Very Easy to Write Like a Fool.”
Otway was bred at St. John’s College, Cambridge. But though his tragedies are still received with “tears of approbation,” he lived in penury, and died in extreme misery, choked, it is said, by a morsel of bread given him to relieve his hunger, the 14th of April, 1685. Ben Jonson, “Rare Ben,” also “finished his education” at St. John’s, nor did I ever tread the mazes of its pleasant walks, but imagination pictured him and his gifted contemporaries and successors, from the time of the minstrel of Arcadia to the days of Kirke White,
In dalliance with the nine in ev’ry nook,
A conning nature from her own sweet book.
But Ben, though “the greatest dramatic poet of his age,” after he left Cambridge, “worked with a trowel at the building of Lincoln’s Inn,” and died poor in everything but fame, in 1637. Ben, however, contrived to keep nearly as many “jovial days” in a year, as there are saints in the Roman calendar, and at a set time held a club at the same Devil Tavern, near Temple-bar, to which the celebrated Cambridge professor, and reformer of our church music, Dr. Maurice Greene, adjourned his concert upon his quarrel with Handel, which made the latter say of him with his natural dry humour, “Toctor Creene was gone to de tavil.” There Ben and his boon companions were still extant, when Tom Randolph (author of “The Muses’ Looking-Glass,” &c.,) a student of Trinity College, Cambridge, had ventured on a visit to London, where, it is said, he stayed so long, that he had already had a parley with his empty purse, when their fame made him long to see Ben and his associates. He accordingly, as Handel would have said, vent to de tavil, at their accustomed time of meeting; but being unknown to them, and without money, he was peeping into the room where they sat, when he was espied by Ben, who seeing him in a scholar’s thread-bare habit, cried out “John Bo-peep, come in.” He entered accordingly, and they, not knowing the wit of their guest, began to rhyme upon the meanness of his clothes, asking him if he could not make a verse, and, withal, to call for his quart of sack. There being but four, he thus addressed them:—
“I, John Bo-peep, to you four sheep,
With each one his good fleece,
If that you are willing to give me five shilling,
’Tis fifteen pence a-piece.”
“By Jesus,” exclaimed Ben (his usual oath,) “I believe this is my son Randolph!” which being confessed, he was kindly entertained, and Ben ever after called him his son, and, on account of his learning, gaiety, and humour, and readiness of repartee, esteemed him equal to Cartwright. He also grew in favour with the wits and poets of the metropolis, but was cut off, some say of intemperance, at the age of twenty-nine. His brother was a member of Christ Church, Oxford, and printed his works in 1638. Amongst the Memorabilia Cantabrigiæ of Milton is the fact, that his personal beauty obtained for him the soubriquet of