like those that
beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries." The allusions here
are very evidently to Caliban and the satyrs who figure in the
sheep-shearing feast in "A Winter's Tale." The worst blast of all,
however, occurs in Jonson's "Timber," but the blows are evidently given
with a loving hand. He writes "I remember, the players have often
mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that, in his writing, whatsoever
he penn'd, hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he
had blotted a thousand;--which they thought a malevolent speech. I had
not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who choose that
circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to
justifie mine owne candor,--for I lov'd the man, and doe honor his
memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. Hee was, indeed, honest,
and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasie; brave
notions and gentle expressions; wherein hee flow'd with that facility
that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd;--_sufflaminandus
erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne
power;--would the rule of it had beene so too! Many times he fell into
those things, could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person
of Caesar, one speaking to him,--Caesar thou dost me wrong; hee
replyed,--Caesar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like;
which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices with his virtues.
There was ever more in him to be praysed then to be pardoned."

And even this criticism is altogether controverted by the wholly
eulogistic lines Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition of Shakespeare
printed in 1623, "To the memory of my beloved, The Author Mr. William
Shakespeare and what he hath left us."[1]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See the Tempest volume in First Folio Shakespeare. (Crowell & Co.)

For the same edition he also wrote the following lines for the portrait
reproduced in this volume, which it is safe to regard as the Shakespeare
Ben Jonson remembered:

"TO THE READER

This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he but have drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in brasse.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.