of the play differing in their characters from one another), which was
the practice of Ben Jonson, whom I think all drammatick poets ought to
imitate, though none are like to come near; he being the onely person
that appears to me to have made perfect representation of human life:
most other authors that I ever read, either have wilde romantick tales,
wherein they strein love and honour to that ridiculous height, that it
becomes burlesque; or in their lower comedies content themselves with
one or two humours at most, and those not near so perfect characters as
the admirable Jonson; always made, who never wrote comedy without seven
or eight considerable humours. I never saw one, except that of
Falstaffe, that was, in my judgment, comparable to any of Jonson's
considerable humours. You will pardon this digression when I tell you,
he is the man, of all the world, I most passionately admire for his
excellency in drammatick poetry.

"Though I have known _some of late so insolent to say_, that Ben Jonson
wrote his best playes without wit, imagining, that all the wit playes
consisted in bringing two persons upon the stage to break jest, and to
bob one another, which they call repartie, not considering, that there
is more wit and invention required in the finding out good humour and
matter proper for it, then in all their smart reparties; for, in the
writing of a humour, a man is confined not to swerve from the character,
and obliged to say nothing but what is proper to it; but in the playes
which have been wrote of late, there is no such thing as perfect
character, but the two chief persons are most commonly a swearing,
drinking, whoring ruffian for a lover, and impudent, ill-bred tomrig for
a mistress, and these are the fine people of the play; and there is that
latitude in this, that almost anything is proper for them to say; but
their chief subject is bawdy, and profaneness, which they call brisk
writing, when the most dissolute of men, that relish those things well
enough in private, are choked at 'em in publick: and, methinks, if there
were nothing but the ill manners of it, it should make poets avoid that
indecent way of writing."--_Preface to the Sullen Lovers_.

Lest this provocation should be insufficient, the Prologue of the same
piece has a fling at heroic plays. The poet says he has

"No kind romantic lover in his play
To sigh and whine out passion, such as may
Charm waiting-women with heroic chime,
An