Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/103



the great dramatic poets of the Shakespearean age there are several who would still have a claim to enduring remembrance as poets, even had they never written a line for the theatre: there are two only who would hold a high rank among the masters of English prose. For Nash was not a poet or a dramatist who wandered occasionally into prose by way of change or diversion: he was a master of prose who strayed now and then into lyric or dramatic verse. Heywood, Middleton, and Ford have left us more or less curious and valuable works in prose; essays and pamphlets or chronicles and compilations: but these are works of historic interest rather than literary merit; or, if this be too strong and sweeping an expression, they are works of less intrinsic than empirical value. But if all his plays were lost to us, the author of Ben Jonson's