unconscious echo of the sentiment of an older poet and patriot has in it the prolonged reverberation and repercussion of music which we hear in the echoes of thunder or a breaking sea.
Again, how happy in the bitterness of its truth is the next remark: 'Natures that are hardened to evil you shall sooner break than make straight: they are like poles that are crooked and dry: there is no attempting them.' And how grand is this:
I cannot think nature is so spent and decayed that she can bring forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like herself; and when she collects her strength,[1] is abler still. Men are decayed, and studies: she is not.
Jonson never wrote a finer verse than that; and very probably he never observed that it was a verse.
The next note is one of special interest to all students of the great writer who has so often been described as a blind worshipper and a servile disciple of classical antiquity.
- ↑ As in the production of Shakespeare—if his good friend Ben had but known it.
