Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/78

 fortable little piece of genial comic realism; pleasant, quaint, and homely: the good-humoured humour of little Robin Cupid and his honest old mother 'Venus, a deaf tirewoman,' is more agreeable than many more studious and elaborate examples of the author's fidelity as a painter or photographer of humble life. Next year, in the masque of Lovers made Men, called by Gifford The Masque of Lethe, he gave full play to his lighter genius and lyric humour: it is a work of exceptionally simple, natural, and graceful fancy. In the following year he brought out the much-admired Vision of Delight; a very fair example of his capacities and incapacities. The fanciful, smooth, and flowing verse of its graver parts would be worthy of Fletcher, were it not that the music is less fresh and pure in melody, and that among the finest and sweetest passages there are interspersed such lamentably flat and stiff couplets as would have been impossible to any other poet of equal rank. If justice has not been done in modern times to Ben Jonson as one of the greatest of dramatists and humourists, much more than justice has been done to him as a lyric poet. The famous song of Night in this masque opens and closes most beautifully and