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PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
vii

of the Plumean Professorship of Astronomy in the University of Cambridge.

Archdeacon Plume's bequest to the town of Maldon included a manuscript pocket-book in which, round about the year 1656, he was in the habit, like many of his contemporaries, of writing down anecdotes which amused him in the conversation of his friends. The stories concerning literary men which figure in Plume's pocket-book have a high claim to consideration, because they embody, albeit at second-hand, the talk of no less a personage than Ben Jonson. Among Plume's acquaintances was John Hacket, an eminent Bishop of Lichfield, who was interested in the drama, and was long on very friendly terms with Ben Jonson. The latter's comments on life and literature circulated widely, and some of the tales which Plume associated with him in his pocket-book on Hacket's authority are recorded elsewhere. But one or two fragments of Jonson's talk which have found their way into the Maldon MS. seem peculiar to it. Plume's notes, which are scrappily written in an abbreviated script, supply two new statements in regard to Shakespeare, of which only one calls for special notice here.[1]

  1. ↑ Plume's second mention of Shakespeare may be relegated to a footnote. It shows the poet in a frivolous and undignified mood, which can be readily paralleled in other anecdotal reminiscences of him. There is plenty of evidence that it was a common sport for wits at social meetings of the period to suggest impromptu epitaphs for themselves and their companions. Ben Jonson gave his Scottish
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