We have spoken frequently in our life of the poet, of the rancour with which his character has been assailed. Posterity have scarcely been more merciful to his fame as a writer. Dibdin has slandered him and sought to depreciate his merits. Hume has penned a shallow, flippant notice of him, as well as of Shakespeare.[1] Schlegel, with too great severity, but with more depth and truth, has called him "a younger contemporary and rival of Shakespeare, who laboured in the sweat of his brow, and with no great success, to expel the romantic drama from the English stage, and to form it on the model of the ancients."[2] Hazlitt confesses that he cannot much relish Ben Jonson, and remarks that his genius "resembles the grub more than the butterfly, and plods and grovels on, and wants wings to wanton in the idle summer's air, and catch the golden light of poetry."[3] It should be remembered that it is in contrasting him with Shakespeare that Hazlitt is thus depreciatory. In attempting the same anti-parallel, Sir W. Scott falls into more exaggerated error. "The one," he says, "is like an ancient statue, the beauty of which, springing from the exactness of proportion, does not always strike at first sight, but rises upon us as we bestow time in considering it; the other is the representation of a monster, which is at first only surprising, and ludicrous and disgusting ever after."[4]
How unfortunate for the fame of Jonson that he had not lived a generation before or after his immortal rival! In such a time he had reigned supreme. In dividing the kingdom of literature, though the dominions of one are wider than the other, the colleagues in the empire are scarce ever mentioned without an invidious comparison
