Ben Jonson's Premonition By Apparition

This eminent dramatist, contemporary of Shakespeare (1573?-1637),

visited the Scottish poet, William Drummond, who took notes of his

conversations which he afterwards published in the form of a book. One

incident which Jonson related and Drummond recorded may be found in The

Library of the World's Best Literature under the title, Ben Jonson.



"At that tyme the pest was in London; he being in the country--with old

Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest sone, then a child and at London,

appear unto him with the mark of a bloodie crosse in his forehead, as if

it had been cutted with a shord, at which amazed he prayed unto God,

and in the morning he came to Mr. Cambden's chamber to tell him; who

persuaded him it was but ane apprehension of his fantasie, at which he

sould not be disjected; in the mean tyme comes then letters from his

wife of the death of that boy in plague. He appeared to him (he said) of

a manly shape, and of that grouth that he thinks he shall be at the

resurrection."