Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/166

 heirs) 'of all their ancestor's vices, and by their good husbandry improve the old, and daily purchase new, must needs be wealthier in vice, and have a greater revenue or stock of ill to spend on.' But this is only one in a score of instances which might be quoted to show that if a great English poet and humourist had left nothing behind him but this little book of 'maxims,' as the French call them—notes, observations, or reflections cast in a form more familiar to French than to English writers—he would still hold a place beside or above La Rochefoucauld, and beside if not above Chamfort. And yet, even among his countrymen, it may be feared that the sardonic wit and the cynical wisdom of the brilliant French patrician and the splendid French plebeian are familiar to many who have never cared to investigate the Discoveries of Ben Jonson,

Again we meet the strangely outspoken satirist and malcontent in the person of the court laureate who allowed himself to remark that 'the great thieves of a state are lightly' [usually or naturally] 'the officers of the crown: they hang the less still, play the pikes in the pond, eat whom they list. The net was never spread for the hawk or buzzard that hurt us, but the harmless birds; they are good