Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/80

 poet's incomparable industry and devotion to the study of dialects and details: and the close is noble and simple in its patriotic or provincial eloquence. But in the year 1620 the comic genius of Jonson shone out once more in all the splendour of its strength. The only masque of that year, News from the New World discovered in the Moon, is worthy of a prose Aristophanes: in other words, it is a satire such as Aristophanes might have written, if that greater poet had ever condescended to write prose. Here for once the generous words of Jonson's noble panegyric on Shakespeare may justly be applied to himself: in his own immortal phrase, the humour of this little comedy is 'not of an age, but for all time.' At the very opening we find ourselves on but too familiar ground, and feel that the poet must have shot himself forward by sheer inspiration into our own enlightened age, when we hear 'a printer of news' avowing the notable fact that 'I do hearken after them, wherever they be, at any rates; I'll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news,' Are not these, the reader must ask himself, the accents of some gutter gaolbird—some dunghill gazetteer of this very present day? Or is the avowal too honest in its impudence for such