Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems

From the opening

BEN JONSON’S “Discoveries” are, as he says in the few Latin words prefixed to them, “A wood—Sylva—of things and thoughts, in Greek ‘ὕλη’” [which has for its first meaning material, but is also applied peculiarly to kinds of wood, and to a wood], “from the multiplicity and variety of the material contained in it. For, as we are commonly used to call the infinite mixed multitude of growing trees a wood, so the ancients gave the name of Sylvæ—Timber Trees—to books of theirs in which small works of various and diverse matter were promiscuously brought together.”

In this little book we have some of the best thoughts of one of the most vigorous minds that ever added to the strength of English literature. The songs added are a part of what Ben Jonson called his “Underwoods.”

Ben Jonson was of a north-country family from the Annan district that produced Thomas Carlyle. His father was ruined by religious persecution in the reign of Mary, became a preacher in Elizabeth’s reign, and died a month before the poet’s birth in 1573. Ben Jonson, therefore, was about nine years younger than Shakespeare, and he survived Shakespeare about twenty-one years, dying in August, 1637. Next to Shakespeare Ben Jonson was, in his own different way, the man of most mark in the story of the English drama. His mother, left poor, married again. Her second husband was a bricklayer, or small builder, and they lived for a time near Charing Cross in Hartshorn Lane. Ben Jonson was taught at the parish school of St. Martin’s till he was discovered by William Camden, the historian. Camden was then second master in Westminster School. He procured for young Ben an admission into his school, and there laid firm foundations for that scholarship which the poet extended afterwards by private study until his learning grew to be sworn-brother to his wit.

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