him, that his antagonist had taken the precaution of bringing into the field a sword ten inches longer than his own, and thus, far from intending to be the victim of murder, had not unsagaciously counted on committing it. Jonson was released; but, apparently vexed at this propitious turn to his fortunes, instead of casting about for some means of subsistence, he almost immediately married a woman as poor as himself,--a wife whom he afterwards curtly described as "a shrew, yet honest." A shrew, indeed! As if Mrs. Jonson must not often have had just occasion to use her tongue tartly!--as if her redoubtable Ben did not often need its acrid admonitions! They seem to have lived together until 1613, when they separated. Absolute necessity now drove Jonson again to the stage, probably both as actor and writer. He began his dramatic career, as Shakespeare began his, by doing job-work for the managers; that is, by altering, recasting, and making additions to old plays. At last, in 1596, in his twenty-second year, he placed himself at a bound among the famous dramatists of the time, by the production, at the Rose Theatre, of his comedy of "Every Man in his Humor." Two years afterwards, having in the mean time been altered and improved, it was, through the influence of Shakespeare, accepted by the players of the Blackfriars' Theatre, Shakespeare himself acting the characterless part of the Elder Knowell. Among the writers of the Elizabethan age, an age in which, for a wonder, there seemed to be a glut of genius, Ben is prominent more for racy originality of personal character, weight or understanding, and quickness of fancy, than for creativeness of imagination. His first play, "Every Man in his Humor," indicates to a great extent the quality and the kind of power with which he was endowed. His prominent characteristic was will,--will carried to self-will, and sometimes to self-exaggeration almost furious. His understanding was solid, strong, penetrating, even broad, and it was well furnished with matter derived both from experience and books; but, dominated by a personality so fretful and fierce, it was impelled to look at men and things, not in their relations to each other, but in their relations to Ben. He had reached that ideal of stormy conceit in which, according to Emerson, the egotist declares, "Difference from me is the measure of absurdity." Even the imaginary characters he delineated as a dramatist were all bound, as by tough cords, to the will that gave them being, lacked that joyous freedom and careless grace of movement which rightfully belonged to them as denizens of an ideal world, and had to obey their master Ben, as puppets obey the show-man. His power of external observation was pitilessly keen and searching, and it was accompanied by a rich, though somewhat coarse and insolent vein of humor; but his egotism commonly directed his observation to what was below, rather than above