appily applied to Victor Hugo, than the composition, by the rugged author
of _Sejanus_ and _Catiline_, of _The Devil is an Ass_ and _Bartholomew
Fair_, of such things as

"Here lies to each her parents ruth;"

or the magnificent song,

"Drink to me only with thine eyes;"

or the crown and flower of all epitaphs,

"Underneath this sable herse."[33]

[33] Ben is sometimes deprived of this, _me judice_, most irreligiously.

But these three universally-known poems only express in quintessence a
quality of Jonson's which is spread all about his minor pieces, which
appears again perfectly in _The Sad Shepherd_, and which he seems to have
kept out of his plays proper rather from bravado than for any other reason.
His prose will be noticed separately in the next chapter, but it may be
observed here that it is saturated with the same literary flavour which
pervades all his work. None of his dramatic fellows wrote anything that can
compare to it, just as none of them wrote anything that surpasses the songs
and snatches in his plays, and the best things in his miscellaneous works.
The one title which no competent criticism has ever grudged him is that of
best epitaph-writer in the English language, and only those who have failed
to consider the difficulties and the charm of that class of composition
will consider this faint praise. Nevertheless, it was no doubt upon drama
that Jonson concentrated his powers, and the unfavourable judgments which
have been delivered on him chiefly refer to this.

A good deal of controversy has arisen out of the attribution to him, which
is at least as old as _The Return from Parnassus_, of being minded to
classicise the English drama. It is certain that he set a value on the
Unities which no other English dramatist has set, and that in _The
Alchemist_ at least he has given something like a perfect example of them,
which is at the same time an admirable play. Whether this attention is at
all responsible for the defects which are certainly found in his work is a
very large question. It cannot be denied that in that work, with perhaps
the single exception just mentioned, the reader (it is, except in the case
of _Every Man in his Humour_, generations since the playgoer had any
opportunity of judging) finds a certain absence of sympathetic attraction,
as well as, for all the formal unity of the pieces, a lack of that fusing
poetic force which makes detail into a whole. The amazing stre