The nobly gentle and manly verses in
which the less fortunate and distinguished poet disclaims and refutes
the imputation of envy or malevolence excited by the favor enjoyed by
his rival in high quarters should have sufficed, in common justice, to
protect him from such a charge. There is not a word in Jonson's satire
expressive of anything but savage and unqualified scorn for his humbler
antagonist: and the tribute paid by that antagonist to his genius, the
appeal to his better nature which concludes the torrent of
recrimination, would have won some word of honorable recognition from
any but the most unscrupulous and ungenerous of partisans. That Dekker
was unable to hold his own against Jonson when it came to sheer hard
hitting--that on the ground or platform of personal satire he was as a
light-weight pitted against a heavy-weight--is of course too plain, from
the very first round, to require any further demonstration. But it is
not less plain that in delicacy and simplicity and sweetness of
inspiration the poet who could write the scene in which the bride takes
poison (as she believes) from the hand of her father, in presence of her
bridegroom, as a refuge from the passion of the king, was as far above
Jonson as Jonson was above him in the robuster qualities of intellect or
genius.
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