Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/177

BEN JONSON l6l '* ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy," then too common on the stage, could not be more forcibly expressed than in his indignant denial "that all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell." Drummond's literary verdict appears as untrust- worthy as his moral. "Oppressed with fantasie, which hath ever mastered his reason, a generall disease in many Poets ! " A general disease in poets, perhaps, but Jonson was precisely the last poet to be infected with it. As Clarendon justly remarks, in the passage quoted from already, " his natural ad- vantages were judgment to order and govern fancy, rather than excess of fancy; his productions being slow and upon deliberation, yet then abounding with great wit and fancy, and will live accordingly." He went to the other extreme, his reason or judgment was generally too predominant over his fantasy or imagination ; whence that intellectual coldness and hardness, detracting from his popularity in our soft- headed, sentimental age. VIII Having sketched the life of Rare Ben and spoken generally of his works, it remains to speak of them particularly in connection with the subject wherein the Tobacco Plant is most profoundly interested. Books have been regarded, studied, and judged in many relations, as, taking a few instances at random, to history, or the art of making fiction appear solid fact ; metaphysics, or the art of " erring with method ; " morality, or the art of expanding local habits into I.