“He was (or rather had been) of a clear and faire skin, his habit was very plaine. I have heard Mr. Lacy, the player, say that he was wont to weare a coate like a coach-man’s coate with slitts under the arme-pitts. He would many times exceed in drinke. Canarie was his beloved liquer.... Ben Jonson had one eie lower than t’other and bigger, like Clun, the player.”

“The character of Jonson, like that of most celebrated wits, has been drawn with great diversity of lights and shades, according as affection or envy guided the pencil. His person, as he has himself told us, was corpulent and large. His disposition seems to have been reserved and saturnine, and sometimes not a little oppressed with the gloom of a splenetic imagination.... Stern and rigid as his virtue was, he was easy and social in the convivial meetings of his friends; and the laws of his Symposia, inscribed over the chimney of the Apollo, a room in the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, where he kept his club, show that he was neither averse to the pleasures of conversation, nor ignorant of what would render it agreeable and improving.”

“Il est clair pour nous que Ben Jonson avait une nature violente dans un corps robuste et athlÉtique; son portrait nous le montre avec une Énorme face, une vigoureuse mÂchoire, des yeux profonds et durs, un cou de taureau. Sa peau avait ÉtÉ, de bonne heure, couturÉe par le scorbut; et lui-mÊme dit quelque part qu’il eut, dans le milieu de sa vie, une montagne pour ventre et un dandinement disgracieux pour dÉmarche. Tous ses traits fortement accentuÉs, anguleux ou carrÉs, dÉnoncent l’Énergie, l’orgueil et l’amour des luttes de toute nature. Il aimait la bonne chÈre et le vin; sa prÉdilection pour le vin des Canaries avait, disait il, pour excuse la nÉcessitÉ de sa constitution scorbutique. Il avait l’esprit semblable au corps; malgrÉ ses Études classiques, il Était loin d’Être un AthÉnien, c’Était un Anglo-Saxon entÉ sur un Romain de la dÉcadence. GÉnÉreux, libÉral, prodigue, il tint toujours table ouverte, mÊme lorsque la misÈre Était devenue l’hÔte de son foyer.”