Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/131

 of Epigrams, as a writer fit to be placed in the hands of schoolgirls. And even then it is difficult to imagine why we come upon certain rows of asterisks in the record of his conversations with Drummond, and in the anonymous interlude written—as Gifford supposes—'for the christening of a son of the Earl of Newcastle, to whom the king or the prince stood godfather.' Even if Jonson had taken—as on such an occasion it would be strange if he had taken—the utmost license of his friends Aristophanes and Rabelais, this would be no reason for treating the reader like a schoolboy or a Dauphin, What a man of genius has written for a public occasion is public property thenceforward and for ever: and the pretence of a man like Gifford to draw the line and determine the limit of publicity is inexpressibly preposterous.

The little interlude, however broad and even coarse in its realistic pleasantry, is a quaint and spirited piece of work; but there are other matters in Colonel Cunningham's appendix which have no right, demonstrable or imaginable, to the place they occupy. It is incredible, it is inconceivable, that Jonson should ever have written such a line as this by way of a Latin verse: