THE SHADOW OF BEN JONSON'S MOTHER.

In Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross, about the year 1580, dwells Mr. Thomas Fowler, a master bricklayer. He had married, in 1575, Mrs. Margaret Jonson, a widow; and had become the protector of her little boy, Benjamin, then about a year and a half old.

Benjamin is now in his sixth year. He duly attends the parish school in St. Martin's Church; for his father was "a grave minister of the gospel," and his mother is anxious that her only child, poor although he must be, shall lack no advantages of education. We see the sturdy boy daily pacing to school, through the rough and miry way of that half-rural district. In his play-hours he is soon in the fields, picking blackberries in Hedge-lane, or flying his kite by the Windmill in Saint Giles's. His father-in-law is a plain, industrious, trusty man—not rich enough to undertake any of the large works which the luxurious wants of the town present; and oft-times interfered with, in the due course of his labor, by royal proclamations against the increase of houses, which are rigidly enforced when a humble man desires to build a cottage. But young Ben has found friends. To the parish school sometimes comes Master Camden; and he observes the bold boy, always at the head of his class, and not unfrequently having his "clear and fair skin" disfigured by combats with his dirty companions, who litter about the alleys of Saint Martin's-lane. The boy has won good Master Camden's heart; and so, in due time, he proposes to remove him to Westminster School.

Let us look at the Shadow of his Mother, as she debates this question with her husband, at their frugal supper. "The boy must earn his living," says the bricklayer. "He is strong enough to be of help to me. He can mix the mortar; he will soon be able to carry the hod. Learning! stuff! he has learning enow, for all the good it will do him."—"Thomas Fowler," responds the mother, "if I wear my fingers to the bone, my boy shall never carry the hod. Master Camden, a good man, and a learned, will pay for his schooling. Shall we not give him his poor meals and his pallet-bed? Master Camden says he will make his way. I owe it to the memory of him who is gone, that Benjamin shall be a scholar, and perhaps a minister."—"Yes; and be persecuted for his opinions, as his father was. These are ticklish times, Margaret—the lowest are the safest. Ben is passionate, and obstinate, and will quarrel for a straw. Make him a scholar, and he becomes Papist or Puritan—the quiet way is not for the like of him. He shall be apprenticed to me, wife, and earn his daily bread safely and honestly." Night after night is the debate renewed. But the mother triumphs. Ben does go to Westminster School. He has hard fare at home; he has to endure many a taunt as he sits apart in the Abbey cloisters, intent upon his task. But Camden is his instructor and his friend. The bricklayer's boy fights his way to distinction.

Look again at the Shadow of that proud Mother as, after three or four anxious years, she hears of his advancement. He has an exhibition. He is to remove to Cambridge. Her Benjamin must be a bishop. Thomas Fowler is incredulous—and he is not generous: "When Benjamin leaves this roof he must shift for himself, wife." The mother drops one tear when her boy departs; the leathern purse which holds her painful savings is in Benjamin's pocket.

It is a summer night of 1590, when Benjamin Jonson walks into the poor house of Hartshorn-lane. He is travel-stained and weary. His jerkin is half hidden beneath a dirty cloak. That jerkin, which looked so smart in a mother's eyes when last they parted, is strangely shrunk—or, rather, has not the spare boy grown into a burly youth, although the boy's jerkin must still do service? The bricklayer demands his business; the wife falls upon his neck. And well may the bricklayer know him not. His face is "pimpled;" hard work and irregular living have left their marks upon him. The exhibition has been insufficient for his maintenance. His spirit has been sorely wounded. The scholar of sixteen thinks he should prefer the daily bread which is to be won by the labor of his hands, to the hunger for which pride has no present solace. Benjamin Jonson becomes a bricklayer.

And now, for two years, has the mother—her hopes wholly gone, her love only the same—to bear up under the burden of conflicting duties. The young man duly works at the most menial tasks of his business. He has won his way to handle a trowel; but he is not conformable in all things. "Wife," says Thomas Fowler, "that son of yours will never prosper. Can not he work—and can not he eat his meals—without a Greek book in his vest? This very noon must he seat himself, at dinner-hour, in the shade of the wall in Chancery-lane, on which he had been laboring; and then comes a reverend Bencher and begins discourse with him; and Ben shows him his book—and they talk as if they were equal. Margaret, he is too grand for me; he is above his trade."—"Shame on ye, husband! Does he not work, honestly and deftly? and will you grudge him his books?"—"He haunts the play-houses; he sits in the pit—and cracks nuts—and hisses or claps hands, in a way quite unbeseeming a bricklayer's apprentice. Margaret, I fear he will come to no good." One night there is a fearful quarrel. It is late when Benjamin returns home. In silence and darkness, the son and mother meet. She is resolved. "Benjamin, my son, my dear son, we will endure this life no longer. There is a sword; it was your grandfather's. A gentleman wore it; a gentleman shall still wear it. Go to the Low-Countries. Volunteers are called for. There is an expedition to Ostend. Take with you these few crowns, and God prosper you."

Another year, and Benjamin's campaign is ended. At the hearth in Hartshorn-lane sits Margaret Fowler—in solitude. There will be no more strife about her son. Death has settled the controversy. Margaret is very poor. Her trade is unprosperous; for the widow is defrauded by her servants. "Mother, there is my grandfather's sword—it has done service; and now, I will work for you."—"How, my son?"—"I will be a bricklayer again." We see the Shadow of the Mother, as she strives to make her son content. He has no longer the "lime and mortar" hands with which it was his after-fate to be reproached; but he bestows the master's eye upon his mother's workmen. Yet he has hours of leisure. There is a chamber in the old house now filled with learned books. He reads, and he writes, as his own pleasure dictates. "Mother," he one day says, "I wish to marry."—"Do so, my son; bring your wife home; we will dwell together." So a few years roll on. He and his wife weep

"Mary, the daughter of their youth."

But there is an event approaching which sets aside sorrow. "Daughter," says the ancient lady, "we must to the Rose Playhouse to-night. There is a new play to be acted, and that play is Benjamin's."—"Yes, mother, he has had divers moneys already. Not much, I wot, seeing the labor he has given to this 'Comedy of Humors'—five shillings, and ten shillings, and, once, a pound."—"No matter, daughter, he will be famous; I always knew he would be famous." A calamity clouds that fame. The play-writer has quarrels on every side. In the autumn of 1598, Philip Henslowe, the manager of "the Lord Admiral's men," writes thus to his son-in-law, Alleyn; "Since you were with me, I have lost one of my company, which hurteth me greatly—that is, Gabriel; for he is slain in Hogsden Fields, by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer." Twenty years after, the great dramatist, the laureat, thus relates the story to Drummond: "Being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary, which had hurt him in the arm, and whose sword was ten inches longer than his; for the which he was imprisoned and almost at the gallows." There is the proud Shadow of a Roman Matron hovering about his cell, in those hours when the gallows loomed darkly in the future.

The scholar and the poet has won his fame. Bricklayer no longer, Ben is the companion of the illustrious. Shakspeare hath "wit-combats" with him; Camden and Selden try his metal, in learned controversies; Raleigh, and Beaumont, and Donne, and Fletcher, exchange with him "words of subtle flame" at "The Mermaid." But a new trouble arises—James is come to the throne. Hear Jonson's account of a remarkable transaction: "He was delated by Sir James Murray to the King, for writing something against the Scots, in a play, 'Eastward Ho,' and voluntarily imprisoned himself, with Chapman and Marston, who had written it among them. The report was, that they should then have had their ears cut, and noses." They are at length released. We see the shadow of a banquet, which the poet gave to his friends in commemoration of his deliverance. There is a joyous company of immortals at that feast. There, too, is that loving and faithful mother. The wine-cups are flowing; there are song and jest, eloquence, and the passionate earnestness with which such friends speak when the heart is opened. But there is one, whose Shadow we now see, more passionate and more earnest than any of that company. She rises, with a full goblet in her hand: "Son, I drink to thee. Benjamin, my beloved son, thrice I drink to thee. See ye this paper; one grain of the subtle drug which it holds is death. Even as we now pledge each other in rich canary, would I have pledged thee in lusty strong poison, had thy sentence taken execution. Thy shame would have been my shame, and neither of us should have lived after it."

"She was no churl," says Benjamin.