Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/175

 of satirical observation—from the heights of a noble art to the depths or levels of ignoble nature, we meet once more the same fierce and earnest critic of life who should certainly be acknowledged as the greatest of all poets by any one—if any one there be—to whom 'criticism of life' seems acceptable or imaginable as a definition of the essence or the end of poetry.

The opening of the satirical essay on parasites which is here divided or split up into two sections by the blundering negligence and the unprincipled incompetence of its editors has the force and the point of a keen and heavy weapon, edged with wit and weighted with indignation. Juvenal has hardly left us a more vivid likeness of the creatures who 'grow suspected of the master, hated of the servants, while they inquire, and reprehend, and compound, and delate business of the house they have nothing to do with.' This note ends with the admirable remark, 'I know not truly which is worse, he that maligns all or that praises all.' An eminent poet and dramatist of our own age, M. Auguste Vacquerie, has said much the same thing in words even more terse, accurate, and forcible than Jonson's:—'Louer tout, c'est une autre façon de dénigrer tout.'