Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

lodgings for his Queen, Mary d'Este. The embroidery of her Majesty's bed cost 3000l., and the carving about the chimney-piece, by Gibbons, was, says Evelyn, "incomparable." Statues of white marble, and an altar-piece by Verrio, decorated the chapel. Blind as his father had been to all the signs of the times, the King would not be content without rushing into conflict with the people; and though his head was allowed to remain on his shoulders, the result, as regards his throne, was the same. William came over; and, finding that James was in no hurry to leave Whitehall, sent some battalions of the Dutch guards into Westminster to quicken his departure: with so little dignity did he fall. The history of the palace is now near its conclusion. On the 10th of April, 1691, a considerable portion of it was burnt by a fire which broke out in the apartment of the Duchess of Portsmouth; and in 1698 the entire structure, with the exception of the Banqueting House and some small portion of its buildings, was destroyed by the same element. Evelyn thus generalises the results:-" Whitehall burnt; nothing but walls and ruins left."

The interior of the Banqueting House has been occupied as a chapel since the time of George I., who granted a stipend to certain clergymen to preach in it. About four years ago it underwent a thorough repair and restoration; when a gallery, built for the use of the Guards, was removed. The immense size and noble proportions of this room now appear in all their original grandeur. Over the door is a bust of the founder, James I. A lofty gallery runs along the two sides of the room, and across the end over the door of entrance, where there is a fine organ. But the great attraction of the Banqueting House is the ceiling, with its series of paintings by Rubens, before referred to, which, immediately the spectator enters the room, attract his eyes by their brilliant and harmonious colouring. Their great height, however, renders any close and accurate inspection impossible. Dr. Waagen, the celebrated German critic, gives on the whole, we think, the best account of them. "The ceiling," he says, "divided into nine compartments, is decorated with so many oil-paintings by Rubens. The largest, in the centre, of an oval form, contains the apotheosis of King James I. On the two long sides of it are great friezes with genii, who load sheaves of corn and fruits in carriages drawn by lions, bears, and rams. All the proportions are so colossal that each of these boys measures nine feet. The other two pictures in the centre row represent King James as protector of Peace, and sitting on his throne, appointing Prince Charles as his successor. The four pictures at the sides of these contain allegorical representations of Royal Power and Virtue. These paintings, executed in 1630, by commission from King Charles I., have by no means given me satisfaction. Independently of the inconvenience of looking at them, all large ceiling paintings have an oppressive, heavy, and, as ornaments to the architecture, unfavourable effect; for which reason, the refined judgment of the ancients never allowed of them, but was content with light decorations on a bright ground. Least of all are the colossal and heavy figures of Rubens adapted to such a purpose. Not to speak of the repulsive coldness of all allegories, the overcharging and clumsiness of those of Rubens are not calculated to make them attractive; and lastly, the character and reign of James I. could scarcely inspire him with any poetical enthusiasm. There is little doubt that the greater part was originally executed by the pupils of Rubens, as was subsequently the case with

the series of the Life of Mary di Medicis, in the Louvre : add to this, that these pictures have already undergone four restorations, the last of which was completed a short time ago."*

The statue seen in our engraving of the Banqueting House is that of James II. This is the work of Gibbons, and in every way worthy of his reputation. The attitude of the figure is easy, yet dignified; and a calm but serious and very thoughtful expression is stamped upon the well-formed features and brow. James is habited in the costume of a Roman emperor, a somewhat incongruous association of ideas; indeed, the only circumstance connected with this beautiful work that at all interferes with our admiration of it is its association with a sovereign so little deserving of the permanent interest that art can confer upon all those with whom it has any connection.

[merged small][graphic][merged small][subsumed]
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

In the map of London, according to the survey of Aggas in 1560, Chancery Lane presents to us only a few scattered houses at the ends which connect it with Fleet Street and Holborn. Nearly the whole of the eastern side exhibits one large enclosed garden; whilst the western has a corresponding garden of greater length, containing a smaller enclosure, that of Lincoln's Inn. In the reign of Elizabeth, when the militant spirit of the owners of the soil displayed itself in the battle-field of the Court of Chancery, and the law was fast rising into the most thriving of professions, Chancery Lane would of necessity partake more than an equal share of the common improvements of London. The garden of Lincoln's Inn was a pleasant place, with its formal walks and shady avenues; and the reverend benchers would naturally desire that the eye of the vulgar passenger should look not upon their solemn musings or their frequent mirth. And so they built a wall in Chancery Lane to shut out the garden. Upon that wall laboured with his own hands the most illustrious of bricklayers, Benjamin Jonson. "His mother, after his father's death, married a bricklayer, and it is generally said that he wrought some time with his father-in-law, and particularly on the garden-wall of Lincoln's Inn, next to Chancery Lane." This is Aubrey's account; and there can be no doubt of the fact of Jonson's early occupation. But the young bricklayer had been building up something better than the garden-wall of Lincoln's Inn. He had raised for himself an edifice of sound scholarship, as a boy of Westminster; and whilst his mother and step-father, according to Fuller, "lived in Hartshorn Lane near Charing Cross," he was studying under the great Camden, then a junior master of that celebrated school. The good old author of the Worthies' thus continues :-" He was statutably admitted into Saint John's College in Cambridge (as many years after incorpo

rated a honorary member of Christ Church in Oxford), where he continued but few weeks for want of further maintenance, being fain to return to the trade of his father-in-law. And let not them blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket."

Aubrey tells the story of his going to college with a little more romance. He had not only the book in his pocket, but he was heard to repeat "Greek verses out of Homer;" and a bencher, discoursing with him, gave him an exhibition at Trinity College. Jonson's name does not appear in any of the Cambridge registers; and he probably remained at the University a very short time. Aubrey continues, "Then he went into the Low Countries, and spent some time (not very long) in the army, not to the disgrace of it, as you may find in his epigrams." The little poem to which Aubrey alludes is an address To True Soldiers :'

"I swear by your true friend, my muse, I love
Your great profession, which I once did prove;
And did not shame it with my actions then."

[ocr errors]

In Jonson's Conversation with Drummond of Hawthornden' he is made to tell that "In his service in the Low Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed one enemy and taken opima spolia from him." Jonson was born in 1574; and there is little doubt that his feats of arms were performed before he was twenty. In 1597 we find him in London, a player and a writer for the stage. Philip Henslow, one of the theatrical managers in that prosperous time of theatres, records in his diary of July, 1597, a loan of four pounds to Benjamin Jonson, player; and on the 3rd of December of the same year he also advances him twenty shillings "upon a book which he was to write for us before Christmas next." At this time he had written Every Man in his Humour,' for Henslow's theatre; not, however, in its present state, but with its scene laid in Italy. In the Life of Alleyn,' recently published by Mr. Collier, there is a letter from Henslow to Alleyn, for the first time printed, which contains the following very curious passage::-" Since you were with me I have lost one of my company, which hurteth me greatly—that is Gabrell, for he is slain in Hogsden Fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer." This letter is dated in September, 1598. The use of the term "bricklayer," to designate Jonson's calling, is most remarkable. Either Henslow was ignorant (which appears very improbable) that the man who slew " Gabrell" was one of his own authors; or Jonson, with that manly independence which we cannot enough admire in his character, followed his step-father's laborious occupation even at the time when he was struggling to attain the honours of a poet. That he unhappily killed a man in a duel there can be no doubt; he himself told the story to Drummond. "Since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary, which 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." Aubrey, in his loose way, says, “He killed Mr. Marlowe, the poet, on Bunhill." Marlowe was killed in 1593. Gifford supposes that this unfortunate event happened in 1595; but, if there be no error as to the date of Henslow's letter, " Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer," was a poet of no mean reputation at the time of this event. His enemies

66

never forgot that he had wielded the trowel. Dekker calls him the lime-andmortar poet." Jonson had precisely the mind to prefer the honest labour of his hands to the fearful shifts and hateful duplicities to which the unhappy man of genius was in those days too often degraded.

Thus, then, about four years before the death of Elizabeth, there was a dramatic writer in London who, though scarcely twenty-five years of age, had studied society under many aspects. He was a scholar, bred up by the most eminent teachers, amongst aristocratic companions; but his home was that of poverty and obscurity, and he had to labour with his hands for his daily bread. He delighted in walking not only amidst the open fields of ancient poetry and eloquence, but in all the by-places of antiquity, gathering flowers amongst the weeds with infinite toil: but he possessed no merely contemplative spirit: he had high courage and ardent passions, and whether with the sword or the pen he was a dangerous antagonist. This humbly-born man, with the badge of the "hod and trowel" fixed on him by his enemies-twitted with ambling "by a play-waggon in the highway"-with a face held up to ridicule as being "like a rotten russet apple when it is bruised," or " punched full of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming pan"-described by himself as remarkable for

"His mountain belly and his rocky face"

with "one eye lower than t'other and bigger," as Aubrey has it—and, according to the same authority, "wont to wear a coat like a coachman's coat, with slits under the arm-pits ;"-this uncouth being was for a quarter of a century the favourite poet of the court,-one that wrote masques not only for two kings to witness, but for one to perform in,-the founder and chief ornament of clubs where the greatest of his age for wit, and learning, and rank, gathered round him as a common centre; but, above all, he was the rigid moralist, who spared no vice, who was fearless in his denunciation of public or private profligacy, who crouched not to power or riches, but who stood up in the worst of days a real man. The pietures which Jonson has left of the London of his time are more full, more diversified, and more amusing, than those of any contemporary writer,—perhaps of all his contemporaries put together. He possessed a combination of the power of acute and accurate observation with unrivalled vigour in the delineation of what he saw. Aubrey, one of the shrewdest as well as the most credulous of biographers, has a very sensible remark upon the characteristics of Shakspere's comedy, as compared with the writers after the Restoration. "His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum; now, our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood." This is precisely the case with Jonson as compared with Shakspere; but he is on this account a far more valuable authority for what essentially belongs to periods and classes. Shakspere has purposely left this field uncultivated; but it is Jonson's absolute domain. Studied with care, as he must be to be properly appreciated, he presents to us an almost inexhaustible series of Daguerreotypes,-forms copied from the life with absolute certainty of the manners of three reigns,-when there was freedom enough for men to abandon themselves without disguise to what they called their humours, and the conflicts of opinion had not yet become so violent as to preclude

« AnteriorContinuar »