"Can you sublime and dulcify? calcine?
Know you the sapor pontic? sapor stiptic,
Or what is homogene, or heterogene?"

Lines like the following show that Jonson's acute mind had grasped
something of the principle of evolution:--

"...'twere absurd
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant: something went before.
There must be remote matter."

_The Silent Woman_ is in lighter vein than either of the plays just
mentioned. The leading character is called Morose, and his special
whim or "humor" is a horror of noise. His home is on a street "so
narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts, nor any
of these common noises." He has mattresses on the stairs, and he
dismisses the footman for wearing squeaking shoes. For a long time
Morose does not marry, fearing the noise of a wife's tongue. Finally
he commissions his nephew to find him a silent woman for a wife, and
the author uses to good advantage the opportunity for comic situations
which this turn in the action affords. Dryden preferred _The Silent
Woman_ to any of the other plays.

Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his
long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies.

Marks of Decline.--A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in
Jonson's plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of
Shakespeare. We may change Jonson's line so that it will state one
reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:--

"He was not for all time, but of an age."

His first play, _Every Man in his Humor_, paints, not the universal
emotions of men, but some special humor. He thus defines the sense in
which he uses humor:--

"As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a Humor."

Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson gives a distorted or incomplete picture of
life. In _Volpone_ everything is subsidiary to the humor of avarice,
which receives unnatural emphasis. In _The Alchemist_ there is little
to relieve the picture of credibility and hypocrisy, while _The Silent
Woman_ has for its leading character a man whose principal "humor" or
aim in life is to avoid noise.

No drama which fails to paint the nobler side of womanhood can be
called complete. In Jonson's plays we do not find a single woman
worthy to c