Ben Jonson began the world poor. He worked for a very short time in
his step-father's business. He volunteered to the wars in the Low
Countries. He came home again, and joined the players. Before the
end of Elizabeth's reign he had written three or four plays, in
which he showed a young and ardent zeal for setting the world to
rights, together with that high sense of the poet's calling which
put lasting force into his work. He poured contempt on those who
frittered life away. He urged on the poetasters and the mincing
courtiers, who set their hearts on top-knots and affected movements
of their lips and legs:-
"That these vain joys in which their wills consume
Such powers of wit and soul as are of force
To raise their beings to eternity,
May be converted on works fitting men;
And for the practice of a forced look,
An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase,
Study the native frame of a true heart,
An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge,
And spirit that may conform them actually
To God's high figures, which they have in power."
Ben Jonson's genius was producing its best work in the earlier years
of the reign of James I.
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