“Whalley’s ‘Life of Jonson.’ ”
“It is to the honour of Jonson’s judgment, that the greatest poet of our nation had the same opinion of Donne’s genius and wit; and hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire into modern verse.”
Videlicet Pope!—
“He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles.”
I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond’s are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him—“This is a joke!”—and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.