Surely "Goetz" and "The Robbers" are nothing
like what he would have called Shakespearian, and the whole _Sturm und
Drang_ tendency would have roused in him nothing but antipathy. Fixed
principles in criticism are useful in helping us to form a judgment of
works already produced, but it is questionable whether they are not
rather a hindrance than a help to living production. Ben Jonson was a
fine critic, intimate with the classics as few men have either the
leisure or the strength of mind to be in this age of many books, and
built regular plays long before they were heard of in France. But he
continually trips and falls flat over his metewand of classical
propriety, his personages are abstractions, and fortunately neither his
precepts nor his practice influenced any one of his greater coevals.[160]
In breadth of understanding, and the gravity of purpose that comes of it,
he was far above Fletcher or Webster, but how far below either in the
subtler, the incalculable, qualities of a dramatic poet! Yet Ben, with
his principles off, could soar and sing with the best of them; and there
are strains in his lyrics which Herrick, the most Catullian of poets
since Catullus, could imitate, but never match. A constant reference to
the statutes which taste has codified would only bewilder the creative
instinct.
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