimony and overthrow their calumny.

_Hear-say news_.—That an elephant, in 1630, came hither ambassador from the Great Mogul, who could both write and read, and was every day allowed twelve cast of bread, twenty quarts of Canary sack, besides nuts and almonds the citizens’ wives sent him. That he had a Spanish boy to his interpreter, and his chief negociation was to confer or practise with Archy, the principal fool of state, about stealing hence Windsor Castle and carrying it away on his back if he can.