to be known as 'Sons of Ben,' and who largely accepted as authoritative his
opinions on literary matters. Thus his life, which ended in 1637, did not
altogether go out in gloom. On the plain stone which alone, for a long
time, marked his grave in Westminster Abbey an unknown admirer inscribed
the famous epitaph, 'O rare Ben Jonson.'

As a man Jonson, pugnacious, capricious, ill-mannered, sometimes surly,
intemperate in drink and in other respects, is an object for only very
qualified admiration; and as a writer he cannot properly be said to possess
that indefinable thing, genius, which is essential to the truest greatness.
But both as man and as writer he manifested great force; and in both drama
and poetry he stands for several distinct literary principles and
attainments highly important both in themselves and for their subsequent
influence.

1. Most conspicuous in his dramas is his realism, often, as we have said,
extremely coarse, and a direct reflection of his intellect, which was as
strongly masculine as his body and altogether lacking, where the regular
drama was concerned, in fineness of sentiment or poetic feeling. He early
assumed an attitude of pronounced opposition to the Elizabethan romantic
plays, which seemed to him not only lawless in artistic structure but
unreal and trifling in atmosphere and substance. (That he was not, however,
as has sometimes been said, personally hostile to Shakspere is clear, among
other things, from his poetic tributes in the folio edition of Shakspere
and from his direct statement elsewhere that he loved Shakspere almost to
idolatry.) Jonson's purpose was to present life as he believed it to be; he
was thoroughly acquainted with its worser side; and he refused to conceal
anything that appeared to him significant. His plays, therefore, have very
much that is flatly offensive to the taste which seeks in literature,
prevailingly, for idealism and beauty; but they are, nevertheless,