This is the learned, but also the creative, Jonson. Without concerning himself with the character of Sulla, and in lines of invective, Jonson makes Sylla’s ghost, while the words are spoken, a living and terrible force. The words fall with as determined beat as if they were the will of the morose Dictator himself. You may say: merely invective; but mere invective, even if as superior to the clumsy fisticuffs of Marston and Hall as Jonson’s verse is superior to theirs, would not create a living figure as Jonson has done in this long tirade. And you may say: rhetoric; but if we are to call it “rhetoric” we must subject that term to a closer dissection than any to which it is accustomed. What Jonson has done here is not merely a fine speech. It is the careful, precise filling in of a strong and simple outline, and at no point does it overflow the outline; it is far more careful and precise in its obedience to this outline than are many of the speeches in _Tamburlaine_. The outline is not Sulla, for Sulla has nothing to do with it, but “Sylla’s ghost.” The words may not be suitable to an historical Sulla, or to anybody in history, but they are a perfect expression for “Sylla’s ghost.” You cannot say they are rhetorical “because people do not talk like that,” you cannot call them “verbiage”; they do not exhibit prolixity or redundancy or the other vices in the rhetoric books; there is a definite artistic emotion which demands expression at that length. The words themselves are mostly simple words, the syntax is natural, the language austere rather than adorned. Turning then to the induction of _The Poetaster_, we find another success of the same kind— Light, I salute thee, but with wounded nerves.... Men may not talk in that way, but the spirit of envy does, and in the words of Jonson envy is a real and living person. It is not human life that informs envy and Sylla’s ghost, but it is energy of which human life is only another variety. Returning to _Catiline_, we find that the best scene in the body of the play is one which cannot be squeezed into a tragic frame, and which appears to belong to satiric comedy. The scene between Fulvia and Galla and Sempronia is a living scene in a wilderness of oratory. And as it recalls other scenes—there is a suggestion of the college of ladies in _The Silent Woman_—it looks like a comedy scene. And it appears to be satire. They shall all give and pay well, that come here, If they will have it; and that, jewels, pearl, Plate, or round sums to buy these. I’m not taken With a cob-swan or a high-mounting bull, As foolish Leda and Europa were; But the bright gold, with Danaë. For such price I would endure a rough, harsh Jupiter, Or ten such thundering gamesters, and refrain To laugh at ’em, till they are gone, with my much suffering.