"That which he hath writ

Is with such judgment labour'd and distill'a
Through all the needful uses of our lives,
That, could a man remember but his lines,
He should not touch at any serious point,
But he might breathe his spirit out of him.

His learning savours not the school-like gloss
That most consists in echoing words and terms,
And soonest wins a man an empty name;
Nor any long or far-fetch'd circumstance
Wrapp'd in the curious general'ties of art;
But a direct and analytic sum

Of all the worth and first effects of art.
And for his poesy, 'tis so ramm'd with life,
That it shall gather strength of life, with being,
And live hereafter more admir'd than now." "

The private opinion of Jonson with regard to Shakspere would not be so much a reflection of the popular judgment as that of the critical few who would apply the tests of ancient art, not only to the art of Shakspere, but to the art of that great body of writers who had founded the English drama upon a broader foundation than the precepts of Aristotle. The art of Jonson was opposed to the art of Shakspere. He satisfied the few, but the many rejected him. There is a poem on Jonson's "Sejanus," which shows how his learned harangues-paraphrases for the most part of the ancient writers - were received by the English people:

*The Poetaster, Act v. Scene 1.

"When in the Globe's fair ring, our world's best stage, I saw Sejanus, set with that rich foil,

I look'd the author should have borne the spoil
Of conquest from the writers of the age:
But when I view'd the people's beastly rage,
Bent to confound thy grave and learned toil,
That cost thee so much sweat, and so much oil,
My indignation I could hardly assuage."

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Jonson, in his free conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, in January, 1619, should say that "Shakspere wanted art." When Jonson said this he was in no laudatory mood. Drummond heads his record of the conversation thus: "His censure of the English poets was this." Censure is here, of course, put for opinion; although Jonson's opinions are by no means favourable to any one of whom he speaks. Spenser's stanzas pleased him not, or his matter; Sir John Harrington's "Ariosto,” under all translations, was the worst; Abraham France was a fool; Sidney did not keep a decorum in making every one speak as well as himself; Shakspere wanted art. And so, during two centuries, a mob of critics have caught up the word, and with the most knowing winks, and the most profound courtesies to each other's sagacity, have they echoed Shakspere wanted art." But a cunning interpolator, who knew the temper of the critics, the anonymous editor of Cibber's "Lives of the Poets," took the "heads of a con

1

versation" between Jonson and Drummond, prefixed to Drummond's works in 1711, and bestowed a few finishing touches upon them, after his own fashion. And thus, to the great joy of the denouncers of anachronisms, and other Shaksperean absurdities, as they are pleased to call them, we have read as follows for a hundred years: "He said, Shakspere wanted Art, and sometimes Sense; for, in one of his plays, he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwrack in Bohemia, where is no sea near by 100 miles." Jonson, indeed, makes the observation upon the shipwreck in Bohemia, but without any comment upon it. It is found in another part of Drummond's record, quite separate from "Shakspere wanted art;" a casual remark, side by side with Jonson's gossip about Sidney's pimpled face and Raleigh's plagiaries. It was probably mentioned by Jonson as an illustration of some principle upon which Shakspere worked; and in the same way "Shakspere wanted art' was in all likelihood explained by him, in producing instances of the mode in which Shakspere's art differed from his (Jonson's) art. It is impossible to receive Jonson's words as any support of the absurd opinion so long propagated that Shakspere worked without labour and without method. Jonson's own testimony, delivered five years after the conversation with Drummond, offers the most direct evidence against such a construction of his expression:

"Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter Nature be,
His art doth give the fashion: and that he
Who casts to write a living line must sweat
(Such as thine are), and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil: turn the same

(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame;
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,-
For a good poet's made as well as born:
And such wert thou."

There can be no difficulty in understanding Jonson's dispraise of Shakspere, small as it was, when we look at the different characters of the two men. In his "Discoveries," written in his last years, there is the following passage: _" I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspere, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Au

assertion.

His wit was in his own

gustus said of Haterius. power; would the rule of it had been so too." The players had said, in their preface to the first folio" His mind and hand went together; and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Jonson, no doubt, alludes to this But we are not, therefore, to understand that Shakspere took no pains in perfecting what, according to the notion of his editors, he delivered with such easiness. The differences between the earlier and the later copies of some of his plays show, as we have repeatedly pointed out, the unremitting care and the exquisite judgment with which he revised his productions. The expression "without a blot" might, nevertheless, be perfectly true; and the fact, no doubt, impressed upon the minds of Heminge and Condell what they were desirous to impress upon others, that Shakspere was a writer of unequalled facility" as he was a happy imitator of nature, he was a most gentle expresser of it." Jonson received this evidence of facility as a reproof to his own laborious mode of composition. He felt proud, and wisely so, of the commendations of his admirers, that his works cost him much sweat and much toil; and when the players told him that Shakspere never blotted out a line, he had his self-satisfied retort, "Would he had blotted a thousand." But this carelessness, as it appeared to Jonson,- this exuberant facility, as the