benefit of converse. Their audiences were no better, and therefore were
satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the golden age
of poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then content
with acorns before they knew the use of bread!" Then, after a somewhat
hasty and unconvincing examination of certain incorrectnesses and
meannesses of expression even in Ben Jonson, learned as he was, he asks,
"What correctness after this can be expected from _Shakspeare_ or
Fletcher, who wanted that learning and care which Jonson had? I will
therefore spare myself the trouble of enquiring into their faults, who,
had they lived now, had doubtless written more correctly." Since
Shakspeare's days, too, the English language had been refined, he says,
by receiving new words and phrases, and becoming the richer for them, as
it would be "by importation of bullion." It is admitted, however, that
Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson did indeed beautify our tongue by their
_curiosa felicitas_ in the use of old words, to which it often gave a
rare meaning; but in that they were followed by "Sir John Suckling and
Mr Waller, _who refined upon them_!" But the greatest improvement and
refinement of all, "in this age," is said to have been in wit. Pure wit,
and without alloy, was the wit of the court of Charles the Second, and
of the Clubs. It shines like gold, yea much fine gold, in the works of
all the master play-wrights. Whereas, "Shakspeare, who many times has
written better than any poet in any language, is yet so far from writing
wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the
subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writers of
ours, or any preceding age. Never did any author precipitate himself
from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He
is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and
you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other." That
the wit "of this age" is much more courtly, may, Dryden thinks, be
easily proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written
in the last. For example--who do you think? Why, MERCUTIO. "Shakspeare
showed the best of his skill in Mercutio; and he said himself that he
was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed by him.
But for my part I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see
nothing in him but what was so exceedingly harmless, that he might have