Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/166

150 Jonson) : " That he was envious, and sparing in com- mendation to his contemporaries, may as well im- mediately be denied. His commendatory verses on Shakespeare, Drayton, Donne, Fletcher, Sir John Beaumont, and others [many others] may easily be consulted ; and he that finds in them any penury of praise, any malicious ambiguity or concealed detrac- tion, may safely be affirmed to have brought a mind already poisoned to their perusal." Indeed, it is scarcely too much to assert that in his poems we find generous and hearty while discriminating eulogy of all the most justly eminent persons of his time, and especially of those eminent in literature and in his own department of literature, as well as most kindly and encouraging praise of many writers of a lower degree. And how cordial were his relations with the worthiest of his literary brethren may be seen, not only from his commendations of them, but from their commendations of him. Besides those named as contributing to the Jonsonus Virbius we have commendatory verses, either on particular dramas or on his works in general, from George Chapman, Donne, Francis Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden (in Latin), and Selden's "most beloved Friend and Chamberfellow " Edward Heyward, to whom the "Titles of Honour" was dedicated, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Oldham, Herrick, Shirley, and others. Shirley having, as Gifford notes, been singled out with exquisite propriety, by Steevens and others, as the most scurrilous of Jonson's enemies, it may be well to give some lines from his prologue to the "Alchemist," written for a performance of it after Jonson's death : —