[Footnote 2: B. 5. 'Legend of Artegall'. Ed.]





LECTURE VII.


BEN JONSON, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, AND MASSINGER.

A contemporary is rather an ambiguous term, when applied to authors. It
may simply mean that one man lived and wrote while another was yet
alive, however deeply the former may have been indebted to the latter as
his model. There have been instances in the literary world that might
remind a botanist of a singular sort of parasite plant, which rises
above ground, independent and unsupported, an apparent original; but
trace its roots, and you will find the fibres all terminating in the
root of another plant at an unsuspected distance, which, perhaps, from
want of sun and genial soil, and the loss of sap, has scarcely been able
to peep above the ground.--Or the word may mean those whose compositions
were contemporaneous in such a sense as to preclude all likelihood of
the one having borrowed from the other. In the latter sense I should
call Ben Jonson a contemporary of Shakspeare, though he long survived
him; while I should prefer the phrase of immediate successors for
Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, though they too were Shakspeare's
contemporaries in the former sense.