This conception of "humours," based on a physiology which was already obsolescent, takes heavily from the realism of Jonson's methods, nor does his use of a careful vocabulary of contemporary colloquialism and slang save him from a certain dryness and tediousness to modern readers.

The truth is he was less a satirist of contemporary manners than a satirist in the abstract who followed the models of classical writers in this style, and he found the vices and follies of his own day hardly adequate to the intricacy and elaborateness of the plots which he constructed for their exposure.

At the first glance his people are contemporary types, at the second they betray themselves for what they are really--cock-shies set up by the new comedy of Greece that every "classical" satirist in Rome or France or England has had his shot at since.

One wonders whether Ben Jonson, for all his satirical intention, had as much observation--as much of an eye for contemporary types--as Shakespeare's rustics and roysterers prove him to have had.

It follows that all but one or two of his plays, when they are put on the stage to-day are apt to come to one with a sense of remoteness and other-worldliness which we hardly feel with Shakespeare or Moliere.