and his fame are in their gift--it is a stern passage for his soul,
a touchstone for the strength and gentleness of his spirit.
Jonson, whose splendid scorn took to itself lyric wings in the two
great Odes to Himself, sang high and aloof for a while, then the
frenzy caught him, and he flung away his lyre to gird himself for
deeds of mischief among nameless and noteless antagonists. Even
Chapman, who, in The Tears of Peace, compares "men's refuse ears"
to those gates in ancient cities which were opened only when the
bodies of executed malefactors were to be cast away, who elsewhere
gives utterance, in round terms, to his belief that


No truth of excellence was ever seen
But bore the venom of the vulgar's spleen,


- even the violences of this great and haughty spirit must pale
beside the more desperate violences of the dramatist who commended
his play to the public in the famous line,


By God, 'tis good, and if you like't, you may.


This stormy passion of arrogant independence disturbs the serenity
of atmosphere necessary for creative art. A greater than Jonson
donned the suppliant's robes, like Coriolanus, and with the
inscrutable honeyed smile about his lips begged for the "most sweet
voices" of the journeymen and gallants who thronged the Globe
Theatre. Only once does the wail of anguish escape him -