led with down-right obscenity) and took not so well at the first
_stroke_, as at the _rebound_, when beheld the second time, yea, they
will endure reading, and that with due commendation, so long as either
ingenuity or learning are fashionable in our Nation. And although all
his Plays may endure the test, yet in three of his Comedies, namely,
_The Fox, Alchymist_, and _Silent Woman_, he may be compared in the
judgment of the learned men, for _decorum, language_ and
_well-humouring_ parts, as well with the chief of the ancient _Greek_
and _Latine_ Comedians, as the prime of modern _Italians_, who have
been judged the best of _Europe_ for a happy vein in Comedies; nor is
his _Bartholomew Fair_ much short of them. As for his other Comedies,
_Staple of News, Devil's an Ass_, and the rest, if they be not so
sprightful and vigorous as his first pieces, all that are old will, and
all that desire to be old, should excuse him therein; and therefore let
the Name of _Ben Johnson_ sheild them against whoever shall think fit
to be severe in censure against them. Truth is, his Tragedies, _Seianus
and Cateline_ seem to have in them more of an artificial and inflate,
than of a pathetical and naturally Tragick height; yet do they every
one of them far excel any of the _English_ ones that were writ before
him; so that he may be truly said to be the first reformer of the
_English_ Stage, as he himself more truly than modestly writes in his
commendatory Verses of his Servants _Richard Broom_'s Comedy of the
_Northern Lass_.

Which you have justly gained from the Stage,
By observation of those Comick Laws,
Which I, your Master, first did teach the Age.

In the rest of his Poetry, (for he is not wholly Dramatick) as his
_Underwoods_, _Epigrams_, &c. he is sometimes bold and strenuous,
sometimes Magisterial, sometimes lepid and full enough of conceit, and
sometimes a man as other men are.

It seems the issue of his brain was more lively and lasting than the
issue of his body, having several Children, yet none living to survive
him; This he bestowed as part of an Epitaph on his eldest Son, dying an
Infant.

Rest in soft peace, and ask'd, say, Here doth lye
_Ben Johnson_ his best piece of Poetry.

But tho' the immortal Memory still lives of him in his learned Works,
yet his Body, subject to mortality, left this life, _Anno_ 1638. and
was buried about the Belfrey in the Abbey-Church at _Westminster_,
having only upon a Pavement