¹ John Dryden, “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,” in Dramatic Essays, Everyman ed (London, 1912), p. 41.

² “The Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age,” op. cit., pp. 99–101.

³ The Works of Ben Jonson ... in Seven Volumes ... with Notes, Critical and Explanatory, ed. Peter Whalley (London, 1756). See particularly i, iii; ii, 219; iii, 26; iv, 187, 396, 401; v, 229, 376. The Works of Ben Jonson ... with Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir, ed. W. Gifford (London, 1816). See ii, 522; iii, 475; v, 66; vii, 431.

⁴ The Works of Ben Jonson ... with an Introduction and Appendices, ed. Lieut.-Col. F. Cunningham (London, 1875). See iii, 494, 524; v, 460; vi, 489.

⁵ In the Yale Studies in English the following editions are particularly informative on Jonson's language: William E. Selin, The Case is Altered; Carroll Storrs Alden, Bartholomew Fair; William Savage Johnson, The Devil Is An Ass; George Bremner Tennant, The New Inn; Florence May Snell, A Tale of a Tub; Herbert S. Mallory, The Poetaster; Alexander Corbin Judson, Cynthia's Revels. George Watson Cole's variorum edition of The Gypsies Metamorphosed, and Josiah H. Penniman's edition of The Poetaster also contain useful material on Jonson's vocabulary.

⁶ Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–37), 5 vols.

⁷ Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language (New York, 1935), p. 308 ff.

⁸ Henry King, “To the Memory of My Friend, Ben Jonson,” in Jonsonus Virbius (1638). Cunningham, ix, 437.

⁹ Richard West, “Our Master Ben Jonson,” ibid., ix, 471.

¹⁰ For further illustrations see J. F. Bradley and J. Q. Adams, The Jonson Allusion Book (New Haven, 1922), pp. 197, 201, 325, 350, 363, 447.

¹¹ Austin Warren, Alexander Pope as Critic and Humanist (Princeton, 1929), p. 54.

¹² Nathaniel Bailey, Dictionarium Britannicum, 2d ed. (London, 1736), p. 5.

¹³ In his Grammar he comments upon supposed points of similarity between Hebrew and English. He notes in particular the occasional omission of relative pronouns and conjunctions in Hebrew, and the antecedent position of the Hebrew pronoun. From Selden's letter to him, however (John Seiden, Opera Omnia [London, 1726], ii, col. 1690) it appears that his knowledge of the language could not have been profound.

¹⁴ “All this to no purpose, for he neither doeth understand French nor Italienne.” Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden in Herford and Simpson, i, 134, 156. See also ii, 95.

¹⁵ “He that but saw thy curious captain's drill,/Would think no more of Vlushing or the Brill.” Underwoods (1637?), lxii.

“[The deed ...] is a thing of greater consequence,/ Then to be borne about in a black box,/ Like a Low-Country vorloffe or a Welsh brief.” The Staple of News (1625), v, i.

¹⁶ James Howell, Episotlœ Ho-Eliance (London, 1645), pp. 31–32.

¹⁷ The English Grammar, ed. Strickland Gibson (London: Lanston Monotype Corporation, 1928), p. 21. Subsequent references are to this edition.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 34, 35. The derivation men-mannen was quite common. See Charles Butler, English Grammar (1634), ed. A. Eichler (Halle, 1910), p. 34.

¹⁹ Grammar, p. 13.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 17.

²¹ In his Grammar he quotes Gower 29 times, Chaucer 26, and Lydgate 14. A tribute to the three poets appears in the masque The Golden Age Restored (1616).

²² Grammar, p. 44.

²³ Herford and Simpson, i, 172, observe that Jonson's etymology for the word harlot was also put forward by Lambarde and others. The derivation of rogue from erro, on the other hand, “looks suspiciously like an etymology of Jonson's own.” See also The New Inn, i, i, where Jonson appears to pun on both words.

²⁴ The Magnetic Lady, Induction, 1. 64. References to Jonson's plays are to the Everyman edition, 2 vols. (London, 1910).

²⁵ A Tale of a Tub, i, iii.

²⁶ Cynthia's Revels, iv, iii.

²⁷ A Tale of a Tub, iv, ii. “The learned Scriben has been looking into Verstegan for his ridiculous etymology.” Gifford, vi, 205.

²⁸ Ibid., i, ii.

²⁹ See, for example, Jonson's comment on c and q in his Grammar.

³⁰ Grammar, p. 37.—Jonson regrets the disappearance of the old form and of the grammatical distinction it emphasized. “The lack hereof,” he says, “will be found a great blemish on our tongue.” Ibid., p. 38.

³¹ Ibid., p. 37.

³² Ibid., p. 33.—So also Butler: “This Teutonic termination of the genitive some refined wit hath turned to his, persuading himself that s is but a corrupt abbreviation of his, which he thought necessary to restore,” op. cit., p. 34.

³³ Herford and Simpson, ii, 421.

³⁴ Grammar, p. 36. Cf. also Sir Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, ed. J. C. Collins (Oxford, 1907), p. 59: “Another will say it [English] wanteth Grammer. Nay truly, it hath that prayse, that it wanteth not Grammer, for Grammer it might have, but needs it not: being so easy of itselfe and so voyd of those cumbersome differences of Cases, Genders, Moodes and Tenses, which I thinke was a peece of Babilon's curse, that a man should be put to Schoole to learne his mother tongue.”

³⁵ Grammar, p. 11.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 27.

³⁷ Ibid., p. 24.

³⁸ “And so much for the first conjugation, being indeed the most usual forming of a verb, and thereby also the common inn to lodge every stranger and foreign guest. That which followeth [i.e., the ‘second’ conjugation] ... entertaineth none, but natural and homeborne words.” Ibid., p. 39.

³⁹ Herford and Simpson, i, 178. Aubrey says that the words were intended for A Tale of a Tub, but he undoubtedly meant The Sad Shepherd. The dialect words in A Tale of a Tub are not northern.

⁴⁰ Henry Bradley, “Shakespeare's English” in Shakespeare's England (Oxford, 1916), ii, 571.

⁴¹ Henry A. Beers, “Dialect on the Old Stage” in Points at Issue (New York, 1904), pp. 225 ff.

⁴² Thus Richard Verstegan, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (Antwerp, 1605), p. 195: “And of this different pronountiation one example in steed of many shall suffice, as this: for pronouncing as one would say at London I would eat more cheese if I had it, the Northern man saith Ay sud eat more cheese gin ay hadet, and the Westerne man saith Chud eat more cheese an chad it. Lo heere three different pronountiations in our owne Country in one thing.” Alexander Gill, however, in Logonomia Anglica (1621), ed. Otto L Jiriczek (Strassburg, 1903), p. 31, names four dialects: the northern, the southern, the eastern, and the western. But the southern and the western appear to have much in common.

⁴³ In his Grammar, too, Jonson mentions the voicing of the s by “rustic people” (changed in the edition of 1692 to “West-Country people”) in such words as zed, zay, zit for said, say, sit. Gill calls the voicing of / and s a southern peculiarity, but he records its appearance also in the western dialect.

⁴⁴ Butler notes the western stur for stir. Gill comments on the substitution of ü for ï, [u] for [i], as in hü for hï, as characteristic of southern speech. Joseph Wright, English Dialect Grammar (Oxford, 1905), records wull for will as still current in Somersetshire and the west.

⁴⁵ Another peculiarity, though hardly a dialectal one, is the misuse of the prefix in such words as praform for perform, purcepts for precepts, upstantial for substantial, subperiors for superiors, conternarsie for controversy.

⁴⁶ Such as ‘dority, ‘zurd, ‘vize for authority, absurd, advise. The following spellings are also worth noting: chenge for change, whaffore for wherefore (weakening of the r?). Lard for Lord. Wright records l^vd for lord as current in Surrey and Sussex. Cf. Gill: “Australes habent o pro a, ut rank pro rank.”

⁴⁷ Bartholomew Fair, iv, iii.—Professor Beers observes that Jonson does not indicate the breaking of the a into aa, or the intrusion of w (in words like hwome, mwore, bwoy). But these peculiarities are by no means characteristic of every southern or western dialect, and the intrusion of w—or the labialization of the o—occurs even in Yorkshire. Cf. Wright, op. cit., under home.

⁴⁸ Bartholomew Fair, iv, iii.

⁴⁹ Wright records the breaking of a into and in all in Yorkshire dialect.

⁵⁰ Wright notes the pronunciation mil for might in parts of Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Cumberland.

⁵¹ See the word fewmand and fugeand (= figent = ‘fidgetty‘) in the NED.

⁵² In his Grammar Jonson calls special attention to the northern quality of the vowel u. “Some pronounce the verbs [choose and shoot] by the diphthong ew; chewse, shewte, and that is Scottish-like.” Grammar, p. 43. Cf. Gill: “pro u substituunt v, ut gvd cvk pro good cook.” The symbol v in Gill's phonetic spelling stands for ‘upsilon.‘

⁵³ In the Grammar Jonson illustrates the difference between northern and southern English by quoting from Smith's De Recta the northern forms brek, flig, brig for the southern breech, fledge, bridge.

⁵⁴ The aphetic forms ‘mong, ‘parel, ‘lotted for among, apparel, alloted, are probably intended to represent careless rustic speech.—Other northern dialect words appear occasionally in other plays. Thus, karlin (ME carling), ‘an old woman,’ NED, The Magnetic Lady, i, v; barnes, ‘children.’ The Gypsies Metamorphosed, i, ii.

⁵⁵ Professor Beers also notes a “touch of East Anglian” in Kastril's pronunciations kuss, suster, wull for kiss, sister, will in The Alchemist, iv. ii.

⁵⁶ Bartholomew Fair, iii. i, ii, and iv. iv.

⁵⁷ The substitution of d for t was not restricted to the Irish dialect. It occurred, according to John Bullokar, Booke at Large (1580), ed. Max Plessow, Palaestra, lii, 263, in the speech of “common people unlearned” in eastern Sussex and Kent.

⁵⁸ The New Inn, ii. vi; iii. ii; iv. iv.

⁵⁹ Eastward Ho, iv. i.

⁶⁰ Herford and Simpson, i, 190 ff.

⁶¹ The earliest illustrations in the NED of the verb to cant and the substantive canting in the sense of “the special phraseology or jargon of a particular class or subject” are from Jonson.

⁶² George Watson Cole, The Gypsies Metamorphosed (New York, 1931), pp. 220 ff.

⁶³ The Staple of News, ii. i.

⁶⁴ Ibid., iv. i.

⁶⁵ Other illustrations of occupational dialects and cant appear in Bartholomew Fair (the language of horse-coursing and the very entertaining lingo of the Puritans), in The Alchemist (the technical dialect of the alchemists), and in Epicoene (the language of the ecclesiastical courts).

One might compare Jonson's attitude toward beggars' slang with that of Gill, op. cit., p. 35: “De venenato illo & putidissimo ulcere nostrae reipub. pudet dicere. Habet enim & faex illa spurcissima erronum mendicantium non propriam dialectum; sed & cantum sive loquelam, quam nulla unquam legum vindicta coercibit, donec edicto publico cogantur justitiarii eius auctores in crucem tollere.”

⁶⁶ The Case is Altered, iii, iii; iv. i, v.

⁶⁷ Grammar, p. 40.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 38.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 23.

⁷⁰ Discoveries, ed. Maurice Castelain (Paris, 1906), p. 96. All subsequent references are to this edition.

⁷¹ See in this connection Robert A. Hall, Jr., “Linguistic Theory in the Italian Renaissance,” Language, xii, 96.

⁷² Discoveries, p. 94.

⁷³ Grammar, pp. 13, 15, 20.

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 52.

⁷⁵ Discoveries, p. 41.

⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 33.

⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 95.

⁷⁸ Everyman in His Humour, Preface.

⁷⁹ Herford and Simpson, i, 362. See also Carl Grabau, “Ben Jonson,” Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, xxxviii, 85, and Henry Holland Carter's edition of Every Man In His Humour (New Haven, 1921), p. xliii. A few isolated examples of the substitution of simpler words for more learned appear in other plays. Thus the Folio of 1616 substitutes list for the Quarto reading inventory in Cynthia's Revels, i. iv, and bewitch for the Quarto traduce in The Poetaster, i. ii.

⁸⁰ Sir Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, ed. cit., p. 59.

⁸¹ J[ohn] H[art], A Methode or Comfortable Beginning for All Vnlearned (London, 1570), quoted in Otto Jespersen, John Hart's Pronunciation of English, Anglistische Forschungen, xii (Heidelberg, 1907), 9.

⁸² Richard Puttenham (?), The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1589), Arber's Reprint, p. 57. Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592), also speaks of London English as the “fountaine whose rivers flowe round about England.” Cf. J. L. Moore, Tudor Stuart Views on the Growth, Status, and Dignity of the English Language (Halle, 1910), p. 21.

⁸³ John Dryden, The Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, ed. cit., p. 106.

⁸⁴ Jonathan Swift, “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue,” Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Temple Scott (London, 1908), xi. ii.

⁸⁵ On variety of usage in Court speech see H. C. Wyld, A History of Modern Colloquial English, 2d ed. (London, 1921), p. 102.

⁸⁶ The New Inn, i. i.

⁸⁷ Every Man Out of His Humour, ii. i. “His humour arrides me exceedingly.”

⁸⁸ Ibid., v. ii.

⁸⁹ The Staple of News, iii. i.

⁹⁰ Cynthia's Revels, ii. i.

⁹¹ J. L. Moore, Tudor-Stuart Views, p. 15.

⁹² Discoveries, p. 98.

⁹³ Discoveries, p. 90.

⁹⁴ See, for example, Walt. Taylor, “Arabic Words in Ben Jonson,” Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages, iii (1934), 34.

⁹⁵ Among them bastinado (verb), canaglia, ciarlitani, clarissimo, gazetti, guitarra, lazaretto, macaroni, nimfadoro, portico, presto, punto, sforzato, reformado, saraband. It should be said that some of these words did not meet with Jonson's approval. Some of them will also be found to have made their appearance in the English language earlier than the date recorded for them in the NED.

⁹⁶ Mary Serjeantson, History of Foreign Words in English (London, 1935), pp. 172, 182, 186.

⁹⁷ Cynthia's Revels, iii. iii.—Thomas Dekker says the same thing in almost the same words. “If you be a souldier ... get some fragments of French, or small parcels of Italian to fling about the table.” The Gull's Hornbook (1609), ed. R. B. McKerrow (London, 1907), p. 59.

⁹⁸ Cunningham, viii, 413.

⁹⁹ J. L. Moore, op. cit., p. 46.

¹⁰⁰ Among the many hundreds of words the first appearance of which in literature is attributed to Jonson by the NED, only the following may be described as inkhorn terms: apozem (‘a decoction’), dimensum (‘a measured position’), epicene (‘of common gender’), eteostic (‘a chronogram’), famelic (‘exciting hunger’), logodaedale (‘cunning in words’), mammothrept (‘a spoiled child’), merdurious (‘composed of dung and wine’), pamphysic (‘embracing all nature’), privign (‘a stepson’), simulty (‘a quarrel or contention’), tentiginous (‘exciting desire’), umbratical (‘shadowy’), vernaculous (‘lowbred’). Some of these words are humorous in origin. Others are intended for a special audience. Professor Schelling, commenting on some unusual words in Discoveries, admits that Jonson's vocabulary is “remarkably English for a scholar of his day.” Cf. Timber, or Discoveries, ed. Felix E. Schelling (Boston, 1892), p. xxiii.

¹⁰¹ Discoveries, p. 94.

¹⁰² The Poetaster, v. iii. Among them are the following: retrograde, reciprocal, incubus, glibbery, lubricai, defunct, magnificate, spurious, snotteries, chilblain'd, clumsy, inflate, turgidous, ventosity, oblatrant, furibund, fatuate, strenuous, prorumped, clutcht, obstupefact. In the Quarto tropologicall, analogicall, loquaeity, and pinnosity appear for snarling gusts and quaking custard of the Folio.

¹⁰³ The Case is Altered, i. i, ii. The words are capricious, changeling, proclive, prejudicate, computation, compunction, pristinate, hieroglyphic, illiterate, ruminate, ingratitude, pilgrimize, ingenuity, legibly, corroborate, intricate, aggravate, ambiguous, insinuate, epitaph, consanguinity, prognosticate, princox, novels, preposterous, encomiastic, apology.

¹⁰⁴ Cynthia's Revels, iv. i. Among the words objected to are ingenious, acute, polite.

¹⁰⁵ Every Man Out of His Humour, iii. i. A partial list follows: aristocratical, capreal, concinnity, diamondising, ecliptic, embrions, galaxia, hypothesis, ingenuity, intellectual, mathematical, mincing, modelising, pythagorical, synderisis, theoric.

¹⁰⁶ The New Inn, ii. ii, elechize, problematize, syllogize, statuminate.

¹⁰⁷ H. C. Hart, “Ben Jonson and Gabriel Harvey,” Notes and Queries, 9th Series (1903), xii, No. 296, p. 161. Other words commented upon by Hart are: hyperbole, linguist, dilemma, elocution, alabaster, rhinoceros, Helicon, ambrosiac, subtle, fantastic, remnant, similitude, mellifluous, methodical, propogate, authentically, circumference, crotchet, anagram, alacrity, intoxicate, quintessence, curvet, paraphrase, intendment, paradox.

¹⁰⁸ Amorphus in iv. i, and v. ii.

¹⁰⁹ Every Man Out of His Humour, iii. i.

¹¹⁰ The Case Is Altered, i. i. In ii. vii, the word capricious is similarly ridiculed: “Capricious? stay, that word's for me.” In The Staple of News, v. i, the word emissaries is condemned for its novelty: “Emissaries? stay, there's a fine new word!”

¹¹¹ Discoveries, p. 98. Note also his objection to those who speak “out of a dictionary method.” Cynthia's Revels, iv. i.

¹¹² Thomas Nashe, Christ's Teares ouer Jerusalem, Preface. Quoted by Moore, op. cit., p. 110.

¹¹³ Discoveries, p. 104.

¹¹⁴ The Case Is Altered, i. ii.

¹¹⁵ Cynthia's Revels, ii. iv.

¹¹⁶ Nashe speaks of the complaints directed against his “Italianate coyned verbs, all in -ize” (Foure Letters, 1592), and Edward Phillips (Preface, New World of English Words, 1658) deplores the “pretty capricchio,” of giving the -ize termination to words like civil, natural, spiritual, etc., “to which humour of hing I have observed in some such immoderate indulgence, as if they designed to raise a generation of Verbs of this stamp out of every Noun whatsoever.”

¹¹⁷ Occasionally also Jonson attacked a phrase which evoked his displeasure for some reason or other. In Cynthia's Revels and The Poetaster he ridicules the expression “in (or out) of one's element.” The reason for his objection is not clear; it is quite possible, as Professor Marckwardt suggests, that the phrase had been overworked. See A. H. Marckwardt, “A Fashionable Expression,” Modern Language Notes, xliv, 93.

¹¹⁸ The Poetaster, v. i.

¹¹⁹ Herford and Simpson, i, 195.

¹²⁰ Ben Jonson's English Grammar, ed. Alice V. Waite (New York, 1909), p. 41: “Alii haec haud inconsulto scribunt abil, stabil, fabul; tanquan a fontibus habilis, stabilis, fabula: verius, sed nequiquam proficiunt.”

¹²¹ “The writer would not—he never would—remember that a phrase or construction which makes very good Latin may make very bad English.” A. C. Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson (London, 1889), p. 163.

¹²² Rea in his edition of Volpone, Briggs in Sejanus, Tennant in The New Inn and Johnson in The Devil Is An Ass note a large number of Latinism.

¹²³ For example, Jonson's use of the word convince in the sense of “overpower” in the phrase “the cap does convince me,” i.e., “does overpower me (by its beauty)” (Bartholomew Fair, i. i), may be paralleled by Shakespeare's use of the same word in the phrase “will I with wine and wassail so convince” (Macbeth, i. vii). Similarly, Jonson's use of the verb prevent in the sense of “go before” in the sentence “You are sure, sir, to prevent them all...” (Tale of a Tub, i. v) may be compared with Shakespeare's use of the same word in the phrase “to prevent his time of life” (Julius Caesar, v. i).

¹²⁴ William E. Selin, ed., The Case Is Altered, p. xvii.

¹²⁵ The proportion of Greek or Latin polysyllabic words (of three syllables or more) to the total vocabulary of The Case Is Altered is, according to Selin 2.65 per cent. For the other plays mentioned the ratio is: Every Man In His Humour, 2.48 per cent; The Shoemaker's Holiday, 2.28 per cent; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 2.21 per cent; All Fools, 3.29 per cent. Selin, loc. cit.

¹²⁶ In making this count the following rules were observed: (1) Every word was counted every time it occurred; (2) names of characters and places were omitted, as were also (3) stage directions, and (4) words of Latin or Greek origin already existing in Old English; (5) hybrids containing one element of foreign origin were regarded as foreign words.

¹²⁷ The actual results are as follows:

First Three Thousand Words of Each Play

Per cent Foreign Per cent Native

Native words (among the first three thousand) in The Tempest, Othello, and Henry IV, Part I averaged 83.5 per cent of the total.

¹²⁸ “A schollar expert in Latine and Greeke but Nothing in the English said of Hott Broath that he would make the danger of it, for it could not be ill English yet was good Latine facere periculü.” Conversations, Herford and Simpson, i, 147.

¹²⁹ Karl Pfeffer, Das Elizabethanische Sprichwort in seiner Verwendung bei Ben Jonson, Dissertation (Giessen, 1933), p. 52.

¹³⁰ Discoveries, p. 98.

¹³¹ Ibid., p. 99.

¹³² Thomas Dekker, Satiromastix, i. ii.

¹³³ Jonson rarely tells us that he is coining a new word. In The Character of the Famous Oldcombian, he coins the word logodaedale, and calls our attention to the coinage in the very sentence in which it occurs: “He is a great bold Carpenter of Words or (to expresse him in one like his owne) a Logodaedale.” So also when he uses the word underwood in a figurative sense as the title of his collection of poems: “I am bold to entitle these lesser poems of later growth by this of Underwoods, out of the analogue they hold to the Forest in my former booke.” He frequently implies the presence of a neologism by adding a synonym or explanatory phrase. “The abrupt stile, which hath many breaches, and doth not seem to end, but fall” (Discoveries, p. 100); “when we come within eyeshot, or presence, of this lady” (Every Man Out of Bis Humour, v. i).

¹³⁴ Cf. W. S. Mackie, “Shakespeare's English: and How Far It Can Be Investigated with the Help of the New English Dictionary,” MLR, xxi, 1.

¹³⁵ Additional examples of earlier citations for words occurring in Jonson follow. The illustrations are based upon a search of the files of the Early Modem English Dictionary by Mr. J. K. Yamagiwa, of the staff of the Dictionary. The dates for the NED citations are those given by the Oxford Dictionary.

¹³⁶ Satiromastix, iv. ii, iii.

¹³⁷ Vide supra, p. 741. Professor Schelling is in error when he says that Jonson “almost totally eschews compound words” (Timber, or Discoveries, ed. F. E. Schelling, p. xxiii). Far from avoiding words of this kind, Jonson appears to make liberal use of them in his plays and masques.

¹³⁸ “A wise justice of the peace meditant... A civil cutpurse searchant, A sweet singer of new ballads allurant.” Bartholomew Fair, Induction.

¹³⁹ “Therefore did Plato from his None-such banish Base Poetasters.” Joshua Sylvester, Urania (?1597), 1. 52.

¹⁴⁰ George Gordon, “Shakespeare's English,” Society for Pure English, Tract xxix (Oxford, 1928), p. 270.

¹⁴¹ The New Inn, ed. George B. Tennant (New York, 1908), p. 280. The last is an example of the very rare figure Tmesis.

¹⁴² For Garrick's comment on Jonson's language see George Pierce Baker, Some Unpublished Correspondence of David Garrick (Boston, 1907), p. 79: “The language and characters of Ben Jonson (and particularly of the comedy in question Every Man In His Humour) are much more difficult than those of any other writer, I was three years before I durst venture to trust the Comedians with their Characters when it was reviv'd.”