Dryden's Works Vol. 3

by John Dryden

----In vitium libertas excidit et vim Dignam lege regi: Lex est accepta, chorusque Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi.

Of which he gives you the reason in another place: where, having given the precept,

Neve immunda crepent, ignominiosaque dicta,

He immediately subjoins,

Offenduntur enim quibus est equus, et pater, et res.

But Ben Jonson is to be admired for many excellencies; and can be taxed with fewer failings than any English poet. I know I have been accused as an enemy of his writings; but without any other reason, than that I do not admire him blindly, and without looking into his imperfections. For why should he only be exempted from those frailties, from which Homer and Virgil are not free? Or why should there be any ipse dixit in our poetry, any more than there is in our philosophy? I admire and applaud him where I ought: Those, who do more, do but value themselves in their admiration of him; and, by telling you they extol Ben Jonson's way, would insinuate to you that they can practise it. For my part, I declare that I want judgment to imitate him; and should think it a great impudence in myself to attempt it. To make men appear pleasantly ridiculous on the stage, was, as I have said, his talent; and in this he needed not the acumen of wit, but that of judgment. For the characters and representations of folly are only the effects of observation; and observation is an effect of judgment. Some ingenious men, for whom I have a particular esteem, have thought I have much injured Ben Jonson, when I have not allowed his wit to be extraordinary: But they confound the notion of what is witty, with what is pleasant. That Ben Jonson's plays were pleasant, he must want reason who denies: But that pleasantness was not properly wit, or the sharpness of conceit; but the natural imitation of folly: Which I confess to be excellent in its kind, but not to be of that kind which they pretend. Yet if we will believe Quintilian, in his chapter de movendo risu, he gives his opinion of both in these following words: Stulta reprehendere facillimum est; nam per se sunt ridicula, et à derisu non procul abest risus: Sed rem urbanam facit aliqua ex nobis adjectio.

And some perhaps would be apt to say of Jonson, as it was said of Demosthenes,—non displicuisse illi jocos, sed non contigisse. I will not deny, but that I approve most the mixt way of comedy; that which is neither all wit, nor all humour, but the result of both. Neither so little of humour as Fletcher shews, nor so little of love and wit as Jonson; neither all cheat, with which the best plays of the one are filled, nor all adventure, which is the common practice of the other. I would have the characters well chosen, and kept distant from interfering with each other; which is more than Fletcher or Shakespeare did: But I would have more of the urbana, venusta, salsa, faceta, and the rest which Quintilian reckons up as the ornaments of wit; and these are extremely wanting in Ben Jonson. As for repartee, in particular; as it is the very soul of conversation, so it is the greatest grace of comedy, where it is proper to the characters. There may be much of acuteness in a thing well said; but there is more in a quick reply: Sunt enim longè venustiora omnia in respondendo quàm in provocando. Of one thing I am sure, that no man ever will decry wit, but he who despairs of it himself; and who has no other quarrel to it, but that which the fox had to the grapes. Yet, as Mr Cowley (who had a greater portion of it than any man I know) tells us in his Character of Wit,—rather than all wit, let there be none. I think there is no folly so great in any poet of our age, as the superfluity and waste of wit was in some of our predecessors: particularly we may say of Fletcher and of Shakespeare, what was said of Ovid, In omni ejus ingenio, facilius quod rejici, quàm quod adjici potest, invenies: The contrary of which was true in Virgil, and our incomparable Jonson.

Some enemies of repartee have observed to us, that there is a great latitude in their characters, which are made to speak it: and that it is easier to write wit than humour; because, in the characters of humour, the poet is confined to make the person speak what is only proper to it; whereas, all kind of wit is proper in the character of a witty person. But, by their favour, there are as different characters in wit as in folly. Neither is all kind of wit proper in the mouth of every ingenious person. A witty coward, and a witty brave, must speak differently. Falstaff and the Liar speak not like Don John in the "Chances," and Valentine in "Wit without Money." And Jonson's Truewit in the "Silent Woman," is a character different from all of them. Yet it appears, that this one character of wit was more difficult to the author, than all his images of humour in the play: for those he could describe and manage from his observations of men; this he has taken, at least a part of it, from books; Witness the speeches in the first act, translated verbatim out of Ovid, "De Arte Amandi." To omit what afterwards he borrowed from the sixth satire of Juvenal against women.

However, if I should grant, that there were a greater latitude in characters of wit, than in those of humour; yet that latitude would be of small advantage to such poets, who have too narrow an imagination to write it. And to entertain an audience perpetually with humour, is to carry them from the conversation of gentlemen, and treat them with the follies and extravagancies of Bedlam.