His rank is high in his own regiment; and the colonel
of that regiment is Ben Jonson. At first sight he may seem rather to
belong to that brighter and more famous one which has Webster among its
captains, Dekker among its lieutenants, Heywood among its privates, and
Shakespeare at its head. Nor did he by any means follow the banner of
Jonson with such automatic fidelity as that imperious martinet of genius
was wont to exact from those who came to be "sealed of the tribe of
Ben." A rigid critic--a critic who should push rigidity to the verge of
injustice--might say that he was one of those recruits in literature
whose misfortune it is to fall between two stools--to halt between two
courses. It is certain that he never thoroughly mastered either the
cavalry drill of Shakespeare or the infantry drill of Jonson. But it is
no less certain that the few finest passages which attest the power and
the purity of his genius as a poet are above comparison with any such
examples of tragic poetry as can be attributed with certainty or with
plausibility to the hand which has left us no acknowledged works in that
line except "Sejanus his Fall" and "Catiline his Conspiracy.
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