Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/121

Rh the task he set before him arouses regret that he allowed his humour, fancy, observation, learning, and constructive power to be directed by so resolute a spirit of pedantry. To "correct" English comedy it was not necessary to deprive it of all interest of story, nor to substitute for often carelessly drawn characters human nature cut in sections and dressed for the microscope. Could Jonson have been content to correct the more glaring faults of popular comedy, making the structure more regular and even, and the characters more consistently typical, while presenting a broad satirical picture of contemporary manners, he would have rendered invaluable service to the English drama. Molière's breadth of vision and deftness of touch were outside Jonson's range; yet he might have created a regular and satirical drama independent of the French, and more interesting and valuable than the superficial and licentious comedy of the Restoration. That he failed to do so is due, however, not only to the pedantic method he adopted. Even in the form it took, Jonson's satirical comedy might have been of greater interest and value, but for the fact that the conditions of English social life prevented his colossal satirical gifts from finding quite adequate themes. In Jonson's greatest comedies—with the exception of Volpone—there is a striking disproportion between the elaborateness of the satire and the trifling and ephemeral character of the vices satirised; and one is disposed to explain this, in part at any rate, by the reception given to his first and