that he was an altogether envious man; that he envied Shakspeare,
girded at his York and Lancaster plays, at 'The Winter's Tale' and
'The Tempest,' in the prologue to 'Every Man in his Humour'; and,
indeed, Jonson's writings, and those of many other playwrights, leave
little doubt that stage rivalry called out the bitterest hatred and
the basest vanity; and that, perhaps, Shakspeare's great soul was
giving way to the pettiest passions, when in 'Hamlet' he had his
fling at the 'aiery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the
top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for 't.' It may
be that he was girding in return at Jonson, when he complained that
'their writer did them wrong to make them complain against their own
succession,' i.e. against themselves, when 'grown to common players.'
Be that as it may. Great Shakspeare may have been unjust to only
less great Jonson, as Jonson was to Shakspeare: but Jonson certainly
is not so in all his charges. Some of the faults which he attributes
to Shakspeare are really faults.

At all events, we know that he was not unjust to the average of his
contemporaries, by the evidence of the men's own plays. We know that
the decadence of the stage of which he complains went on
uninterruptedly after his time, and in the very direction which he
pointed out.

On this point there can be no doubt; for these hodmen of poetry 'made
a wall in our father's house, and the bricks are alive to testify
unto this day.' So that we cannot do better than give a few samples
thereof, at least samples decent enough for modern readers, and let
us begin, not with a hodman, but with Jonson himself.

Now, Ben Jonson is worthy of our love and respect, for he was a very