Hail mighty founder of our stage! for so I dare
Entitle thee, nor any modern censures fear,
Nor care what thy unjust detractors say;
They'll say, perhaps, that others did materials bring,[1]
That others did the first foundations lay,
And glorious 'twas (we grant) but to begin,
But thou alone couldst finish the design,
All the fair model, and the workmanship was thine:
Some bold adventurers might have been before,
Who durst the unknown world explore;
By them it was surveyed at distant view,
And here and there a cape, and line they drew,
Which only served as hints, and marks to thee,
Who wast reserved to make the full discovery.
Art's compass to thy painful search we owe,
Whereby thou wentest so far, and we may after go;
By that we may wit's vast and trackless ocean try,
Content no longer, as before,
Dully to coast along the shore,
But steer a course more unconfined and free,
Beyond the narrow bounds that pent antiquity.
- ↑ This was one of the charges brought against Jonson by the Restoration critics—that he borrowed his materials. The most remarkable case was that of the Alchemist which he was accused of having plagiarized from a play by a Mr. Tomkis, called Albumazar, produced at Cambridge in 1614. Dryden gave currency to the charge by repeating it in a prologue to Albumazar on its revival in 1668:
'And Jonson, of those few the best, chose this,
As the best model of his master-piece:
Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
The Alchemist by this Astrologer;
Here he was fashioned, and we may suppose
He liked the fashion well, who wore the clothes.'
In these lines we may see how Jonson was estimated in relation to the poets of his own time, Dryden setting him above them all. The charge of plagiarism, in the instance of Albumazar, is wholly set aside by the conclusive fact that it was not printed or acted till four years after the production of the Alchemist.
Lost, written professedly in imitation of the 'divine Shakespeare' whom he had himself been mainly instrumental in bringing into neglect. But he made ample reparation afterwards, in his noble and comprehensive characters of him both in prose and verse.
