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But though I would fain agree with him, the object of attack can be no known person save Will. Jonson was already, in The Poetaster, using the term "Poet-Ape," for he calls the actors at large "apes."
News from the New World discovered in the Moon, presented 1620 at court. Oberon, the Fairy Prince, a Masque, of Prince Henry's. Pan's Anniversary, or the Shepherd's Holiday, a Masque, 1625. Pleasure reconciled to Virtue, a Masque, presented at court, 1619. Poetaster, or his Arraignment, a comical Satire, first acted in the year 1601.
Then I turn about my chair So that I can dimly see Into the dark corners where Lies my modest library. I have not the rare Lucasta, London, 1649; I'm a lean-pursed poetaster, Or the book had long been mine.... And the muse of Lycidas, Lost in meditation deep, Give the cut to Hudibras, Unaware the knave's asleep....
And I cite it, not as a sign of moral fault, with which I have no business, but as a sign of a most significant literary insensibility insensibility, whether to the quality of a poetaster when he wrote "poet," or to that of a poet when he wrote "poetaster," is of no matter.
He was well acquainted with all the petty vanities and affectations of the poetaster; but was not aware that these foibles were united with all the talents and vices which lead to success in active life, and that the unlucky versifier who pestered him with reams of middling Alexandrines, was the most vigilant, suspicious, and severe of politicians.
The latter part of it alludes to different passages in Juvenal; and he particularly reflects on some poetaster he calls Labeo, whom he had repeatedly lash'd before; and who was not improbably some cotemporary scribler. Upon the whole, these satires sufficiently evince both the learning and ingenuity of their author.
Without the smallest real reverence for genius—without the smallest capacity of distinguishing the poetaster it always adores from the true poet it always ignores—the public can still fall down before the pedestal upon which genius has been placed by the select few—fall down with its long ears wide open for gossip about genius, or anything else that is talked about.
Having most probably been requested by Heminge and Condell not to withhold his tribute from the departed, to whom both his contemporaries as well as posterity had done homage, Jonson may readily have seized the occasion to do amends for the wrong he had inflicted upon the great poet during his lifetime. 17: Poetaster, Apol. Dialogue.
The discouraging effect of a sometimes supercilious and conservative criticism is not an unmixed evil. The verse-writer who can be snuffed out by the cavils of a tutorial drone, is a poetaster silenced for his country's good.
I AM forfeited to eternal disgrace if you do not commiserate. ...... Go to, then, raise, recover. BEN JONSON: Poetaster. THE next morning Admiral Legard and his nephew were conversing in the little cabin consecrated by the name of the admiral's "own room."
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