The eternal theme of envy,
invented by Jonson and worked to death by its inventor, was taken up
again by Marston and treated with a vigorous acerbity not always
unworthy of comparison with Jonson's; the same conception inspired with
something of eloquence the malignant idiocy of the satirical dunce who
has left us, interred and embedded in a mass of rubbish, a line or two
like these which he has put into the mouth of his patron saint or
guardian goddess, the incarnate essence of Envy:
Turn, turn, thou lackey to the winged time!
I envy thee in that thou art so slow,
And I so swift to mischief.
But the entire affair is obviously an effusion and an example of the
same academic sagacity or lucidity of appreciation which found utterance
in other contemporary protests of the universities against the universe.
In that abyss of dulness "The Return from Parnassus," a reader or a
diver who persists in his thankless toil will discover this pearl of a
fact--that men of culture had no more hesitation in preferring Watson to
Shakespeare than they have in preferring Byron to Shelley. The author of
the one deserves to have been the author of the other.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151