taxed in him, a less fault than the carelessness of Shakespeare.
He does not well always; and, when he does, he is a true
Englishman,--he knows not when to give over. If he wakes in one scene,
he commonly slumbers in another; and, if he pleases you in the first
three acts, he is frequently so tired with his labour, that he goes
heavily in the fourth, and sinks under his burden in the fifth.

For Ben Jonson, the most judicious of poets, he always writ properly,
and as the character required; and I will not contest farther with my
friends, who call that wit: it being very certain, that even folly
itself, well represented, is wit in a larger signification; and that
there is fancy, as well as judgment, in it, though not so much or
noble: because all poetry being imitation, that of folly is a lower
exercise of fancy, though perhaps as difficult as the other; for it is
a kind of looking downward in the poet, and representing that part of
mankind which is below him.

In these low characters of vice and folly, lay the excellency of that
inimitable writer; who, when at any time he aimed at wit in the
stricter sense, that is, sharpness of conceit, was forced either to
borrow from the ancients, as to my knowledge he did very much from
Plautus; or, when he trusted himself alone, often fell into meanness
of expression. Nay, he was not free from the lowest and most groveling
kind of wit, which we call clenches, of which "Every Man in his
Humour" is infinitely full; and, which is worse, the wittiest persons
in the drama speak them. His other comedies are not exempt from them.
Will you give me leave to name some few? Asper, in which character he
personates himself, (and he neither was nor thought himself a fool)
exclaiming against the ignorant judges of the age, speaks thus:

How monstrous and detested is't, to see
A fellow, that has neither art nor brain,
Sit like an _Aristarchus_, or _stark-ass_,
Taking men's lines, with a _tobacco face_,
In _snuff_, &c.

And presently after: "I marvel whose wit 'twas to put a prologue in
yond Sackbut's mouth. They might well think he would be out of tune,
and yet you'd play upon him too."--Will you have another of the same
stamp? "O, I cannot abide these limbs of _sattin_, or rather _Satan_."

But, it may be, you will object that this was Asper, Macilente, or
Carlo Buffone; you shall, therefore, hear him speak in his own person,
and that in the two last lines, or sting of an epigram