Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/125

 ment of others, just judgment of himself, was all but impossible to this great writer, this consummate and indefatigable scholar, this generous and enthusiastic friend. The noble infirmity of excess in benevolence is indisputably no less obvious in three great writers of our own century; great, each of them, like Ben Jonson, in prose as well as in verse: one of them greater than he, one of them equal, and one of them hardly to be accounted equal with him. Victor Hugo, Walter Savage Landor, and Théophile Gautier, were doubtless as exuberant in generosity—the English poet was perhaps as indiscriminate in enthusiasm of patronage or of sympathy—as even the promiscuous panegyrist of Shakespeare, of Fletcher, of Chapman, of Drayton, of Browne, of Brome, and of May; and moreover of one Stephens, of one Rutter, of one Wright, of one Warre, and of one Filmer. Of these last five names, that of the worthy Master Joseph Rutter—Ben's 'dear son, and right learned friend'—is the only one which signifies to me the existence of an author not utterly unknown. His spiritual father or theatrical sponsor is most copious and most cordial in his commendations of the good man's pastoral drama; he has not mentioned its one crowning excellence—the quality for which, having