THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the irst literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary,'having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth early n 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a ime apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the ttention of the famous antiquary, William Camden, then sher at Westminster School, and there the poet laid the solid oundations of his classical learning. Jonson always held Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed, All that I am in arts, all that I know; ind dedicating his first dramatic success," Every Man in His Humour," to him. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went either university, though Fuller says that he was" statutbly admitted into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells is that he took no degree, but was later Master of rts in both the universities, by their favour, not his study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier, trailing his ike in Flanders in the protracted wars of William the Silent gainst the Spanish. Jonson was a large and raw-boned lad; e became by his own account in time exceedingly bulky. chat with his friend William Drummond of Hawthornden, I vii a 2