e, or Goethe. The deepest wisdom, the
sweetest poetry, the widest range of character, are combined in his
plays. He made the English language an organ of expression unexcelled
in the history of literature. Yet he is not an English poet simply,
but a world-poet. Germany has made him her own, and the Latin races,
though at first hindered in a true appreciation of him by the canons of
classical taste, have at length learned to know him. An ever-growing
mass of Shaksperian literature, in the way of comment and
interpretation, critical, textual, historical, or illustrative,
testifies to the durability and growth of his fame. Above all, his
plays still keep, and probably always will keep, the stage. It is
common to speak of Shakspere and the other Elisabethan dramatists as if
they stood, in some sense, on a level. But in truth there is an almost
measureless distance between him and all his contemporaries. The rest
shared with him in the mighty influences of the age. Their plays are
touched here and there with the power and splendor of which they were
all joint heirs. But, as a whole, they are obsolete. They live in
books, but not in the hearts and on the tongues of men. The {120} most
remarkable of the dramatists contemporary with Shakspere was Ben
Jonson, whose robust figure is in striking contrast with the other's
gracious impersonality. Jonson was nine years younger than Shakspere.
He was educated at Westminster School, served as a soldier in the low
countries, became an actor in Henslowe's company, and was twice
imprisoned--once for killing a fellow-actor in a duel, and once for his
part in the comedy of _Eastward Hoe_, which gave offense to King James.
He lived down to the times of Charles I. (1635), and became the
acknowledged arbiter of English letters and the center of convivial wit
combats at the _Mermaid_, the _Devil_, and other famous London taverns.

"What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life." [1]

The inscription on his tomb, in Westminster Abbey, is simply

"O rare Ben Jonson!"

Jonson's comedies were modeled upon the _vetus comaedia_ of
Aristophanes, which was satirical in purpose, and they belonged to an
entirely different school from Shakspere's. They wer