Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless
revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any
marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden that
designated them "Jonson's dotages" is unfair to their genuine merits. Thus
the idea of an office for the gathering, proper dressing, and promulgation
of news (wild flight of the fancy in its time) was an excellent subject for
satire on the existing absurdities among the newsmongers; although as much
can hardly be said for "The Magnetic Lady," who, in her bounty, draws to
her personages of differing humours to reconcile them in the end according
to the alternative title, or "Humours Reconciled." These last plays of the
old dramatist revert to caricature and the hard lines of allegory; the
moralist is more than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal
lampoon, especially of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears
unworthily to have used his influence at court against the broken-down old
poet. And now disease claimed Jonson, and he was bedridden for months. He
had succeeded Middleton in 1628 as Chronologer to the City of London, but
lost the post for not fulfilling its duties. King Charles befriended him,
and even commissioned him to write still for the entertainment of the
court; and he was not without the sustaining hand of noble patrons and
devoted friends among the younger poets who were proud to be "sealed of the
tribe of Ben."

Jonson died, August 6, 1637, and a second folio of his works, which he had
been some time gathering, was printed in 1640, bearing in its various parts
dates ranging from 1630 to 1642. It included all the plays mentioned in
the foregoing paragraphs, excepting "The Case is Altered;" the masques,
some fifteen, that date between 1617 and 1630; another collection of lyrics
and occasional poetry called "Underwoods, including some further
entertainments; a translation of "Horace's Art of Poetry" (also published
in a vicesimo quarto in 1640), and certain fragments and ingatherings which