Shepherd, I pray thee stay. Where hast thou been? Or whither goest thou? Here be woods as green As any; air likewise as fresh and sweet As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet Face of the curled streams; with flowers as many As the young spring gives, and as choice as any; Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, Arbors o'ergrown with woodbines, caves, and dells; Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing, Or gather rushes, to make many a ring For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,-- How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes She took eternal fire that never dies; How she conveyed him softly in a sleep, His temples bound with poppy, to the steep Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night, Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, To kiss her sweetest. (FLETCHER: _The Faithful Shepherdess_, I. iii. ab. 1610.) Fletcher uses the couplet in this drama with a freedom hardly found elsewhere until the time of Keats; see the remark of Symonds, quoted p. 210, below. If Rome so great, and in her wisest age, Fear'd not to boast the glories of her stage, As skilful Roscius, and grave Æsop, men, Yet crown'd with honors, as with riches, then; Who had no less a trumpet of their name Than Cicero, whose every breath was fame: How can so great example die in me, That, Allen, I should pause to publish thee? Who both their graces in thyself hast more Outstript, than they did all that went before: And present worth in all dost so contract, As others speak, but only thou dost act. Wear this renown. 'Tis just, that who did give So many poets life, by one should live. (BEN JONSON: _Epigram LXXXIX, to Edward Allen._ 1616.) Jonson is thought by some to have been the founder of the classical school of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made the heroic couplet peculiarly its own. See on this subject an article by Prof. F. E. Schelling, "Ben Jonson and the Classical School," in the _Publications of the Modern Language Association_, n. s. vol. vi. p. 221. Professor Schelling finds in Jonson's verse all the characteristics of the later couplet of Waller and Dryden: end-stopped lines and couplets, a preference for medial cesura, and an antithetical structure of the verse. "No better specimen of Jonson's antithetical manner could be found," he says further, than the Epigram here quoted. So far as this antithetical quality of Jonson's verse is concerned, Professor Schelling's view cannot be questioned; but that Jonson shows any singular preference for end-stopped lines and couplets may be seriously questioned.