THE TRUE CRITIC.

A creature of a most perfect and divine temper:  one in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met, without emulation of precedency.  He is neither too fantastically melancholy, too slowly phlegmatic, too lightly sanguine, nor too rashly choleric; but in all so composed and ordered, as it is clear Nature went about some full work, she did more than make a man when she made him.  His discourse is like his behaviour, uncommon, but not unpleasing; he is prodigal of neither.  He strives rather to be that which men call judicious, than to be thought so; and is so truly learned, that he affects not to show it.  He will think and speak his thought both freely; but as distant from depraving another man’s merit, as proclaiming his own.  For his valour, ’tis such that he dares as little to offer any injury as receive one.  In sum, he hath a most ingenuous and sweet spirit, a sharp and seasoned wit, a straight judgment and a strong mind.  Fortune could never break him, nor make him less.  He counts it his pleasure to despise pleasures, and is more delighted with good deeds than goods.  It is a competency to him that he can be virtuous.  He doth neither covet nor fear; he hath too much reason to do either; and that commends all things to him.

The play that preceded “Cynthia’s Revels” was “Every Man Out of his Humour.”  It was first printed in 1600, and Ben Jonson amused himself by adding to its list of Dramatis Personae this piece of Character Writing:—­

THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSONS.

Asper.  He is of an ingenious and free spirit, eager and constant in reproof, without fear controlling the world’s abuses.  One whom no servile hope of gain, or frosty apprehension of danger, can make to be a parasite, either to time, place, or opinion.

Macilente.  A man well parted, a sufficient scholar, and travelled; who, wanting that place in the world’s account which he thinks his merit capable of, falls into such an envious apoplexy, with which his judgment is so dazzled and distasted, that he grows violently impatient of any opposite happiness in another.

Puntarvolo.  A vainglorious knight, over-Englishing his travels, and wholly consecrated to singularity; the very Jacob’s staff of compliment; a sir that hath lived to see the revolution of time in most of his apparel.  Of presence good enough, but so palpably affected to his own praise, that for want of flatterers he commends himself, to the floutage of his own family.  He deals upon returns, and strange performances, resolving, in despite of public derision, to stick to his own particular fashion, phrase, and gesture.

Carlo Buffone.  A public, scurrilous, and profane jester, that more swift than Circe, with absurd similes, will transform any person into deformity.  A good feast-hound or banquet-beagle, that will scent you out a supper some three miles off, and swear to his patrons, damn him! he came in oars, when he was but wafted over in a sculler.  A slave that hath an extraordinary gift in pleasing his palate, and will swill up more sack at a sitting than would make all the guard a posset.  His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry.  They stand highest in his respect whom he studies most to reproach.