ABSTRACT
JONSON in 1617 was forty-three years of age. He had written his best plays. He had published his works in a first collected edition. On February 3rd of that year he was granted by the King a pension of one hundred marks which, though the title had not yet been invented or the position created, made him in effect the first poet laureate of England. He presented now a very different figure from the lank and haggard youth, back from the wars, who had killed Gabriel Spencer some sixteen years previously. The “ raw-boned anatomy ” of Every Man out of His Humour, “ who walks up and down like a charged musket ”, had begun to put on flesh and soon, since he could no longer hope to redeem his figure, he would be driven to jest upon it. “ Twenty stones less two pounds ” was shortly to be his confession. In 1619 he walked from London to Edinburgh and back again. Was it a last despairing effort to keep hard in body as in mind ? It was an heroic remedy, but unsuccessful. For another eight or ten years he remained outwardly at the height of his powers, but the dissolution was begun.
