Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/250

 234 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES " But acts of clowns and constables to-day Stuff out the scenes of our ridiculous play. We bring you now, to show what different things The cotes of clowns are from the courts of kings." It gladdens us to find our big Ben, at threescore, laughing such kindly and jolly laughter. Lastly, for the comedies, we come to "The Case is Altered," which, however, ought probably to have been placed second or third, as it appears to have been written in 1599. The style has a freedom and ease which are somewhat deficient in his later dramas; both form and substance come nearer to those of his best contemporaries; romance and passion are not slain outright by the keen, cold, intellectual analysis of humours and affectations and charlatanisms. On the whole, I am inclined to regret with Gifford that Jonson "did not rather labour to perfect his early style than to exchange it altogether for that more severe and masculine mode of composition which he subsequently adopted." The miser, Jaques de Prie, rich with stolen wealth, who acts the beggar for its greater security, is drawn with much power and humour : his doting ecstasies over his hidden hoard of golden crowns, his anxious suspicions that every one coming to his house must have discovered his secret, his transport of agony when he finds that his treasure has been stolen from him in turn are true to the life in an ante-banknote miser. (But surely Peter Onion and Juniper, the cobbler, must have had some difficulty in walking off impromptu with the bulk and weight of thirty thousand golden crowns !) In Charles I,amb's note