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.