Occasionally, as in his best known lyric, he is perfect and achieves an air of spontaneity little short of marvellous, when we know that his images and even his words in the song are all plagiarized from other men.

His expression is always clear and vigorous and his sense good and noble.

The native earnestness and sincerity of the man shines through as it does in his dramas and his prose.

In an age of fantastic and meaningless eulogy--eulogy so amazing in its unexpectedness and abstruseness that the wonder is not so much that it should have been written as that it could have been thought of--Jonson maintains his personal dignity and his good sense.

You feel his compliments are such as the best should be, not necessarily understood and properly valued by the public, but of a discriminating sort that by their very comprehending sincerity would be most warmly appreciated by the people to whom they were addressed.