he robuster qualities of intellect or
genius. This most lovely scene, for pathos tempered with fancy and for
passion distilled in melody, is comparable only with higher work, of
rarer composition and poetry more pure, than Jonson's: it is a very
treasure-house of verses like jewels, bright as tears and sweet as
flowers. When Dekker writes like this, then truly we seem to see his
right hand in the left hand of Shakespeare.

To find the names of Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker amicably associated in
the composition of a joint poem or pageant within the space of a year
from the publication of so violent a retort by the latter to so vehement
an attack by the former must amuse if it does not astonish the reader
least capable of surprise at the boyish readiness to quarrel and the
boyish readiness to shake hands which would seem to be implied in so
startling a change of relations. In all the huge, costly, wearisome,
barbaric, and pedantic ceremonial which welcomed into London the Solomon
of Scotland, the exhausted student who attempts to follow the ponderous
elaboration of report drawn up by these reconciled enemies will remark
the solid and sedate merit of Jonson's best couplets with less pleasure
than he will receive from the quaint sweetness of Dekker's lyric notes.
Admirable as are many of Ben Jonson's songs for their finish of style
and fulness of matter, it is impossible for those who know what is or
should be the special aim or the distinctive quality of lyric verse to
place him in the first class--much less, in the front rank--of lyric
poets. He is at his best a good way ahead of such song-writers as Byron;
but Dekker at his best belongs to the order of such song-writers as
Blake or Shelley. Perhaps the very finest example of his flawless and
delicate simplicity of excellence in this field of work may be the
well-known song in honor of honest poverty and in praise of honest labor
which so gracefully introduces the heroine of a play published in this
same year of the accession of James--"Patient Grissel"; a romantic
tragicomedy so attractive for its sweetness and lightness of tone and
touch that no reader will question the judgment or condemn the daring of
the poets who ventured upon ground where Chaucer had gone before them
with such gentle stateliness of step and such winning tenderness of
gesture. His deepest note of pathos they have not even attempted to
reproduce: but in freshness and straightforwardness, in frankness