SOURCE: "Ben Jonson's Poems: Notes on the Ordered Society," in Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age, edited by Millar MacLure and F. W. Watt, University of Toronto Press, 1964, pp. 43-68.

In the following essay, MacLean discusses Jonson 's poems as observations on civilized society, stressing friendship between good men, the ideal relationship between prince and poet, and the social actions befitting the ruling class.

"The reputation of Jonson," Mr. Eliot once remarked, "has been of the most deadly kind that can becompelled 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 virtues which excite the least pleasure; and to be read only by historians and antiquaries—this is the most perfect conspiracy of approval" ["Ben Jonson," Selected Essays, 1913-1932, 1932]. Perhaps...