Jonson was a man of strong convictions and equally strong prejudices. He was convinced of the necessity for rational control of the passions, especially for a poet; yet he often failed to manage his own notoriously unruly passions and appetites. In a censorious and aggressive age he was notably censorious and aggressive. However, he was also loyal and generous, and he had a special talent for making firm friendships.
Of Jonson's early life and family background relatively little is known. He told the Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden, whose account of his conversations with Jonson is a valuable source of information about Jonson's life, that his grandfather was a gentleman who came from Carlisle and before that from Annandale. His father, a minister who lost his estate under Queen Mary, died in 1572, not long before the birth of his son Benjamin, near London, between 5 May 1572 and 19 January 1573 (probably on 11 June 1572). The character of his mother can be glimpsed in an anecdote about Jonson that is related in the Conversations with Drummond (1842).
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