The flirt at “all the Essayists, even their master Montaigne,” is especially interesting, because of the high opinion which Jonson elsewhere expresses of Bacon, the chief, if not the first, English Essayist of his time, and because of the fact that not a few of these very _Discoveries_ are “Essays,” if any things ever were. [Sidenote: _The fling at Montaigne;_] Nor would it be very easy to make out a clear distinction, in anything but name, between some of Ben’s most favourite ancient writers and these despised persons. It is, however, somewhat easier to understand the reason of the condemnation. Jonson’s classically ordered mind probably disliked the ostentatious desultoriness and incompleteness of the Essay, the refusal, as it were out of mere insolence, to undertake an orderly treatise. Nor is it quite impossible that he failed fully to understand Montaigne, and was to some extent the dupe of that great writer’s fanfaronade of promiscuousness. The “_Tamerlane_ and _Tamercham_”[281] fling is not even at first sight surprising. [Sidenote: _at_ Tamerlane,] It was quite certain that Ben would seriously despise what Shakespeare only laughed at—the confusion, the bombast, the want of order and scheme in the “University Wits”—and it is not probable that he was well enough acquainted with the even now obscure development of the earliest Elizabethan drama to appreciate the enormous improvement which they wrought. Nay, the nearer approach even of such a dull thing as _Gorboduc_ to “the height of Seneca his style,” might have a little bribed him as it bribed Sidney. He is true to his side—to his division of the critical creed—in this also. ----- Footnote 281: P. 27. “The _Tamerlanes_ and _Tamerchams_ of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them.” It is just worth noting that Jonson thought there was more than this in Marlowe; and that the early edd. of _Tamburlaine_ are anonymous. -----