Cunningham calls attention to the fact that Massinger’s Parliament of Love was not produced until 1624. Jonson depicts a sort of mock Parliament of Love in the New Inn, Act 4.
1. 6. 88 And at all caracts. ‘I. e., to the nicest point, to the minutest circumstance.’—G. See Gloss. and cf. Every Man in, Wks. 1. 70.
1. 6. 89, 90 as scarce hath soule, In stead of salt. Whalley refers to Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 446, 7: ‘Talk of him to have a soul! ’heart, if he have any more than a thing given him instead of salt, only to keep him from stinking. I’ll be hang’d afore my time.’ Gifford quotes the passage from B. & Fl., Spanish Curate:
—this soul I speake of, Or rather salt, to keep this heap of flesh From being a walking stench.
W. furnishes a Latin parallel: ‘Sus vero quid habet praeter escam? cui quidem, ne putresceret, animam ipsam pro sale datam dicit esse Chrysippus.’—Cic. De Natura Deor, lib. 2.
It is to these passages that Carlyle refers in his Past and Present: ‘A certain degree of soul, as Ben Jonson reminds us, is indispensable to keep the very body from destruction of the frightfulest sort; to ‘save us,’ says he, ’the expense of salt.’ Bk. 2, Ch. 2.
‘In our and old Jonson’s dialect, man has lost the soul out of him; and now, after the due period,—begins to find the want of it.... Man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt.’ (Simpson in N. & Q., 9th Ser. 4. 347, 423.)
To the same Latin source Professor Cook (Mod. Lang. Notes, Feb., 1905) attributes the passage in Rabbi Ben Ezra 43-45:
What is he but a brute Whose flesh has soul to suit, Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
and Samuel Johnson’s ‘famous sentence recorded by Boswell under June 19, 1784: “Talking of the comedy of The Rehearsal, he said: ‘It has not wit enough to keep it sweet.’”’