This leads us to the question of Humours. Largely on the evidence of the two Humour plays, it is sometimes assumed that Jonson is occupied with types; typical exaggerations, or exaggerations of type. The Humour definition, the expressed intention of Jonson, may be satisfactory for these two plays. _Every Man in his Humour_ is the first mature work of Jonson, and the student of Jonson must study it; but it is not the play in which Jonson found his genius: it is the last of his plays to read first. If one reads _Volpone_, and after that re-reads the _Jew of Malta_; then returns to Jonson and reads _Bartholomew Fair_, _The Alchemist_, _Epicœne_ and _The Devil is an Ass_, and finally _Catiline_, it is possible to arrive at a fair opinion of the poet and the dramatist. The Humour, even at the beginning, is not a type, as in Marston’s satire, but a simplified and somewhat distorted individual with a typical mania. In the later work, the Humour definition quite fails to account for the total effect produced. The characters of Shakespeare are such as might exist in different circumstances than those in which Shakespeare sets them. The latter appear to be those which extract from the characters the most intense and interesting realization; but that realization has not exhausted their possibilities. Volpone’s life, on the other hand, is bounded by the scene in which it is played; in fact, the life is the life of the scene and is derivatively the life of Volpone; the life of the character is inseparable from the life of the drama. This is not dependence upon a background, or upon a substratum of fact. The emotional effect is single and simple. Whereas in Shakespeare the effect is due to the way in which the characters _act upon_ one another, in Jonson it is given by the way in which the characters _fit in_ with each other. The artistic result of _Volpone_ is not due to any effect that Volpone, Mosca, Corvino, Corbaccio, Voltore have upon each other, but simply to their combination into a whole. And these figures are not personifications of passions; separately, they have not even that reality, they are constituents. It is a similar indication of Jonson’s method that you can hardly pick out a line of Jonson’s and say confidently that it is great poetry; but there are many extended passages to which you cannot deny that honour. I will have all my beds blown up, not stuft; Down is too hard; and then, mine oval room Fill’d with such pictures as Tiberius took From Elephantis, and dull Aretine But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse And multiply the figures, as I walk.... Jonson is the legitimate heir of Marlowe. The man who wrote, in _Volpone_: for thy love, In varying figures, I would have contended With the blue Proteus, or the hornèd flood.... and