CHAPTER IX.
A FEW OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS.
From the nature of their adopted mode, we cannot look for much poetry of a devotional kind from the dramatists.

That mode admitting of no utterance personal to the author, and requiring the scope of a play to bring out the intended truth, it is no wonder that, even in the dramas of Shakspere, profound as is the teaching they contain, we should find nothing immediately suitable to our purpose; while neither has he left anything in other form approaching in kind what we seek.

Ben Jonson, however, born in 1574, who may be regarded as the sole representative of learning in the class, has left, amongst a large number of small pieces, three _Poems of Devotion_, whose merit may not indeed be great, but whose feeling is, I think, genuine.

Whatever were his faults, and they were not few, hypocrisy was not one of them.

His nature was fierce and honest.