The next Discovery is more to my purpose:
Poetry in this latter Age, hath prov’d but a meane Mistresse to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her; or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then tendred their visits, shee hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their owne professions (both the Law and the Gospel) beyond all they could have hoped or done for themselves without her favour.
From this the reader will gather that under “Eliza and our James,” lawyer-poets who masked their poems—“in a players hide,” perhaps—were likely candidates for legal honours.
The next Discovery but one runs thus:
De Shakespeare nostrat. I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in all his writing (whatever he penned) hee never blotted out a line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand.... I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne candor, for I lov’d the man and doe honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had excellent phantasie; brave notions and gentle expressions; wherein he flow’d with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d.... His wit was in his owne power, would the rule of it had beene so too.... But he redeemed his vices with his vertues.
Another Discovery (p. 99)[49] censures “all the Essayists, even their Master Montaigne.” The slur suggested by this censure upon Bacon is significant. We were wont to believe that Bacon’s fame as a master of English rested securely on his Essays, and perhaps among his acknowledged works no better foundation is discoverable. Jonson’s estimate (to be quoted presently) of Bacon’s achievement “in our tongue,” is at least as high as ours. Yet Jonson does not appreciate Bacon’s Essays. The dilemma seems to be this: either Jonson was writing at random, or he knew of unacknowledged Baconian work which he was not free to disclose.
Another Discovery treats De claris Oratoribus, and among them of Dominus Verulamius[50] in these words:
There hapn’d in my time one noble Speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where hee could spare or passe by a jest) was nobly censorious.... No member of his speech but consisted of his owne graces. His hearers could not cough, or looke aside from him, without losse.... No man had their affections more in his power. The feare of every man that heard him was lest hee should make an end.
On the next page after an appreciative notice of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, which was published almost simultaneously with the Shakespeare Ode, Jonson over-praises and misreads the Novum Organum in these words:
Which though by most of superficiall men, who cannot get beyond the Title of Nominals, it is not penetrated, nor understood; it really openeth all defects of Learning whatsoever and is a Booke; Qui longum noto scriptori porriget ævum.