Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/247

 BEN JONSON 231 deatli, George Chapman. Our fiery and dauntless translator of Homer thus ends the dedication of the first of his poems, "The Shadow of Night " (1594, set. 35-6) : " So preferring thy allowance in this poor and strange trifle, to the passport of a whole City of others, I rest as resolute as Seneca, satisfying myself if but a few, if one, or if none like it." And as a postscript to the "Gloss" on the first of his two hymns, he writes : " For the rest of his own invention, figures and similes, touching their aptness and novelty, he hath not laboured to justify them, because he hopes they will be proved enough to justify themselves, and prove sufficiently authentical to such as understand them; for the rest, God help them [for the poet evidently will not, interjects Mr. Swinburne in citing this passage], I cannot do as others, make day seem a lighter woman than she is, by painting her." Again, in his dedication of " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " (1595) to the same " truly learned and very worthy Friend " Master Matthew Roydon, he declares : " The profane multitude I hate, and only consecrate my strange poems to those searching spirits, whom learning hath made noble, and nobility sacred." See also the dedi- cations of the tragedies, "The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois," and "Caesar and Pompey." * loses his head and foams at the mouth when the monarchy or Church is in question. Jonson's Puritans in the "Alchemist" and ' ' Bartholomew Fair " made fine targets for virulent invective ; but a note to this drama is about as good a brief specimen of his ravings in one of these paroxysms as I remember. Bias, a vi-politic, or sub- secretary, says (Act iii., Sc. 4) " Sir, the corruption of one thing in nature Is held the generation of another "
 * I remarked in the second of these papers that Gifford quite