Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/105

Rh theatrical audience; and this is but a meagre praise of them as plays. But his greatest fault, and specially patent in these higher efforts of his muse, is that he cannot borrow and make what he borrows his own. He cannot assimilate. He is learned, his information vast and varied, but he cannot stamp with his own genius the thoughts of others, and impart any fresh beauty or lustre to them. On this ground he stands in exact contrast to his greatest contemporary. Shakespeare made his little learning go so far, that we think his powers encyclopædiacal. And he used his information with the utmost discretion, and coloured everything with his own originality. Jonson, who was infinitely more learned than Shakespeare, thrusts his reading so palpably before us, that we are sometimes tempted to suspect that he is a pedagogue and a pedant. With him much, and not a little learning, was a dangerous thing. As a tragic writer he has little of the majestic grandeur of Æschylus, the tempered softness and sweetness of Sophocles, the proverbial philosophy and eloquent declamation of Euripides; and if we compare him with the myriad-minded Shakespeare, he will weigh yet lighter in the balance. Those who know "Sejanus" and "Catiline," will not dare to class them with "The Agamemnon," "The Antigone" or "The Medea," and still less with "Hamlet" and "Macbeth." They will occupy no mean place in literature, when they are ranked more fairly with "Cato" and "Ion."

His best comedies are so generally known, that a lengthy critique on them would be tedious. Those that are less read are scarcely deserving of any notice, beyond the interest that must attach itself to any production from the pen of such a man. "Every Man in his Humour," "The Alchymist," "Volpone, or the Fox," and "The Silent Woman," are the best of the numerous comedies he has