personal ridicule, when the follies and vices of the object are supposed to deserve it. • But what wounded his pride and fame most sensibly, was the preference which the publick and most of his contemporary wits gave to Ford's Lover's Melancholy, before his New Inn or Light Heart. They were both brought on in the same week and on the same stage; where Ben's was damn'd, and Ford's received with uncommon applause: and what made this circumstance still more galling, was, that Ford was at the head of the partisans who supported Shakespeare's fame against Ben Jonson's Invectives. • This so incensed old Ben, that as an everlasting stigma upon his audience, he prefixed this title to his play"The New Inn, or Light Heart. A comedy, as it was never acted, but most negligently play'd by some, the King's idle servants; and more squeamishly beheld and censur'd by others, the King's foolish subjects." This title is followed by an abusive preface upon the audience and reader. • Immediately upon this, he wrote his memorable ode against the publick, beginning "Come, leave the loathed stage, The revenge he took against Ford, was to write an epigram on him as a plagiary. "Playwright, by chance, hearing toys I had writ, alluding to a character in The Ladies Trial, which Ben says Ford stole from him. The next charge against Ford was, that The Lover's Melancholy was not his own, but purloined from Shakspeare's papers, by the connivance of Heminge and Condel, who, in conjunction with Ford, had the revisal of them. • The malice of this charge is gravely refuted, and afterwards laughed at in many verses and epigrams, the best of which are those that follow, with which I shall close this theatrical extract: "To my worthy friend, John Ford. "'Tis said, from Shakspeare's mine your play you drew : "What need?-when Shakspeare still survives in you; "But grant it were from his vast treasury reft, " That plund'rer Ben ne'er made so rich a theft. "Thomas May." "Upon Ben Jonson, and his Zany, Tom Randolph. "Thus Ben and Tom, the dead still praise, "The living to decry; " For none must dare to wear the bays, " Even Avon's swan could not escape " They on his fame contriv'd a rape, "But after times with full consent " This truth will all acknowledge,- "Endymion Porter." Mr. Macklin the comedian was the author of this letter; but the pamphlet which furnished his materials, was lost in its passage from Ireland. The following stanza, from a copy of verses by Shirley, prefixed to Ford's Love's Sacrifice, 1633, alludes to the same dispute, and is apparently addressed to Ben Jonson : "Look here thou that hast malice to the stage, " To read this tragedy, and thy owne be next. "STEEVENS." - ubi nulla fugam reperit fallacia, victus, In sese redit. VIRG. I HAVE long had great doubts concerning the authenticity of the facts mentioned in the above letter, giving a pretended extract from a pamphlet of the last age, entitled "Old Ben's Light Heart made heavy by young John's Melancholy Lover," containing some anecdotes of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and John Ford, the dramatick poet; and suspected that the plausible tale which the writer of that letter has told, was an innocent forgery, fabricated for the purpose of aiding a benefit, and making the town believe that The Lover's Melancholy came from the mint of Shakspeare. Some additional information on this subject, which I have lately obtained, appears to me so decisively to confirm and establish my opinion, that I shall here, though somewhat out of place, devote a few pages to the examination of this question. Having always thought with indignation on the tastelessness of the scholars of that age in preferring Jonson to Shakspeare after the death of the latter, I did not find myself much inclined to dispute the authenticity of a paper, which, in its general tenour, was conformable to my own notions: but the love of truth ought ever to be superior to such considerations. Our poet's fame is fixed upon a basis as broad and general as the casing air, and stands in no need of such meretricious aids as the pen of fiction may be able to furnish. However, before I entered on this discussion, I thought it incumbent on me to apply to Mr. Macklin, the author of the letter in question, upon the subject: but his memory is so much impaired, (he being now in the ninety-first year of his age,) that he scarcely recollects having written such a letter, much less the circumstances attending it. I ought, however, to add, that I had some conversation with him a few years ago upon the same topick, and then strongly urged to him that no kind of disgrace could attend his owning that this letter was a mere jeu d'esprit, written for an occasional harmless purpose: but he persisted in asserting that the pamphlet of which he has given an account, (for which I in vain offered by a publick advertisement, continued for some time in the newspapers, to pay two guineas, and of which no copy has been found in any publick or private library in the course of forty years,) was once in his possession; was printed in quarto, and bound up with several small political tracts of the same period; and was lost with a large collection of old plays and other books, on the coast of Ireland, in the year 1760. I cannot therefore boast, habeo confitentem reum. However, let the point be tried by those rules of evidence which regulate by trials of greater importance; and I make no doubt that I shall be able to produce such testimony as shall convict our veteran comedian of having, sportively, ingeniously, and falsely, (though with no malice afore-thought,) invented and fabricated the narrative given in the letter already mentioned, contrary to the Statute of Biography, and other wholesome laws of the Parnassian Code, in this case made and provided, for the security of the rights of authors, and the greater certainty and authenticity of dramatick history. Nor let our poet's admirers be at all alarmed, or shrink. from this discussion; for after this slight and temporary fabrick, erected to his honour, shall have been demolished, there will still remain abundant proofs of the gentleness, modesty, and humility of Shakespeare; of the overweening arrogance of old Ben; and of the ridiculous absurdity of his partizans, who for near a century set above our great dramatick poet a writer whom no man is now hardy enough to mention as even his competitor. I must premise, that the Lover's Melancholy, written by John Ford, was announced for representation at Drurylane theatre on Friday the 22d of April, 1748. Mr. Steevens has mentioned that it was performed for a benefit; but the person for whose benefit this play was acted is in the present case very material: it was performed for the benefit of Mrs. Macklin; and consequently it was the interest of Mr. Macklin that the entertainment of that night should prove profitable, or in other words that such expectation should be raised among the frequenters of the play-house as should draw together a numerous audience. Mr. Macklin, who had then been on the stage about twenty-five years, was sufficiently conversant with the arts of puffing, which, though now practised with perhaps superior dexterity, have at all times (by whatever name they may have gone) been tolerably well understood and accordingly on Tuesday the 19th of April, three days before the day appointed for his wife's benefit, he inserted the following letter in The General (now The Publick) Advertiser, which appears to have escaped the notice of my predecessor: 'As The Lover's Melancholy, which is to be revived on Friday next at the theatre-royal in Drury-Lane, for the benefit of Mrs. Macklin, is a scarce play, and in a very few hands, it is hoped, that a short account of the author, his works in general, and of that piece in particular, will not be unacceptable to the publick. John Ford, Esq. was one of the Middle Temple, and though but a young man when Shakspeare left the stage, yet as he lived in strict friendship with him till he died, which appears by several of Ford's sonnets and verses, it may be said with some propriety, that he was a contemporary of that great man's. It is said that he wrote twelve or fourteen dramatick pieces, eight of which only have been collected, viz. The Broken Heart, Love's Sacrifice, Perkin Warbeck, The Ladies' Trial, 'Tis Pity she's a Whore, The Sun's Darling, a Masque, and The Lover's Melancholy Most of those pieces have great merit in them, particularly The Lover's Melancholy; which in the private opinion of many admirers of the stage, is written with an art, ease, and dramatick spirit, inferior to none before or since his time, Shakspeare excepted. The moral of this play is obvious and laudable; the fable natural, simple, interesting, and perfect in all its parts; the action one and entire; the time twelve hours, and the place a palace. 'The writing, as the piece is of that species of the drama, which is neither tragedy, nor comedy, but a play, is often in familiar, and sometimes in elevated, prose, after the manner of Shakspeare; but when his subject and characters demand it, he has sentiment, diction, and flowing numbers, at command. His characters are natural, and well chosen, and so distinct in manners, sentiment, and language, that each as he speaks would distinctly live in the reader's judgment, without the common help of marginal directions. As Ford was an intimate and a professed admirer of Shakspeare, it is not to be wondered at, that he often thinks and expresses like him; which is not his misfortune, but his happiness; for when he is most like Shakspeare, he is most like nature. He does not put you in mind of him like a plagiarist, or an affected mere imitator; but like a true genius, who had studied under that great man, and could not avoid catching some of his divine excellence. This praise perhaps by some people may be thought too much of that the praiser pretends not to be a judge; |