left us. They have provoked unsparing censure from Bishop Kurd. He condemns the first as "an unnatural and as the painters say, hard delineation of a group of simply existing passions, wholly chimerical, and unlike to anything we may observe in the commerce of real life." He terms "The Alchymist" "a farcical comedy," asserts that "Volpone" is "not a complete model of comedy," and complains generally that Jonson's wit is too frequently caustic, his raillery coarse, and his humour excessive. We need not pause to express our utter disregard for such censure. When we know that Voltaire said that "Hamlet" seemed the work of a drunken savage, we can feel no surprise when we are thus dashed against the shallows of criticism. We live too in an age when tenth-rate men review the writings of their superiors with cheerful confidence and fatal facility. Mr. Gifford declares that Hurd knew little or nothing of Jonson's works, and while we tremble in charging dishonesty on a writer on Prophecy and a Bishop, we think Mr. Gifford is not far wrong. But we will favour our reader with one or two counter opinions from no less a man than Mr. Hallam. Speaking of "Every Man in his Humour," Mr. H. calls it "an extraordinary monument of early genius in what is seldom the possession of youth, a clear and unerring description of human character, various and not extravagant beyond the necessities of the stage." He adds, "It is, perhaps, the earliest of European domestic comedies, that deserves to be mentioned." Of "The Alchymist," he remarks that "The plot with great simplicity is continually animated and interesting, the characters are conceived and delineated with admirable boldness, truth, spirit and variety; the humour, especially in the two Puritans—a sect who now began to do penance on the stage—is amusing; the language, when it does not smell too much of book learning, is forcible and clear." Mr. Gifford is more enthusiastic
