ABSTRACT
The greatest portion of Ben Jonson’s comic writing is in prose; but this chapter presents a striking specimen in verse – indeed, the best scene of his best production. Ben Jonson’s famous humour is as pampered, jovial, and dictatorial as he was in his own person. He always gives one the idea of a man sitting at the head of a table and a coterie. He carves up a subject as he would a dish; talks all the while to show off both the dish and himself; and woe betide difference of opinion, or his ‘favourite aversion,’ envy. Ben Jonson had probably found his panegyric treated with neglect, perhaps contempt; and it was bold in him to return it; but it was proclaiming his own gratuitous flattery. It has been objected to Ben Jonson’s humours, that they are too exclusive of other qualities; that the characters are much absorbed in the peculiarity, so as to become personifications of an abstraction.
