to Shakspeare. Let Ben Jonson himself speak, and in his preface to
'Volpone' tell us in his own noble prose what he thought of the
average morality of his contemporary playwrights:-


'For if men will impartially and not asquint look toward the offices
and functions of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the
impossibility of any man's being a good poet without first being a
good man. He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good
discipline, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in
their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood,
recover them to their first strength; that comes forth the
interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less
than human, a master in manners and can alone (or with a few) effect
the business of mankind; this, I take him, is no subject for pride
and ignorance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But it will
here be hastily answered that the writers of these days are other
things, that not only their manners but their natures are inverted,
and nothing remaining of them of the dignity of poet but the abused
name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatick,
or (as they term it) stage poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation,
blasphemies, all licence of offence toward God and man is practised.
I dare not deny a great part of this (and I am sorry I dare not),
because in some men's abortive features (and would God they had never
seen the light!) it is over true; but that all are bound on his bold
adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and uttered, a
more malicious slander. For every particular I can (and from a most
clear conscience) affirm that I have ever trembled to think toward
the least profaneness, and have loathed the use of such foul and
unwashed . . . [his expression is too strong for quotation] as is now