C_ome forth thou bonny bouncing Book then, daughter_ O_f_ Tom of Odcombe, _that odd jovial Author_, R_ather his son I should have call'd thee, why_? Y_es thou wert born out of his travelling thigh_ A_s well as from his brains, and claim'st thereby_ T_o be his_ Bacchus _as his_ Pallas: _he_ E_ver his Thighs_ Male _then and his Brains_ She. He was paramount in the Dramatick part of Poetry, and taught the Stage an exact conformity to the Laws of Comedians, being accounted the most learned, judicious, and correct of them all, and the more to be admired for being so, for that neither the height of natural parts, for he was no _Shakespear_, nor the cost of extraordinary education, but his own proper industry, and addiction to Books, advanced him to this perfection. He wrote fifty Plays in all, whereof fifteen Comedies, three Tragedies, the rest Masques and Entertainments. His Comedies were, _The Alchimist_, _Bartholomew Fair_, _Cynthia's Revels_, _Caseis alter'd_, _The Devil is an Ass_, _Every Man in his humour, every Man out of his humour_, _The Fox_, _Magnetick Lady_, _New Inn_, _Poetaster_, _Staple of News_, _Sad Shepherd, Silent Woman_, and _A Tale of a Tub_. His Tragedies were, _Cateline's Conspiracy, Mortimer's Fall_, and _Seianus_. His Masques and Entertainments, too long here to write, were thirty and two, besides a Comedy of _East-ward, hoe_? in which he was partner with _Chapman_. These his Plays were above the vulgar capacity, (which are onely tickled with down-right obscenity) and took not so well at the first _stroke_, as at the _rebound_, when beheld the second time, yea, they will endure reading, and that with due commendation, so long as either ingenuity or learning are fashionable in our Nation. And although all his Plays may endure the test, yet in three of his Comedies, namely, _The Fox, Alchymist_, and _Silent Woman_, he may be compared in the judgment of the learned men, for _decorum, language_ and _well-humouring_ parts, as well with the chief of the ancient _Greek_ and _Latine_ Comedians, as the prime of modern _Italians_, who have been judged the best of _Europe_ for a happy vein in Comedies; nor is his _Bartholomew Fair_ much short of them. As for his other Comedies, _Staple of News, Devil's an Ass_, and the rest, if they be not so sprightful and vigorous as his first pieces, all that are old will, and all that desire to be old, should excuse him therein; and therefore let the Name of _Ben Johnson_ sheild them against whoever shall think fit to be severe in censure against them. Truth is, his Tragedies, _Seianus and Cateline_ seem to have in them more of an artificial and inflate, than of a pathetical and naturally Tragick height; yet do they every one of them far excel any of the _English_ ones that were writ before him; so that he may be truly said to be the first reformer of the _English_ Stage, as he himself more truly than modestly writes in his