The Induction to Every Man out of His Humour, a very large part of Cynthia’s Revels, with its principal character of Crites, and its audacious self-praise in the Epilogue, not a little of The Silent Woman, and scores of other places in play and poem, might be added.
[270]. These dicta, thus juxtaposed, should make all argument about apparently one-sided judgments superfluous. If Drummond had omitted the first or the last, we should have been utterly wrong in arguing from the remainder.
[271]. The best separate edition is that of Prof. Schelling of Philadelphia (Boston, U.S.A., 1892). I give the pp. of this, as well as the Latin Headings of sections, which will enable any one to trace the passage in complete editions of the Works such as Cunningham’s Gifford. It is strange that no one has numbered these sections for convenience of reference.
[272]. It may be observed that the shorter aphorisms rise to the top—at least the beginning.
[273]. “He is upbraidingly called a poet.... The professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap.”
[274]. It is here that Ben borrows from Petronius not merely the sentiment but the phrase, “umbratical doctor” (see vol. i. p. 244 note).
[275]. “Taylor the Water-Poet,” certainly bad enough as a poet—though not as a man. But the selection of Spenser as the other pole is an invaluable correction to the sweeping attack in the Conversations.
[276]. Perhaps, indeed, an exception should be made in favour of the section De malignitate Studentium, p. 34, which reiterates the necessity of “the exact knowledge of all virtues and their contraries” on the part of the poet.
[277]. He may have taken this from the Italians.
[278]. This is one of the most lacrimable of the gaps. Ben must have known other authorities besides Quintilian well: he even quotes, though only in part, the great passage of Simylus (vol. i. p. [25 note]).