In all of them he strove to pour into an ancient form
language that was as intense and vigorous and as purely English as the
earliest trumpeters of the Renaissance in England could have wished. The
result is not entirely successful. He seldom fails to reproduce classic
dignity and good sense; on the other hand he seldom succeeds in
achieving classic grace and ease. Occasionally, as in his best known
lyric, he is perfect and achieves an air of spontaneity little short of
marvellous, when we know that his images and even his words in the song
are all plagiarized from other men. His expression is always clear and
vigorous and his sense good and noble. The native earnestness and
sincerity of the man shines through as it does in his dramas and his
prose. In an age of fantastic and meaningless eulogy--eulogy so amazing
in its unexpectedness and abstruseness that the wonder is not so much
that it should have been written as that it could have been thought
of--Jonson maintains his personal dignity and his good sense. You feel
his compliments are such as the best should be, not necessarily
understood and properly valued by the public, but of a discriminating
sort that by their very comprehending sincerity would be most warmly
appreciated by the people to whom they were addressed.
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