being instituted. In literature, as in religion, there is a strong tendency to party spirit—a wish to make a faction and appoint a leader—a setting up of Paul and Apollos, instead of a catholic admiration of genius apart from personal feelings and prejudices.
To counter-balance the severe remarks, which we have quoted, we must remember that Jonson received the warmest eulogies from his greatest contemporaries; and we therefore give two quotations from Fuller and Dryden, where the comparison is handled with temper and judgment. Fuller, in speaking of the "Wit Combats" between Shakespeare and Jonson at the "Mermaid Tavern," adds: "Which two, I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances: Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention."
Dryden writes: "As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also in some measure we had before him, but something of art was wanting to the drama before he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such
