Page:The Works of Ben Jonson - Gifford - Volume 6.djvu/317

I lament with Whalley, and with every reader of taste, that the whole of the Sad Shepherd has not reached us. That it was completed, I have little doubt; its mutilated state is easily accounted for by the confusion which followed the author's death. Into whose hands his papers fell, as he left, apparently, no will, nor testamentary document of any kind, cannot now be told; perhaps, into those of the woman who resided with him, as his nurse, or some of her kin; but they were evidently careless or ignorant, and put his manuscripts together in a very disorderly manner, losing some, and misplacing others. Had they handed down to us the Sad Shepherd in its complete state, we should have possessed a poem, which might have been confidently opposed to the proudest effort of dramatic genius that time has yet bequeathed us.