Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/142

 unconscious echo of the sentiment of an older poet and patriot has in it the prolonged reverberation and repercussion of music which we hear in the echoes of thunder or a breaking sea.

Again, how happy in the bitterness of its truth is the next remark: 'Natures that are hardened to evil you shall sooner break than make straight: they are like poles that are crooked and dry: there is no attempting them.' And how grand is this:

I cannot think nature is so spent and decayed that she can bring forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like herself; and when she collects her strength, is abler still. Men are decayed, and studies: she is not.

Jonson never wrote a finer verse than that; and very probably he never observed that it was a verse.

The next note is one of special interest to all students of the great writer who has so often been described as a blind worshipper and a servile disciple of classical antiquity.

'I know nothing can conduce more to letters,' says the too obsequious observer of Tacitus and of Cicero in