BEN JONSON was born in Westminster, in 1573. His early life was full of hard and varied experiences. He was educated at Westminster School, and entered St. John's College, Cambridge. Being obliged to leave his university course unfinished, he worked for a time with his step-father as a brick-layer. At the age of eighteen he enlisted as a volunteer in the Low Countries; but in 1596 he settled in London, as a playwright. His first comedy, "Every Man in his Humour," did not meet with immediate success. It was remodelled, at Shakespeare's suggestion, and when afterwards presented was received with marked favor. His first tragedy, "Sejanus," was acted in 1603. His masques, of which there are thirty-six, were written during the reign of James I. His miscellaneous works, embracing a variety of odes, elegies, epigrams, and other lyrics and epistles, are included in two collections, the first of which, called _The Forest_, was published in 1616, and the second posthumously, in 1641. He died in London, August 6, 1637. One of the last and most beautiful of Jonson's dramas is the unfinished pastoral comedy, "The Sad Shepherd." It was written while in the sick-chamber, with a keen sense and remembrance of the disappointments which had followed him through life; and to these he touchingly refers in the prologue: "He that hath feasted you these forty years, And fitted fables for your finer ears, Although at first he scarce could hit the bore; Yet you, with patience, hearkening more and more, At length have grown up to him, and made known The working of his pen is now your own: He prays you would vouchsafe, for your own sake, To hear him this once more, but sit awake. And though he now present you with such wool As from mere English flocks his muse can pull, He hopes when it is made up into cloth, Not the most curious head here will be loth To wear a hood of it, it being a fleece, To match or those of Sicily or Greece. His scene is Sherwood, and his play a tale Of Robin Hood's inviting from the vale Of Belvoir, all the shepherds to a feast; Where, by the casual absence of one guest, The mirth is troubled much, and in one man As much of sadness shown as passion can." Robert Herrick wrote of him thus: "Ah Ben! Say how or when Shall we, thy guests, Meet at those lyric feasts, Made at the Sun, The Dog, the Triple Tun; Where we such clusters had, As made us nobly wild, not mad? And yet each verse of thine Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.