from perishing, by putting his thoughts
and satire into modern verse."

_Videlicet_ Pope!--

"He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and
sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of
men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no
sea near by a hundred miles."

I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In
Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to
comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes
of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be
easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and
what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But
this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless
you tell him--"This is a joke!"--and still less of that finer shade of
feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.

"Every Man Out Of His Humour."

Epilogue.--

"The throat of war be stopt within her land,
And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings
About her court."

"Turtle-footed" is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it
mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle,
land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed
better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be
sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with _eclat_--_a claw_!

"Poetaster."

Introduction.--

"Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,
Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness."

There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in the _Paradise
Lost_, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it
otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great
genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed
psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious
self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract
that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other
excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.

Act i. sc. 1.--

"_Ovid._ While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be
whorish."

The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple
transposition:--

"While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish."