Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/149

 Christian or ethnic, if he be honest, can miss it: no statesman or patriot should. For without truth all the actions of mankind are craft, malice, or what you will rather than wisdom. Homer says he hates him worse than hell-mouth that utters one thing with his tongue and keeps another in his breast. Which high expression was grounded on divine reason: for a lying mouth is a stinking pit, and murders with the contagion it venteth. Besides, nothing is lasting that is feigned; it will have another face than it had ere long. As Euripides saith, 'No lie ever grows old.'

It would be well if this were so: but the inveterate reputation of Euripides as a dramatic poet is hardly reconcilable with the truth of his glibly optimistic assumption. Nor, had that fluent and facile dealer in flaccid verse and sentimental sophistry spoken truth for once in this instance, should we have had occasion to wonder at the admiration expressed for him by the most subtle and sincere, the most profound and piercing intelligence of our time; nor could that sense of reverential amazement have found spontaneous expression in the following couplet of Hudibrastic doggrel:—

That the huckster of pathos, whose gift was insipid ease, Finds favour with Browning, must puzzle Euripides.

But Jonson himself, it seems to me, was far