Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/66

 reate would hardly, I fear, have accepted with benignity the tribute of a compliment to the effect that his use of the sweet and simple heptasyllabic metre was worthy of Richard Barnfield or George Wither: but it is certain that in purity and fluency of music his verse can seldom be compared, as here it justly may, with the clear flutelike notes of Cynthia and The Shepherd's Hunting. An absurd misprint in the last line but three has afflicted all Jonson's editors with unaccountable perplexity, 'Then, then, angry music sound,' sings the chorus at the close of a song in honour of 'gentle Love and Beauty.' It is inconceivable that no one should yet have discovered the obvious solution of so slight but unfortunate an error in the type as the substitution of 'angry' for 'airy.'

The tragedy of Catiline his Conspiracy gave evidence in the following year that the author of Sejanus could do better, but could not do much better, on the same rigid lines of rhetorical and studious work which he had followed in the earlier play. Fine as is the opening of this too laborious tragedy, the stately verse has less of dramatic movement than of such as might be proper—if such a thing could be—for epic satire cast into the form of dialogue. Catiline is so mere a monster