On Wednesday, January 27, 2021 at 11:25:25 PM UTC-5, Dennis wrote:

It seems contrary to reason to state or suggest that one of the most famous and beloved authors in history was subject to the charge of infamia during his lifetime - and that rather than the immortal offspring of his mind should be subject to the same

blot he divorced them from his true name and suffered them to appear under a pseudonym. However, the devil is in the detail, and the changing of fashions, and there is nothing to do but continue to pick at the pieces.

Alan H. Nelson's _Monstrous Adversary_ demonstrates amply that many blots remain to disfigure the memory of Edward de Vere. It is my hope that once the ridiculous figure of the Stratford Shakespeare is wiped away a more balanced appraisal of this great

courtier and author may yet arise.

Ben Jonson is at the centre of the authorship controversy. Described as the father of English literary criticism, Jonson brought the full weight of classical criticism to bear upon the literary productions of 'Shake-speare' and found them wanting. It

is a consequence of Oxford's high social status, especially his position as High Lord Chamberlain, one of the Great Offices of State, and the overarching threat of Scandalum Magnatum, that Jonson's criticisms of Oxford/Shake-speare were required to be
couched in indirect language - and for this end Jonson employed figurative speech.

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Eric Auerbach - Figura

..but the figure which was then regarded as the most important and seemed before all others to merit the name of figure was the hidden allusion in its diverse forms. Roman orators had developed a refined technique of expressing or insinuating something

without saying it, in most cases of course something which for political or tactical reasons, or simply for the sake of effect, had best remain secret or at least unspoken. Quintilian speaks of the importance attached to training in this technique in the
schools of rhetoric, and tells us how speakers would invent special cases, controversiae figuratae, in order to perfect and distinguish themselves in it.

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That Jonson was familiar with this special usage of figura appears in his posthumously published _Discoveries_. It is this book that provides the 'unlearned' reader - a reader unfamiliar with classical writings - with a key to Jonson's triumph over the

'unworthy' poetics of Oxford/Shake-speare, (unworthy in the sense of being unfit for the purposes of imitation and the humanist pedagogical project in general) - and how successful Jonson proved to be in removing Shake-speare from the sphere of the court
as a maker of manners and replacing him with himself. Jonson's _Discoveries_ or _Timber_ is a critical key to the fountain of allusions and matter that are embedded in Jonson's First Folio poem written of 'his' Shake-speare - and it is the key that turns
outward appearances or figurations of praise into figurations of blame.

Take for an example the lines that form the ridiculous Droeshout Figure of the First Folio. This is only one of Jonson's figurations of Shakespeare as he continues to change and alter Shakespeare's figure/form/shape (soul, monument, swan, constellation

etc.) carrying us along as these figurations move us ever further from the truth.

Here is the Droeshout Figure's pedigree - to be found in Jonson's author of special interest - Horace:

Horace, Epistle I To Maecenas
If I meet you with *my hair cut by an uneven barber*, you laugh [at me]: if I chance to have a ragged shirt under a handsome coat, *or if my disproportioned gown fits me ill*, you laugh. What [do you do], when my judgment contradicts itself? it

despises what it before desired; seeks for that which lately it neglected; is all in a ferment, and is inconsistent in the whole tenor of life; pulls down, builds up, changes square to round. In this case, you think I am mad in the common way, and you do
not laugh, nor believe that I stand in need of a physician, or of a guardian assigned by the praetor; though you are the patron of my affairs, and are disgusted at the ill-pared nail of a friend that depends upon you, that reveres you.

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īnfāmia f (genitive īnfāmiae); first declension

bad reputation or repute, ill fame, dishonor, disgrace, infamy, reproach *********************************
This I regard as history's highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out for the reprobation of posterity that which is notorious for infamy. -- Tacitus

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The Mind of the Frontispiece to a Book
by Ben Jonson
From death and dark oblivion (near the same)
The mistress of man's life, grave history,
Raising the world to good or evil fame,
Doth vindicate it to eternity.
Wise providence would so; that nor the good
Might be defrauded, nor the great secured,
But both might know their ways were understood,
When vice alike in time with virtue dured.
Which makes that (lighted by the beamy hand
Of truth, that searcheth the most hidden springs,
And guided by experience, whose straight wand
Doth mete, whose line cloth sound the depth of things)
She cheerfully supporteth what she rears;
Assisted by no strengths, but are her own,
Some note of which each varied pillar bears,
By which as proper titles she is known
Time's witness, herald of antiquity,
The light of truth, and life of memory.

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The Restraint/Exclusion of Fancy/Oxford:

William Cartwright, to Jonson (in Jonsonus Virbius)

...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and TH'AGES FASHION DID MAKE HIT;

EXCLUDING THOSE FROM LIFE IN AFTER-TIME,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a BENEVOLENCE:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..

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"But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the FANCY: for IMAGINATION in a poet is a faculty so WILD and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have

CLOGS tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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Jonson, on Shakespeare (Timber)
He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped.

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Rhodri Lewis:

...the visionary quality of the furor poeticus was by definition irrational, and easily contaminated by the threat of ‘enthusiasm’; as there was Restoration consensus that the civil wars had been the product of enthusiastic speech and writing, this

contamination was fatal. Consequently, the imitative model of poetics – and with it, translation – came to have a new prestige and cultural importance as an antidote to such anxieties: in CONSTRAINING the poet’s FREEDOM to ERR, it was seen as doing
important meta-literary work, and conferred an intrinsic mutuality on the literary enterprise:

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Milton

Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, *Fancy's child*,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

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The idea of ancient literary criticism

By Yun Lee

...In his treatise On Style, Demetrius declares that figured language must be employed if somebody wishes to address and to criticize eithera tyrant or a powerful individual, and he advocates this as a middle course between flattery, which is base, and

direct criticism, which is dangerous. Ahl notes, in an essay entitled 'The Art of Safe Criticism', that Quintilian, Vespasian's imperial rhetorician, subsequently elaborates Demetrius' account of the political use of figured language at Institutio
oratoria 9.2.66. Quintilian sets out three different occasions on which figured language, which he defines as language that is changed from its most obvious and uncomplicated usage by poetic or oratorical usage (9.1.13), may be employed. The first of
these concerns when it is dangerous to speak openly; the second concerns propriety - where the Latin 'it is not fitting/suitable ('non decet' ) perhaps renders the Greek 'improper' (aprepes); while the third advocates the use of figured language where
the novelty of such structures may produce delight and pleasure. Of these three occasions, the first is the most obviously political, and what Quintilian proposes is a need for the author in question to tread warily around authority, particularly as
author and political leader may be at odds. The following section of the works suggests that the rhetorician has in mind the empire, figured as tyranny: he cites the use of rhetorical figures in school exercises which require pupils to produce speeches
to instigate rebellion against despots without speaking too plainly to tyrants. (9.2.67).

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Jonson, _Discoveries_

Periodi.—Obscuritas offundit tenebras.—Superlatio.—Periods are beautiful when they are not too long; for so they have their strength too, as in a pike or javelin. As we must take the care that our words and sense be clear, so if the obscurity

happen through the hearer’s or reader’s want of understanding, I am not to answer for them, no more than for their not listening or marking; I must neither find them ears nor mind. But a man cannot put a word so in sense but something about it will
illustrate it, if the writer understand himself; for order helps much to perspicuity, as confusion hurts. (Rectitudo lucem adfert; obliquitas et circumductio offuscat. [116a]) We should therefore speak what we can the nearest way, so as we keep our gait,
not leap; for too short may as well be not let into the memory, as too long not kept in. Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts into a riddle; the obscurity is marked, but not the value. That perisheth, and is passed by, like the pearl in
the fable. Our style should be like a skein of silk, to be carried and found by the right thread, not ravelled and perplexed; then all is a knot, a heap. There are words that do as much raise a style as others can depress it. Superlation and over-
muchness amplifies; it may be above faith, but never above a mean. It was ridiculous in Cestius, when he said of Alexander:

“Fremit oceanus, quasi indignetur, quòd terras relinquas.” [117a]

But propitiously from Virgil:

“Credas innare revulsas
Cycladas.” [117b]

He doth not say it was so, but seemed to be so. Although it be somewhat incredible, that is excused before it be spoken. But there are hyperboles which will become one language, that will by no means admit another. As Eos esse P. R. exercitus, qui cæ

lum possint perrumpere, [118a] who would say with us, but a madman? Therefore we must consider in every tongue what is used, what received. Quintilian warns us, that in no kind of translation, or metaphor, or allegory, we make a turn from what we began;
as if we fetch the original of our metaphor from sea and billows, we end not in flames and ashes: it is a most foul inconsequence. Neither must we draw out our allegory too long, lest either we make ourselves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is
childish. But why do men depart at all from the right and natural ways of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter, to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers. Or to
avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called εσχηματισμενη or figured
language.

Oratio imago animi.—Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.

Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.

Structura et statura, sublimis, humilis, pumila.—Some men are tall and big, so some language is high and great. Then the words are chosen, their sound ample, the composition full, the absolution plenteous, and poured out, all grave, sinewy, and

strong. Some are little and dwarfs; so of speech, it is humble and low, the words poor and flat, the members and periods thin and weak, without knitting or number.

Mediocris plana et placida.—The middle are of a just stature. There the language is plain and pleasing; even without stopping, round without swelling: all well-turned, composed, elegant, and accurate.

Vitiosa oratio, vasta—tumens—enormis—affectata—abjecta.—*The vicious language is vast and gaping, swelling and irregular: when it contends to be high, full of rock, mountain, and pointedness; as it affects to be low, it is abject, and creeps,

full of bogs and holes. And according to their subject these styles vary, and lose their names: for that which is high and lofty, declaring excellent matter, becomes vast and tumorous, speaking of petty and inferior things; so that which was even and apt
in a mean and plain subject, will appear most poor and humble in a high argument. Would you not laugh to meet a great councillor of State in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobbyhorse cloak, his gloves under his girdle, and yond haberdasher in a
velvet gown, furred with sables? There is a certain latitude in these things, by which we find the degrees.

Figura.—The next thing to the stature, is the figure and feature in language—that is, whether it be round and straight, which consists of short and succinct periods, numerous and polished; or square and firm, which is to have equal and strong parts

everywhere answerable, and weighed.

Cutis sive cortex. Compositio.—The third is the skin and coat, which rests in the well-joining, cementing, and coagmentation of words; whenas it is smooth, gentle, and sweet, like a table upon which you may run your finger without rubs, and your nail

cannot find a joint; not horrid, rough, wrinkled, gaping, or chapped: after these, the flesh, blood, and bones come in question.

Carnosa—adipata—redundans.—We say it is a fleshy style, when there is much periphrasis, and circuit of words; and when with more than enough, it grows fat and corpulent: arvina orationis, full of suet and tallow. It hath blood and juice when the

words are proper and apt, their sound sweet, and the phrase neat and picked—oratio uncta, et benè pasta. But where there is redundancy, both the blood and juice are faulty and vicious:—Redundat sanguine, quia multo plus dicit, quam necesse est.
Juice in language is somewhat less than blood; for if the words be but becoming and signifying, and the sense gentle, there is juice; but where that wanteth, the language is thin, flagging, poor, starved, scarce covering the bone, and shows like stones
in a sack.

Jejuna, macilenta, strigosa.—Ossea, et nervosa.—Some men, to avoid redundancy, run into that; and while they strive to have no ill blood or juice, they lose their good. There be some styles, again, that have not less blood, but less flesh and

corpulence. These are bony and sinewy; Ossa habent, et nervos.

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Jonson
Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection a high mind can put off; being both a rebel unto the soul and reason, and enforceth all laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, *and offereth violence to **Nature'

s** self*.

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note - in his translation of Horace's 'Art of Poetry', Jonson translates 'Minerva' as 'Nature'.

He is loth to make Nature afraid in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like drolleries, to mix his Head with other Mens Heels; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Puppets

will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in. (Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_)

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Horace, Ars Poetica

"Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva; id tibi judicium est, ea *MENS*."

"But you will say nothing and do nothing against Minerva's will; such is your judgement, such your good sense." (transl. Rushton Fairclough)

mens - the mind, disposition, feeling, character, heart, soul

You will neither say nor do anything with Minerva unwilling.

Invita Minerva/ Unwilling Minerva/Against Minerva

Honesta ambitio. -- If divers men seek fame or honour by divers ways, so both be honest, neither is to be blamed; but they that seek immortality are not only worthy of love, but of praise. (Jonson, _Timber Or Discoveries_)

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Representative selections from Jonson's _Timber Or Discoveries: Made Upon Men and Matter, As They Have Flow'd Out of His Daily Readings, Or Had Their Refluxe to His Peculiar Notion of the Times_

Not. 10.—It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests,

and their sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow. Now, because they speak all they can (however
unfitly), they are thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first, and make all an even and proportioned body. *The true artificer will not run away from Nature (note -
Minerva in Horace) as he were afraid of her*, or depart from life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and
Tamer-chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps,
he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. He gratulates them and their fortune.
Another age, or juster men, will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing, his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what sharpness; in jest, what
urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in men’s affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is beautifully
translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which is
worse), especially for that it is naught.

Ignorantia animæ.—I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, not of the arts and sciences, but of itself; yet relating to those it is a pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth,

with which a man goes groping in the dark, no otherwise than if he were blind. Great understandings are most racked and troubled with it; nay, sometimes they will rather choose to die than not to know the things they study for. Think, then, what an evil
it is, and what good the contrary.

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Soul of the Age!!

Jonson, Alchemist

To the Reader

If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be COZENED, than IN THIS AGE, in

poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the concupiscence of dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from nature, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the spectators. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art?
When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the things, think to get off wittily with
their ignorance.

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Ambition Has Roots in Roman Politics - Merriam-Webster

When candidates for public office in ancient Rome wanted to be elected, they had to do just what modern candidates must do. They had to spend most of their time going around the city urging the citizens to vote for them. The Latin word for this effort

was ambitio, which came from ambire, a verb meaning “to go around.” Since this activity was caused by a desire for honor or power, the word eventually came to mean “the desire for honor or power.” This word came into French and English as
ambition in the late Middle Ages. Later its meaning broadened to include “an admirable desire for advancement or improvement” and still later “the object of this desire.”

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Billy Budd, Melville - Death of Captain Edward Fairfax Vere

Under him (note- the Lieutenant)the enemy was finally captured and though much crippled was by rare good fortune successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English port not very distant from the scene of the fight. There, Captain Vere with the rest of the

wounded was put ashore. He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily he was cut off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The spirit that spite its philosophic austerity may yet have indulged in the most secret of all passions, AMBITION, never
attained to the fulness of fame.

Not long before death, while lying under the influence of that magical drug which soothing the physical frame mysteriously operates on the subtler element in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant—"Billy Budd, Billy Budd."

That these were not the accents of remorse, would seem clear from what the attendant said to the Indomitable's senior officer of marines who, as the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-head court, too well knew, tho' here he kept the
knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.

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Billy Budd - noble foundling - 'Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.' (Melville, _Billy Budd_)

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Figurations of Authorship:
1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville

"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors."

“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page
of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine
authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all
BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. PURELY IMAGINATIVE
as this FANCY may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some
warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author
has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences
among us?”

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Shakespeare

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number'd hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

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impression/figura
Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi (satire thought to be directed at Oxford)

...Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appeare, that this English Poet wanted but a good PATTERNE before his eyes, as it might
be some delicate, and choyce elegant Poesie of good M. Sidneys, or M.
Dyers (ouer very Castor, & Pollux for such and many greater matters)
when this trimme geere was in hatching: Much like some Gentlewooman, I coulde name in England, who by all Phisick and Physiognomie too, might
as well have brought forth all goodly faire children, as they have now
some ylfavoured and DEFORMED, had they at the tyme of their
Conception, had in sight, the amiable and gallant beautifull Pictures
of ADONIS, Cupido, Ganymedes, or the like, which no doubt would have
wrought such deepe impression in their fantasies, and imaginations, as
their children, and perhappes their Childrens children to, myght have thanked them for, as long as they shall have Tongues in their heades.

********************************

Representative selections from Jonson's _Timber Or Discoveries: Made Upon Men and Matter, As They Have Flow'd Out of His Daily Readings, Or Had Their Refluxe to His Peculiar Notion of the Times_

Fama.—A Fame that is wounded to the world would be better cured by another’s apology than its own: for few can apply medicines well themselves. Besides, the man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him. He is not easily

emergent.

Opinio.—Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing; settled in the imagination, but never arriving at the understanding, there to obtain the tincture of reason. We labour with it more than truth. There is much more holds us than presseth us.

An ill fact is one thing, an ill fortune is another; yet both oftentimes sway us alike, by the error of our thinking.

Jam literæ sordent.—Pastus hodiern. ingen.—The time was when men would learn and study good things, not envy those that had them. Then men were had in price for learning; now letters only make men vile. He is upbraidingly called a poet, as if it

were a contemptible nick-name: but the professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap—railing and tinkling rhymers, whose writings the vulgar more greedily read, as being taken with the scurrility and petulancy of such wits. He shall not have a
reader now unless he jeer and lie. It is the food of men’s natures; the diet of the times; gallants cannot sleep else. The writer must lie and the gentle reader rests happy to hear the worthiest works misinterpreted, the clearest actions obscured, the
innocentest life traduced: and in such a licence of lying, a field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be matter wanting to his laughter? Hence comes the epidemical infection; for how can they escape the contagion of the writings, whom the virulency
of the calumnies hath not staved off from reading?

Sed seculi morbus.—Nothing doth more invite a greedy reader than an unlooked-for subject. And what more unlooked-for than to see a person of an unblamed life made ridiculous or odious by the artifice of lying? But it is the disease of the age; and no

wonder if the world, growing old, begin to be infirm: old age itself is a disease. It is long since the sick world began to dote and talk idly: would she had but doted still! but her dotage is now broke forth into a madness, and become a mere frenzy.

Vulgi expectatio.—Expectation of the vulgar is more drawn and held with newness than goodness; we see it in fencers, in players, in poets, in preachers, in all where fame promiseth anything; so it be new, though never so naught and depraved, they run

to it, and are taken. Which shews, that the only decay or hurt of the best men’s reputation with the people is, their wits have out-lived the people’s palates. They have been too much or too long a feast.

Censura de poetis.—Nothing in our age, I have observed, is more preposterous than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any

wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for miracles, who yet are so vile that if a man should go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have done but one blot. Their good is so
entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the other’s death with it. A sponge dipped in ink will do all:—

“—Comitetur Punica librum
Spongia.—” [44a]

Et paulò post,

“Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ
. . . una litura potest.”

Cestius—Cicero—Heath—Taylor—Spenser.—Yet their vices have not hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved for nothing else. And this false opinion grows strong against the best men, if once it take root with the

ignorant. Cestius, in his time, was preferred to Cicero, so far as the ignorant durst. They learned him without book, and had him often in their mouths; but a man cannot imagine that thing so foolish or rude but will find and enjoy an admirer; at least a
reader or spectator. The puppets are seen now in despite of the players; Heath’s epigrams and the Sculler’s poems have their applause. There are never wanting that dare prefer the worst preachers, the worst pleaders, the worst poets; not that the
better have left to write or speak better, but that they that hear them judge worse; Non illi pejus dicunt, sed hi corruptius judicant. Nay, if it were put to the question of the water-rhymer’s works, against Spenser’s, I doubt not but they would
find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments and like that which is naught.


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