“Poetaster.”
Introduction.—
“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,
Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.”
There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in the Paradise Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.
Act i. sc. 1.—
“Ovid. While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be
whorish.”
The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple transposition:—
“While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.”
Act. iv. sc. 3—
“Crisp. O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous.
O—conscious.”
It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as [pg 267] strenuous, conscious, &c., and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not prevent the naturalisation of accommodation, remuneration, &c.; or Swift the gross abuse even of the word idea.