ifts, they 'misuse the
bounteous Pan, and thank the Gods amiss.' Their productions shoot up in
haste, but bear the marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are
two goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and
with the verdure springing at their feet; but they do not strike their
roots far enough into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the
flowers!"

_Jonson_, Ben (1573-1637), was the originator of the "comedy of humors."
Hazlitt, in discussing him at length in the second lecture on the "Comic
Writers," confesses a disrelish for his style. "He was a great man in
himself, but one cannot readily sympathise with him. His works, as the
characteristic productions of an individual mind, or as records of the
manners of a particular age, cannot be valued too highly; but they have
little charm for the mere general reader. Schlegel observes, that whereas
Shakspeare gives the springs of human nature, which are always the same,
or sufficiently so to be interesting and intelligible; Jonson chiefly
gives the _humours_ of men, as connected with certain arbitrary and
conventional modes of dress, action, and expression, which are
intelligible only while they last, and not very interesting at any time.
Shakspeare's characters are men; Ben Jonson's are more like machines,
governed by mere routine, or by the convenience of the poet, whose
property they are.... His portraits are caricatures by dint of their very
likeness, being extravagant tautologies of themselves; as his plots are
improbable by an excess of consistency; for he goes thoroughstitch with
whatever he takes in hand, makes one contrivance answer all purposes, and
every obstacle give way to a predetermined theory.... Old Ben was of a
scholastic turn and had dealt a little in the occult sciences and
controversial divinity. He was a man of strong crabbed sense, retentive
memory, acute observation, great fidelity of description and keeping in
character, a power of working out an idea so as to make it painfully true
and oppressive, and with great honesty and manliness of feeling, as well
as directness of understanding: but with all this, he wanted, to my
thinking, that genial spirit of enjoyment and finer fancy, which
constitute the essence of poetry and wit.... There was nothing
spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius: it was all forced,
up-hill work, making a toil of pleasure. And hence his overweening
admiration of his own work