been written by the peasant who only knew his native dialect, or the penniless lad earning his bread in stranger London, at the first shift at hand--with no entre to the great libraries, and no leisure to use one if he had it? Ben Jonson spent some years at Cambridge before he was taken away and set at brickmaking--he is said to have been a very studious brickmaker, working, according to Fuller, with a trowel in one hand and a book in the other. As to his career as a soldier--a soldier, when not actually in the field or on the march, may find considerable opportunity for rumination; and, when lying in jail, he would certainly have ample leisure for his Greek and Roman. But Jonson wrote for the Elizabethan theaters; he lived and died hungry and poor, a borrower, over his ears in debt to the last. William Shakespeare, his contemporary, loaned Ben Jonson money; rose rapidly from penury to affluence; made his father rich, and a gentleman with an escutcheon; bought himself the most splendid house in Stratford (so splendid as to be deemed worthy a royal residence by Queen Henrietta); invested in outlying lands; speculated in tithes, and lived, until his death--according to Dominie Ward--at the rate of $25,000 a year. We are familiar enough with these stories of self-made men (so-called) in our daily newspapers. Let those who will, believe that William Shakespeare accumulated this splendid fortune, _not_ by the success{044}ful management of the best appointed and affected theater in London, but by writing plays for its stage! and--at the same time--conceived, evolved from his own inner consciousness, all the learning which other playwrights (like Ben Jonson and the rest) were obliged--like ordinary mortals--to get out of books!