Jonson was the fortunate occupant of a post which Daniel thought he had a prior right to, no breach occurred in the friendship which had long existed between them.
Jonson's continental wanderings had increased his love of travel. In 1618, he started on a tour to Scotland. In these days, when we are whirled from London to Edinburgh between the morning and evening meal, it is strange to think of our poet's walking the whole way from the one capital to the other. Jonson wrote an account of this pedestrian excursion and stay in the north, but unfortunately it perished in the fire at his house. In its absence, little more is known than that he spent several months at the seats of the nobility and gentry in the vicinage of the modern Athens. At Leith, he encountered Taylor, the water poet, who alludes to the meeting, and makes grateful mention of the generosity of Jonson, who gave him, at parting, "a piece of gold, two-and-twenty shillings value, to drink his health in England." In the spring he proceeded to Hawthornden, where he passed the greater part of April with another brother bard, Drummond.
To Jonson's reputation, this visit was fraught with injury, perhaps never wholly to be erased. His host had a tendency to what has been well called "Boswellism;" but it unfortunately lacked two important features in that amiable weakness, accuracy and kind feeling. He had some appreciation of the great capacities of his guest, but was not devoid of jealousy and envy. From the brief, blundering account which he gives of Jonson's conversations with him, a candid critic would gather, had he no other proofs to aid him in the conclusion, that the Laureate possessed varied and profound information on most subjects, was a severe censor of books and men, had wit to
