Page:The Works of Ben Jonson - Gifford - Volume 3.djvu/504

500 Morose was derived. The poet's "actual acquaintance with such a man," is now placed upon certain grounds:—and those who accuse him of dealing in illiberal personalities, or extravagancies peculiar to himself, may, if they please, derive a lesson of forbearance from the instance in the text, and not eagerly press, as they always do, to decide every point against Jonson, before the smallest part of the question has been examined. Not only the name of Morose, (which Dryden seems to think so happily allusive,) but the whole frame and contexture of his character, our poet found in Libanius. He has, however, rendered him far more natural and interesting than he appears in the sophist of Antioch, and thrown him into situations calculated, with admirable address, to place the peculiarities of his humour in the strongest light, and render them at once instructive and amusing.

It is somewhat singular that Dryden should dismiss the collegiates with a bare mention. They merited more of his care. The comic stage cannot boast of more legitimate objects of satire: and while their profligacy is treated with unmixed severity, their absurd pretensions to literature are advanced with such serious mockery, ridiculed with such natural and easy dexterity, and exposed with such sarcastic and overwhelming contempt, that though we hear of some combinations of this kind, about the period of the Silent Woman's appearance, no traces of them, as here drawn, are afterwards discoverable. "They vanished at the crowing of the cock"—Our days have witnessed an attempt to revive the Collegiatesbut this was a water-suchy club, merely ridiculous; and so unsubstantial as not to require the clarion of the cock; but to "melt into thin air," at the twittering of a wren.