n of distinctive human types. As such it survived by name
into the Restoration age[199] and cannot be said to have ever died out.
In the actual reproduction of humanity in its infinite but never, in his
hands, alien variety, it was impossible that Shakespeare should be
excelled by Jonson; but in the consciousness with which he recognized
and indicated the highest sphere of a comic dramatist's labours, he
rendered to the drama a direct service which the greater master had left
unperformed. By the rest of his contemporaries and his successors, some
of whom, such as R. Brome, were content avowedly to follow in his
footsteps, Jonson was only occasionally rivalled in individual instances
of comic creations; in the entirety of its achievements his genius as a
comic dramatist remained unapproached. The favourite types of Jonsonian
comedy, to which Dekker, J. Marston and Chapman had, though to no large
extent, added others of their own, were elaborated with incessant zeal
and remarkable effect by their contemporaries and successors. It was
after a very different fashion from that in which the Roman comedians
reiterated the ordinary types of the New Attic comedy, that the
inexhaustible _verve_ of T. Middleton, the buoyant productivity of
Fletcher, the observant humour of N. Field, and the artistic
versatility of Shirley--not to mention many later and not necessarily
minor names[200]--mirrored in innumerable pictures of contemporary life
the undying follies and foibles of mankind. As comedians of manners more
than one of these surpassed the old master, not indeed in distinctness
and correctness--the fruits of the most painstaking genius that ever
fitted a learned sock to the representation of the living realities of
life--but in a lightness not incompatible with sureness of touch; while
in the construction of plots the access of abundant new materials, and
the greater elasticity in treatment resulting from accumulated
experience, enabled them to advance from success to success. Thus the
comic dramatic literature from Jonson to Shirley is unsurpassed as a
comedy of manners, while as a comedy of character it at least defies
comparison with any other national literary growth preceding or
contemporaneous with it. Though the younger generation, of which W.
Cartwright may be taken as an example, was unequal in originality or
force to its predecessors, yet so little exhausted was the vitality of
the species, that its traditions survived t