On each of these three occasions, Ben's TONE
varies. In 1619 he said no more to Drummond of Hawthornden
(apparently on two separate occasions) than that Shakespeare "lacked
art," and made the mistake about a wreck on the sea-coast of Bohemia.
In 1619, Ben spoke gruffly and briefly of Shakespeare, as to Drummond
he also spoke disparagingly of Beaumont, whom he had panegyrised in
an epigram in his own folio of 1616, and was again to praise in the
commendatory verses in the Folio. He spoke still more harshly of
Drayton, whom in 1616 he had compared to Homer, Virgil, Theocritus,
and Tyraeus! He told an unkind anecdote of Marston, with whom he had
first quarrelled and then made friends, collaborating with him in a
play; and very generously and to his great peril, sharing his
imprisonment. To Drummond, Jonson merely said that he "beat Marston
and took away his pistol." Of Sir John Beaumont, brother of the
dramatist, Ben had written a most hyperbolical eulogy in verse;
luckily for Sir John, to Drummond Ben did not speak of him. Such was
Ben, in panegyric verse hyperbolical; in conversation "a despiser of
others, and praiser of himself." Compare Ben's three remarks about
Donne, all made to Drummond. Donne deserved hanging for breaking
metre; Donne would perish for not being understood: and Donne was in
some points the first of living poets.
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