in his prodigious activity of production. His immortal lyrics attest the delicacy and grace which seldom inspire his plays, and, indeed, are most noted in the lover; "a scholar and a gentleman," of his incoherent play "The New Inn" (1629). Ben's drama is the work of a "made" writer, the fruit of reflection on what the stage ought to be, and of ponderous industry and diligent observation. We feel that the plays, despite their richness and vigour, their masculine energy, are somewhat prolix, rather pedantic, and they do not hold the stage, like those of Shakespeare, at whom Ben scratched so often, without moving the master to reply in kind. Jonson's Prose. It is not easy to sympathize with the sweet enthusiasts who place Ben Jonson's "Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter," above Bacon's Essays. These sayings, maxims, and very brief essays were mainly written when Ben was old, and not yet wise enough to be contented. He appears as a contemner of times present, when the poet is no longer taken at his own estimate, which, in Jonson's case, was rather high. Many of the "Discoveries" had, not infrequently or of recent date, been discovered before. Thus of Fortune, "That which happens to any man, may to every man. But it is in his reason what he accounts it, and will make it." This has been put more briefly and better: "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so". Nothing can be more trite than this of waste of time, but the expression is admirable, "What a deal of cold business doth a man" (and do most women) "mis-spend the better part of life in! In scattering compliments, _tendering visits_, gathering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter-love in a dark corner." But Jonson was not profuse in venting compliments, and, with his enormous reading, can hardly have spent much time in paying calls. The sentences on the decay of taste are passed by elderly men of letters in all ages on "railing and tinkling rhymers, whose writings the vulgar more greedily read..." "Expectation of the vulgar is more drawn with newness than goodness," yet a poet is nothing if he has not something new in manner if not in matter.