Ben Jonson by T.S. Eliot

The reputation of Jonson has been of the most deadly kind that can be / compelled upon the memory of a great poet. To be universally accepted; / to be damned by the praise that quenches all desire to read the book; to / be afflicted by the imputation of the virtues which excite the least / pleasure; and to be read only by historians and antiquaries-this is the / most perfect conspiracy of approval. For some generations the reputation / of Jonson has been carried rather as a liability than as an asset in the / balance-sheet of English literature. No critic has succeeded in making / him appear pleasurable or even interesting. Swinburne's book on Jonson / satisfies no curiosity and stimulates no thought. For the critical study / in the "Men of Letters Series" by Mr. Gregory Smith there is a place; it / satisfies curiosity, it supplies many just observations, it provides / valuable matter on the neglected masques; it only fails to remodel the / image of Jonson which is settled in our minds. Probably the fault lies / with several generations of our poets. It is not that the value of / poetry is only its value to living poets for their own work; but / appreciation is akin to creation, and true enjoyment of poetry is / related to the stirring of suggestion, the stimulus that a poet feels in / his enjoyment of other poetry. Jonson has provided no creative stimulus / for a very long time; consequently we must look back as far as / Dryden-precisely, a poetic practitioner who learned from Jonson-before / we find a living criticism of Jonson's work.

Yet there are possibilities for Jonson even now. We have no difficulty / in seeing what brought him to this pass; how, in contrast, not with / Shakespeare, but with Marlowe, Webster, Donne, Beaumont, and Fletcher, / he has been paid out with reputation instead of enjoyment. He is no less / a poet than these men, but his poetry is of the surface. Poetry of the / surface cannot be understood without study; for to deal with the surface / of life, as Jonson dealt with it, is to deal so deliberately that we too / must be deliberate, in order to understand. Shakespeare, and smaller men / also, are in the end more difficult, but they offer something at the / start to encourage the student or to satisfy those who want nothing / more; they are suggestive, evocative, a phrase, a voice; they offer / poetry in detail as well as in design. So does Dante offer something, a / phrase everywhere (_tu se' ombra ed ombra vedi_) even to readers who / have no Italian; and Dante and Shakespeare have poetry of design as well / as of detail. But the polished veneer of Jonson reflects only the lazy / reader's fatuity; unconscious does not respond to unconscious; no swarms / of inarticulate feelings are aroused. The immediate appeal of Jonson is / to the mind; his emotional tone is not in the single verse, but in the / design of the whole.