Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/255

Rh groundlings] laid as if on purpose in our way through so magnificent a gallery of comic and poetic inventions, the monument of a mind so mighty, the palace of so gigantic a genius as Ben Jonson's, we are more than content to forget such passing and perishable impediments to our admiration of that sovereign intellect which has transported us across them into the royal presence of its ruling and informing power Here, again, we find that Jonson and Chapman stand far apart from their fellow-men of genius. The most ambitious and the most laborious poets of their day, conscious of high aims and large capacities, they would be content with no crown that might be shared by others; they had each his own severe and haughty scheme of study and invention, and sought for no excellence which lay beyond or outside it; that any could lie above, past the reach of their strong arms and skilful hands, past the scope of their keen and studious eyes, they would probably have been unable to believe or to conceive. And yet there were whole regions of high poetic air, whole worlds of human passion and divine imagination, which might be seen by humbler eyes than theirs and trodden by feebler feet, where their robust lungs were powerless to breathe, and their strenuous song fell silent,"

The reader will do well to study the whole of this Introduction, which is not unworthy in its sphere of the author of "Atalanta in Calydon," being the fit reverse of the golden medallion of which that is the noble obverse.