Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/83

 too voluble and voluminous improvisation is not unfairly caricatured; but the Laureate's malevolence is something too obvious in his ridicule of the 'soft ambling verse' whose 'rapture' at its highest has the quality denied by nature to Jonson's—the divine gift of melodious and passionate simplicity. A better and happier use for his yet unimpaired faculty of humour was found in the following year's masque of Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion; which contains the most famous and eloquent panegyric on the art of cookery that ever anticipated the ardours of Thackeray and the enthusiasm of Dumas. The passage is a really superb example of tragicomic or mock-heroic blank verse; and in the closing lyrics of the masque there is no lack of graceful fancy and harmonious elegance. For the next year's masque of Pan's Anniversary, or The Shepherd's Holiday, not quite so much can reasonably be said. It is a typical and_a flagrant instance of the poet's proverbial and incurable tendency to overdo everything: there is but artificial smoothness in the verse, and but clownish ingenuity in the prose of it.

But the year 1625 is memorable to the students