230 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES When the nature of Parson Palate has been ex- pounded by Master Compass in rhyme (as Tennyson, in one of his later poems, expounds that of the unctuous hypocrite and swindler who ever slimed his victims ere he gorged), his brother, Captain Ironside, asks, "Who made this Epigram, you?" and Compass replies, " No, a great clerk As any of his bulk, Ben Jonson made it" (Act i., Sc. i). In the interlude of the chorus between Acts i. and ii., Probee asks the Boy, who has spoken of "any velvet lethargy in the house," a phrase whose import actors will keenly appreciate : —
- ' Why do you maintain your poet's quarrel so with velvet and
good clothes, boy ? we have seen him in indifferent good clothes ere now." Boy. Ay, and may do in better, if it please the king his master to say Amen to it, and allow it, to whom he acknowledgeth all. But his clothes shall never be the best part about him though ; he will have somewhat beside either of human letters, or severe honesty, shall speak him a man, though he went naked." We remark likewise his old self-assertion, and his disdain for the mob, whether rich or poor, high or low. Thus in the Induction he says of himself, through the mouth of the Boy : •' He will not woo the gentile ignorance so much. But careless of all vulgar censure, as not depending on common approba- tion, he is confident it shall super-please judicious spectators, and to them he leaves it to work with the rest, by example or otherwise." But Jonson was never quite so haughty and contemptu- ous as his friend and fellow " gnomic poet " and drama- tist, about fifteen years before him in life, only three in
