--

"The Fox." And the incidents such as the swooning of Fungoso at sight of Brisk's new suit, the sealing up of Buffone's mouth, the inexpressibly ludicrous tournament in court-compliment between Azotus and Mercury, the vomiting of Crispinus, &c., &c. are conceived in the spirit of the wildest farce or the most bitterly exaggerated satire. There is, indeed, a parallel to Jonson's mad upsetting of things among the classics: Aristophanes is a devil of mirth no less fantastic and much more unconstrained than Jonson; but we do not look to Aristophanes for good order, regularity, or "all the probabilities which the most rigid admirer of the ancient models could possibly demand."

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Jonson, indeed, explicitly professed his independence of correct classical models, and proclaimed his affinity with the older and more licentious forms. In the Induction to "Every Man out of his Humour," Cordatus, the man "inly acquainted with the scope and drift of the plot," explains that the play is "strange, and of a particular kind by itself, somewhat like 'Vetus Comoedia.' "Does the author," asks Mitis, "observe all the laws of comedy in it, according to the Terentian manner?" "O no," replies Cordatus," these are too nice observations." He can discern no necessity for adhering to the Terentian model. The laws of comedy were not a revelation or a sudden inspiration of genius: each playwright reserved the fullest liberty to innovate upon his predecessors "according to the elegancy and disposition of those times wherein he wrote." "I see not then but we should enjoy the same licence, or free power to illustrate and heighten our invention, as they did; and not be tied to those strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but form, would thrust upon us." It is a curious illustration of the blindness of preconception that Gifford should have read this and yet persisted in magnifying Jonson as the apostle of regularity- the very thing that he contemptuously disclaimed. True, Jonson might not have understood himself. We know that, although he professed to cleanse the stage of ribaldry, foul and unwashed brothelry, and suchlike, he nevertheless, like many another professed and earnest moralist, drew in the interests of morality foul and disgusting pictures, quite as demoralising as anything that the most licentious dramatist ever ventured to portray. None of the Elizabethan dramatists exceed in unwashed filth some of the passages in “The Silent Woman" and "Bartholomew Fair." We should not have suspected that Jonson was an apostle of decency, if he had not told But in the matter of correctness and regularity, it needed no Cordatus, inly acquainted with the author's drift, to inform us that. Jonson's study of "humours" is "strange, and of a particular kind by itself, somewhat like 'Vetus Comoedia,' a very remarkable outcome of a powerful and original mind, which was not very pop

us.

ular at the time, but which strongly affected the practice of contemporary dramatists, and has been fully honoured by posterity. The only sense in which correctness can be applied to Jonson is careful elaboration laborious filling in of details. Whether in the exhibition of character, or in the description of places or things, he is never content with a bold sketch and a few significant particulars. The characteristic of plodding dogged thoroughness runs through all his work, but is most conspicuous and obtrusive in passages where he has an opportunity of displaying technical knowledge, as when he expounds the stock-in-trade and the business cares of a draper, or the various vessels and other implements of an alchemist's laboratory, or the ingredients of a fine lady's cosmetic or a witch's charm, or the precise language of the acknowledged processes for raising the devil, or transmuting the baser metals into gold. It is in studying this peculiarity that we get a just idea of the vastness of Jonson's scholarship, his prodigious patience of research, and strength of memory. His scholarship was not so much an athletic scholarship, like Spenser's, as a vast knowledge of all sorts of dry details from all sorts of sources; and when we consider the extent of it, we cannot sufficiently admire the power and the patience that have compelled it into dramatic existence, and endowed it with a certain dramatic life.

We need not dwell on Ben Jonson's tragedies, "Sejanus" and "Catiline." His warmest admirers have not much to say in favour of them. "Catiline" is better than "Sejanus," but even "Catiline" wants the elements of an effective drama. Looking at these tragedies, I am wholly at a loss to understand M. Taine's opinion that Jonson possesses in an eminent degree the art of development, of drawing up ideas in connected rank. The primary rule of development is to present your audience first with the broad outlines, and then to fill in the details clearly. This is the rule of development observed by Shakespeare and by all conscious or unconscious masters of the art of presentation. But this rule is not observed by Johnson: in spite of his Herculean efforts to marshal his vast scholarship, he was too much overwhelmed by it to put his readers in clear possession of character and situation by bold decisive strokes and well-judged and opportune sequence. Compare the opening of his "Sejanus" with the opening of "Titus Andronicus." In "Titus Andronicus" the dramatist had to deal with numerous characters and complicated relations, yet we take them all in at our first reading of the first act: the leading parties are brought boldly and clearly on the stage at once in such a way as to command our interest, and minor relations appear as we proceed with perfectly-judged sequence. The same may be seen in Shakespeare's more mature Roman dramas, " Julius Cæsar" and "Coriolanus." In "Sejanus," on the other hand, laborious

attention and several readings of the opening passages are needed before we comprehend the situation. Two unimportant personages come in with long-winded talk about the arts of worldly advancement, and describe some half-dozen characters in a string in such a way that the sharpest hearer must get bewildered as to their relative positions and claims upon his interest. It seems to me that M. Taine must have formed his opinion of Jonson's skill in development from observing his persistent iteration throughout each play of the main characteristics of his personages, and his habit of expounding the intention of important passages, as if he could not trust to the unaided understanding of the audience. Thus Ben hammers into us the daring, forward, impetuous character of Cethegus; and before the scene in which Catiline practises to win over allies, makes the arch-conspirator unfold to his wife how he means to work upon their various weaknesses. But this is not so much skilful development as superfluous care and weak distrust of the intelligence of his hearers.

In Jonson's comedies there are occasional passages that may justly be called tragic, but they belong to low, coarse, revolting tragedy. The misanthropy of Macilente in "Every Man out of his Humour" is tragic; it is the Timonism of a thoroughly illconditioned foul-mouthed churl. The scene between Volpone, Corvino, and Celia ("The Fox," iii. 5)—the foul abuse of his wife by Corvino, and the struggle between Volpone and Celia is monstrously tragic: if the moralist desired to heal spiritual diseases by such an exhibition, he has not scrupled to administer a very strong medicine. The opening scene of "The Alchemist," between the sharpers Subtle and Face and their confederate and common mistress Dol, might pass in a modern sensational drama from the south side of the Thames but for the coarseness and the power of the language: it is a unique revelation of hellish discord and odious patching up of a villanous alliance; and its initiatory fascination was doubtless a chief cause in making "The Alchemist" Jonson's most successful play.

The most generally pleasing remains of Jonson's genius are his occasional songs, his Masques, and his "Sad Shepherd." The "Sad Shepherd" is not quite complete; but, though not without a few blots and stains, it contains some of Jonson's finest poetry. The shepherdess Amie is such a sweet creation that one is indignant at the dramatist for the vulgar and wholly superfluous immodesty of one of her expressions in her first confession of unrest to the pure all things are pure, but it exposes the simple shepherdess to unnecessary ridicule from the ordinary reader. One is surprised to find such sympathy with simple innocence in rare but rough Ben- all the more that the "Sad Shepherd" was written in his later years, when he was exacerbated by failure and poverty.

"I do remember, Marian, I have oft

With pleasure kist my lambs and puppies soft;
And once a dainty fine roe-fawn I had,

Of whose out-skipping bounds I was as glad
As of my health; and him I oft would kiss;
Yet had his no such sting or pain as this:
They never prick'd or hurt my heart; and for
They were so blunt and dull, I wish no more.

But this that hurts and pricks doth please; this sweet
Mingled with sour, I wish again to meet:
And that delay, methinks, most tedious is
That keeps or hinders me of Karol's kiss."

IV. THOMAS DEKKER (1577-1638).

The skirmish between Marston, Jonson, and Dekker, is one of the most famous "quarrels of authors." Who gave the first offence is a matter of dispute: Jonson said it was Marston and Dekker, and Dekker said it was Jonson. When Jonson caricatured Marston as Crispinus the Poetaster, with a very slight passing thrust at Dekker under the name of Demetrius, he professed that he had received information of their intention to attack him; and when Dekker replied with "Satiromastrix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet," he read Johnson a dignified lecture on his jealous disposition, and represented himself and Marston as acting reluctantly in self-defence. On which side the truth lies, it is impossible to say; the facts are against Jonson, inasmuch as he struck the first blow; and his alleged acquaintance with the evil intentions of Marston and Dekker is such as might easily have been inserted between the first acting of "The Poetaster," and the publication of it.1 At any rate, Dekker had very much the best of the contest. From Gifford's saying that "Dekker writes in downright passion, and foams through every page," we should infer that he had never read “Satiromastrix," were it not the case that he makes mistakes equally gross concerning plays that he must have read. Dekker writes with the greatest possible lightness of heart, easy mockery, and free abuse. It is absurd to say that he "makes no pretensions to invention, but takes up the characters of his predecessor, and turns them the seamy side without." Tucca is the only character that he borrows, and a very ingenious idea it is one of the best parts of the joke Johnson's own free-spoken swaggerer to abuse himself. Dekker's Tucca is much more ably wrought out than Jonson's; he has a much finer command of what Widow Minever calls "horrible un

to set

1 All the part of Demetrius looks as if it had been inserted after Jonson was informed of Dekker's intention to "untruss him" in revenge of Marston,

godly names ; and his devices to obtain money are equally shameless and amusing. All the other characters, and what plot there is, are Dekker's own; he, of course, uses the names Horace, Crispinus, and Demetrius, otherwise there would have been no point in his reply but he gives them very different characters. William Rufus, whom Gifford supposed to be the "rude and ignorant soldier" of that name, is conjectured to have been no other than Shakespeare"learning's true Mæcenas, poesy's King"; and perhaps to a playwright like Dekker, Shakespeare might appear a true Mæcenas, although at first sight one would naturally think rather of the Earl of Pembroke or some other noble patron of letters. I am surprised that so able a critic as Mr Symonds should say that "Satiromastrix " is not to be named in the same breath with the "Poetaster," and that its success must have been due to the acting. To be sure it does not reproduce the Court of Augustus with the same verisimilitude — its flight is much too light-winged and madding for any such scholarly achievement. The Court of Augustus would have broken the continuity of the play with yawning intervals; the frail, fallible, and romantic Court of William Rufus is more in keeping with its ebullient and victorious humour. "Satiromastrix," the castigation of the satirist, is not in itself a satire so much as a genial confident mockery it accomplished the main end of such productions - the applause of the playgoers; and I must confess that I for one should have been inclined to give the clever rogue a hand, however badly his counterblast had been put on the stage.

Of Dekker's personal history few particulars are known. The dates both of his birth and of his death are only approximate conjectures. He seems to have made his living by plays, pageants, and prose pamphlets, and to have been almost as prolific and versatile as Defoe, although his labours did not always suffice to keep him out of "the Counter in the Poultry," and the King's Bench Prison. He is first named in 'Henslowe's Diary' in 1597, and he would seem to have been conjoined with Chettle, Haughton, Day, and Jonson on several plays before the close of the century. The first play published as his was "The Shoemaker's Holiday," in 1600 and the subsequent list is "The Pleasant Comedy of Old Fortunatus," 1600; Satiromastrix," 1602; "Patient Grissel" (in conjunction with Chettle and Haughton), 1603; "The Honest Whore" (Part I.), 1604; "The Whore of Babylon," 1607; "Westward Ho !" "Northward Ho!" and "Sir Thomas Wyatt (in conjunction with Webster), 1607; “The Roaring Girl" (in conjunction with Middleton), 1611; "If it be not Good, the Devil is in it," 1612; "The Virgin Martyr" (in conjunction with Massinger), 1622; "Match me in London," 1631; "The Wonder of a Kingdom," 1636; "The Sun's Darling" (not published till 1656);