Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/134

124 reason to be grateful to the compiler who has inserted for the first time among Ben Jonson's works the fine and flowing stanzas described by their author as an allegoric ode. This poem, which in form is Horatian, has no single stanza so beautiful or so noble as the famous third strophe of the Pindaric ode to Sir Lucius Cary on the death of Sir Henry Morison; but its general superiority in purity of style and fluidity of metre is as remarkable as the choice and use of proper names with such a dexterous felicity as to emulate while it recalls the majestic and magnificent instincts of Marlowe and of Milton.

If the fame of Ben Jonson were in any degree dependent on his minor or miscellaneous works in verse, it would be difficult to assign him a place above the third or fourth rank of writers belonging to the age of Shakespeare. His station in the first class of such writers, and therefore in the front rank of English authors, is secured mainly by the excellence of his four masterpieces in comedy; The Fox and The Alchemist, The Staple of News and Every Man in his Humour: but a single leaf of his Discoveries is worth all his lyrics, tragedies, elegies, and epigrams together. That golden little book of noble thoughts and subtle observations is