In the following passage, curiously enough, a certain person is extolled
as the model of a good man, against whom the stage dramatists, who
themselves, according to Jonson, are not good men ('nothing remaining
with them of the dignity of the poet'), have, as he thinks, grievously
sinned:--'_He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good
disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in
their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover
them to their first strength;_ [2] _that comes forth the interpreter and
arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human,_ [3]
_a master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the business
of mankind:_ [4] _this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ance
to exercise their railing rhetoric upon._'
In this description we again see Montaigne, against whom 'railing
rhetoric' has been used.
Ben Jonson proudly points to himself as having never done such mischief:
'For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm
that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness.'
Though--he says--he cannot wholly escape 'from some the imputation of
sharpness,' he does not feel guilty of having offered insult to anyone,
'except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon.' But--'I would ask of
these supercilious politics, _what nation, society, or general order_
of state I have provoked? .
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