Poetry Criticism | Jonson, Ben - Geoffrey Walton (essay date 1955)

Geoffrey Walton (essay date 1955)

SOURCE: "The Tone of Ben Jonson's Poetry," in Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets: Authoritative Texts, Criticism, edited by Hugh MacLean, W. W. Norton & Company, 1974, pp. 479–96.

[In the following essay, Walton characterizes Jonson's poetry as a model of civility, exhibiting both its intellectual and moral values.]

It is well known that Pope imitated the opening couplet of Jonson's "Elegie on the Lady Jane Pawlet, Marchion: of Winton":

What gentle ghost, besprent with April deaw,
Hayles me, so solemnly, to yonder Yewgh?

in his own opening couplet of the "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady":

What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?

The similarity and the difference between the grand style of Pope and the slightly Spenserian language of Jonson on this occasion are...

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