of many proofs that
pleasantry had not at this time reached its highest excellence.

To Shakespeare's kindness and discretion Ben Jonson owed his first
introduction to dramatic fame. The young poet had presented "Every Man
in his Humour," to one of the leading players of the company to which
Shakespeare belonged, and the comedian upon reading it, determined to
refuse it. Jonson's fate was trembling in the balance; he was a
struggling man, and, had he been unsuccessful, might have eventually,
returned to his bricklayer's work, but he was destined to be raised up
for his own benefit and that of others. Shakespeare was present when his
play was about to be rejected, asked to be allowed to look over it, and,
at once recognising the poet's talent, recommended it to his companions.
From that moment Jonson's career was secured. But he was never destined
to acquire the lasting fame of Shakespeare. With him the stream of
Comedy was losing its deep and strong reflections, and beginning to flow
in a swifter and shallower current, meandering through labyrinths of
court and city life. Perhaps, also, his large amount of humorous
illustration, which must have been mostly ephemeral, tended to cut short
his fame. The best of it is interwoven with his several designs and
plots, as where, in "The Alchemist," a gentleman leaves his house in
town, and his housekeeper fills it with fortune-tellers vagabonds, who
carry on their trade there; and in "The Fox" a rich and childless man is
courted by his friends, from whom he obtains presents under the pretence
that he will leave them his property. In this last play a parasite is
introduced, and in general these plays abound with classical allusions,
sometimes very incongruously intermixed with modern concerns. An
indiscriminating admiration of ancient literature and art was as much
one of the features of the day, as was its crude humour--a cleverness
joined to folly and attributed to boobies and simpletons. Much of this
jocosity scarcely deserves the name of humour, and we may remark that in
Jonson's time it did not receive it. With him humour is thus defined--

"To be a quality of air or water,
And in itself holds these two properties,
Moisture and fluxure.... Now thus far
It may by metaphor apply itself
Unto the general disposition:
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his power."

The social pec