And yet this prose is extant, and by no means inaccessible. Malien Jonson died, in 1637, he left behind him certain memoranda which were published in 1640, and are well-known as "Ben Jonson's Discoveries." One of these memoranda--for the work is in the disjointed form of a common-place book of occasional entries--is devoted to the eminent men of letters in the era spanned by its author's own acquaintance or familiarity. It runs as follows: _Cicero is said to be the only wit that the people of Rome had equaled to their empire. Imperium par imperio. We have had many, and in their several ages (to take in the former sæculum), Sir Thomas More, the elder Wiat, Henry, Earl of Surry, Chal-oner, Smith, Eliot, B. Gardiner, were, for their times, admirable; and the more because they began eloquence with us. Sir Nich{135}olas Bacon was singular and almost alone in the beginning of Elizabeth's time. Sir Philip Sidney and Mr. Hooker (in different matter) grew great masters of wit and language, and in whom all vigour of invention and strength of judgment met. The Earl of Essex, noble and high, and Sir Walter Raleigh not to be contemned, either for judgment or style. Sir Henry Saville, grave and truly lettered. Sir Edwin Sandys, excellent in both. Lord Egerton, a grave and great orator, and best when he was provoked. But his learned and able, but unfortunate successor, is he that hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome. * In short, within this view, and about this time, were all the wits born that could honour a language or help study. Now things daily fall; wits grow downward and eloquence grows backward. So that he may be so named and stand as the mark and -------- of our language_. ** * Judge Holmes ("Authorship of Shakespeare," third edition, p. 650) italicises these words to point the allusion to Bacon, and to notice that the passage in "The Discoveries," immediately preceding the above, is a direct allusion to Bacon, while the phrase "insolent Greece and haughty Rome" occurs in line thirty-nine of the verses eulogistic of William Shakespeare. ** "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 Time." By Ben Jonson. "Works," by Peter Whalley, vol. vii., p. 99.