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| Style | Massive, erudite, concise, compact, equipoised, rotund; in a word, classic. As literal as Shakespeare is figurative; as studied as Shakespeare's intuitive and unrestrained ... In prose, terse, sharp, swift, biting. In versification, peculiarly smooth and flowing; for this literary leviathan, it strangely appears, has eminently the merits of elegance and grace |
| Rank | In the cluster of poets who sing the meditative, aspiring, and romantic
life of the period, Jonson is a soloist; next to Shakespeare, a leader,
-- a leader by profundity of knowledge and vigor of conception ... Above
all, has he the art of development, the habit of Latin regularity. For
the first time, a plot is a symmetrical whole, advancing by consecutive
deductions; having a beginning, middle, and end, its subordinate actions
well ordered, and its leading truth which they combine to elucidate and
establish ... But in this full attainment of form, he fails in completeness
of life. He is too much of a theorist, too little of a seer ... His plots,
admirable of their kind, are external contrivances of the understanding
rather than interior organisms of the imaginative insight ...
Still, if unable to construct characters, variety of learning, clearness of mind, and energy of soul, suffice to depict English manners and to render vice visible and odious ... His inequality -- great excellences offset by great defects -- is in strong contrast with the unebbing fulness and amplitude of the creative Shakespeare. Nevertheless in his field, in his genus of the drama, he stands on the summit of his hill. |
| Character | The most obvious qualities of his intellectual nature are weight and
force; of his spiritual nature, earnestness and courage ... He had moral
loftiness. 'Of all styles,' he said, 'he most loved to be named Honest.'
To this add resolute self-assertion ... he would guide, not follow, the
popular taste ... Egotistical, overbearing, of sour aspect, he was frank,
social, generous, even prodigal. To the last he retained the riotous, defiant
color of the brilliant dramatic world through which he fought his way ...
In a general view, he presents a singular antithesis, -- a rugged, gross, and combative aspect, which is the ordinary one, and a fanciful, serene aspect, which is exceptional and separate, occupying, so to speak, a secluded corner in the general largeness. |
| Influence | In his own age, his power was similar to that of his massive namesake, Samuel Johnson, in the succeeding century. Swift was to find suggestions in his Tale of the Tub. Milton was to go to his masques and odes for some of the elegancies of his own dignified muse. Dryden was to think, erroneously, 'He did a little too much Romanize our tongue.' ... his readers are now, unhappily and unworthily, relatively few; but, as his good parts are enduring and imperishable, no fame is more secure. |
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