Ben Jonson's neoclassicism is grounded firmly upon the moderate Christian humanism which was cultivated in England by scholars and educators such as Thomas More, Erasmus, Roger Ascham, John Cheke, and William Camden. Jonson's art is typical of this tradition in that he is concerned primarily with social and ethical problems, and his sense of civic duty and propriety is derived in large part from those Roman authors—especially Horace, Virgil, Seneca, and Cicero—whom he deeply revered. There is considerable justification for Frances Yates's use of the phrase "Latin humanism" to refer to this educational and literary movement, which is concerned with human beings as social creatures, not as magnificent demigods or magicians. While the Latin humanists were more concerned with the development of the individual personality than were most medieval thinkers, they avoided the radical assertion of humankind's dignity and freedom which we find in Pico, Ficino, and others whose works were more heavily influenced by Hermetic sources. The term "Latin" suggests this moderate stance and the pragmatic, social orientation of those who adopted a Ciceronian morality and who wrote satire as a significant part of their program of social reform. The term need not imply an ignorance of Greek, but the Plato reverenced by Thomas More and Ben Jonson was the social theorist of The Republic, not the poetic or religious metaphysician of Phaedrus or Ion.

A significant aspect of Jonson's loyalty to the Roman spirit of Latin civic humanism is his conscious rejection of the subjective quest for selfhood or for a personal vision of reality as the primary subjects of art; he insists instead upon the artist's role as advisor to those in positions of political power. Although Jonson is loyal in many important ways to the ideals of the early Renaissance, his reaction against the more radical movements of the period leads him to become much more socially conservative than More or Erasmus had been. From the perspective of the early 1600s it was painfully obvious that the Golden Era predicted by Renaissance humanists from Erasmus through Spenser would never materialize, and Jonson is intensely aware of the limitations imposed upon reformers. From this later position in history Jonson could perceive, as Erasmus and More initially could not, that an insistence on the immediate relation between the individual soul and God would tend to destroy institutional authorities. Having witnessed revolutions led by religious and political radicals such as the Anabaptists of Münster, Jonson feared that if one fails to exercise conscious, rational control over one's personality, one may unleash powers which are bestial or Satanic, rather than those which are godlike. His conception of human nature is thus somewhat more pessimistic than that of many of the earlier humanists, and his insistence upon adherence to the limitations and restraints of rational law is more rigorous. In his self-conscious adherence to authority and his fear of social innovation he is closer to Samuel Johnson or Jonathan Swift than to More or Erasmus. Yet in his court masques, Jonson himself employs the rhetoric of the return of the Golden Age, as well as methods of symbolism which Discoveries, The Alchemist, and other plays and poems seem to criticize quite severely. The exploration of this apparent paradox in Jonson's life and work is the subject of this chapter.

Discoveries, which consists largely of Jonson's private reflections and which consequently possesses a special status as a revelation of Jonson's own critical and moral assumptions, consistently emphasizes discipline, rational self-control, and acceptance of one's limitations in both aesthetics and social and political thought. Jonson repeatedly condemns excessive innovation, extravagant rhetoric, and the use of "far-fet" metaphors as a dangerous self-indulgence. "The true Artificer," he writes, "will not run away from nature, as hee were afraid of her; or depart from life, and the likenesse of Truth; but speake 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-Chams of the late Age, which had nothing in them but the scenicall strutting, and furious vociferation, to warrant them to the ignorant gapers." Although he affirms the importance of invention, Jonson makes clear that poets or dramatists who strive only for novelty may become so caught up in pride in their own wit that they fail to communicate—to "speake to the capacity of [their] hearers"—and he therefore subordinates the individual's imagination to custom and tradition in the selection of diction and figures of speech. Judging from Discoveries, Jonson has no tolerance whatsoever for ambiguity: "Many Writers perplexe their Readers, and Hearers with meere Non-sense. Their writings need sunshine. Pure and neat Language I love, yet plaine and customary. A barbarous Phrase hath often made mee out of love with a good sense; and doubtfull writing hath wrackt mee beyond my patience."

In his "Execration upon Vulcan," written after the catastrophic fire which destroyed his house and possessions in 1623, Jonson provides a catalogue of literary vices, and the chains of association in the poem are intriguing:

In a rather brief compass Jonson proceeds from political treason and religious heresy through the unnatural myths and monsters of romance to the obscure and trivial puzzles of literary riddles. Here, as in his critical prose and elsewhere, Jonson makes clear his strong preference for traditional morality and religion, realism, and clarity. The purpose of figurative language in Jonson's work is typically to adorn and to clarify, and his criteria for evaluating poetry are thus diametrically opposed to those of the dominant schools of twentieth-century criticism. "The chiefe vertue of a style is perspicuitie," he insists in Discoveries, "and nothing so vitious in it, as to need an Interpreter."

This demand for clarity springs from Jonson's concern with the social function of poetry, but it is also a corollary of his belief that all human beings operate within the same limits of perception. A writer who uses complex, symbolic language may claim that he has access to a sphere of knowledge higher than that perceived by ordinary mortals; Jonson, however, frequently dismisses such claims as self-delusions or as conscious attempts to deceive one's audience. He assumes that cryptic or highly ambiguous language is pretentious, inept, and often meaningless. The assumption behind most of his critical pronouncements is that truth is that which is clear, universal, and capable of being perceived by human reason, not that which is secret or obscure, clothed in mystic symbols, or perceived by a lone, inspired prophet or seer. While he believes that poetry teaches religion as well as morality, he trusts in the traditions of established churches, rather than personal visions, as the reliable source of religious wisdom, a view which correlates with his insistence that the language of the poet must be that which lies within the public domain.

In The Alchemist, … Jonson links highly imaginative, symbolic forms of poetry with the mystical characters and obscure language used by occult philosophers. Subtle makes this connection explicit by describing both alchemy and poetry as "arts" in which the initiates disguise their secret knowledge in "mystick symboles" and "perplexed allegories." When Jonson describes Subtle's construction of an absurd magical sign for Drugger's shop, he identifies the use of such esoteric symbols with fraud, as well as with the prideful quest for mere novelty:

Face. What say you to his constellation, Doctor?
The Ballance? Svbtle. No, that way is stale, and common.
A townes-man, borne in Taurus, giues the bull;
Or the bulls-head: In Aries, the ram.
A poore deuice. No, I will haue his name
Form'd in some mystick character; whose radii,
Striking the senses of the passers by,
Shall, by a vertuall influence, breed affections,
That may result vpon the partie ownes it:
As thus—Face, nab! Svbtle. He first shall haue a bell, that's abel;
And, by it, standing one, whose name is dee,
In a rugg gowne; there's D. and Rug, that's drvg:
And right anest him, a Dog snarling Er;
There's drvgger, abel drvgger. That's his signe.
And here's now mysterie, and hieroglyphick!
face. abel, thou art made.

Drugger actually believes that Subtle's esoteric knowledge enables him to create a symbol with genuine magical power, and he is awestruck. In reality, Subtle is cozening poor Nab, and the "hieroglyphick" he constructs is a meaningless absurdity. In the preface to The Alchemist, Jonson connects this kind of cozening with contemporary poetry: "For thou wert neuer more fair in the way to be cos'ned (then in this Age) in Poetry, especially in Playes. The action of some plays is so fantastic, he continues, as "to runne away from Nature," and presumably we are to infer that we shall be cozened if we accept such action as a reflection of reality. Although the preface focuses primarily upon "the Concupiscence of Daunces, and Antickes" and other breaches of decorum, The Alchemist itself stresses the similarity between certain kinds of poetry and occultism, suggesting that obscurely symbolic or visionary poetry can cozen us just as Subtle has cozened Drugger. A poet who attempts to become an inspired magus or a visionary leads us not to a higher sphere of truth, but into a realm of illusion. Truth for Jonson is fidelity to nature, and nature is the world of observable fact: citing Aristotle as his authority, Jonson defines a poet as "a Maker, or a fainer: His Art, an Art of imitation, or faining; expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony" (Discoveries, 2348-50). In most of Jonson's works, his symbols are not shadows of a suprasensual reality, but metaphors or emblems whose meaning can be explicated rationally … Jonson seems to regard the belief that the poet can see beyond physical nature as a mere humor. Like Mammon's perception of "a diuinitie, beyond / An earthly beautie" in Dol, it is an illusion prompted by pride and created by a diseased imagination.

In his court masques, Jonson displays masterful control over methods of symbolism and uses of mythology and romance which he criticizes quite rigorously in his other works. In The Golden Age Restored, The Fortunate Isles and their Union, and elsewhere, Jonson praises the apparent power of King James to transform the present age into an Era of Gold, promoting peace and justice and embodying ideal virtues which are founded upon true religion and humanistic learning. Graham Parry has argued that Jonson took great pleasure in his ability to devise symbols based heavily upon traditional iconography and sufficiently complex to appeal to a monarch who took pride in his own intellect and erudition. Jonson's increasing use of emblematic method was initiated by his design for the triumphal arches through which the king passed during his progress through London in 1604: the elaborate symbolism includes personifications of Theosophia, or Divine Wisdom; Agrypnia, or Vigilance; Agape, or Loving Affection; and many other attributes of the British monarchy and its empire. Jonson's published commentaries on the arches, as well as the speeches he had written for the occasion, reveal the extent to which he had drawn upon his immense learning as he developed an elaborate iconology which he further employed in his subsequent court masques. In Hymenaei, for example, Jonson utilizes Juno as a mystical symbol of the power of love and reason to effect union and harmony, and in one of his marginal glosses on the masque he tells us that he has adopted from Macrobius the allegorical interpretation of Zeus's golden chain as the emanation of the world soul from the Divine Mind; Jonson thus draws upon a theory of cosmic harmony quite similar to that of Pico and Ficino. Douglas Brooks-Davies has argued for a level of allegory which goes beyond that which is explained in Jonson's own glosses: he believes that the figure of Mercury in Jonson's court masques is an esoteric symbol of the king as a royal messenger of the gods whose magical power to reform the world is similar to that of Hermes Trismegistus. One might conclude that Jonson possesses the singular distinction of having composed the most effective satire against magic and esoteric symbolism in English literature and, almost simultaneously, having developed an exquisitely sophisticated use of occult philosophy and mystical symbols when they suited his own purposes.

One of the simplest explanations of Jonson's apparent self-contradiction is that his desire to adapt himself to the tastes of the court, especially those of the royal family itself, led him to abandon the principles which he enunciated in Discoveries and in many of his other works. One might well argue that Jonson accused his rivals and those whom he wished to regard as his social inferiors as misguided visionaries, while he himself practiced whatever his audience demanded. To see Jonson's life and work as embodying this degree of disingenuousness, however, is a serious distortion. There are events in Jonson's life which suggest that he did not fear to speak his mind to a nobleman, as he reportedly did when he criticized the Lord Salisbury's hospitality, or when he proclaims himself in the dedication of Cynthia's Revels to be the "seruant, but not slaue" of the court itself. Indeed, the entire dedication of Cynthia's Revels, far from being an act of flattery, is an admonition to the court to live up to the ideals which the poet will reveal. As Stephen Orgel has demonstrated in The Jonsonian Masque, Jonson strove with increasing success to incorporate material imposed by the expectations of his courtly audience into an art form which was genuinely his own. Among the most interesting facets of his courtly spectacles are those through which Jonson hints that the poetic ideals of the masque are not accomplished facts upon which the king and his court may pride themselves, but distant goals which an imperfect society must continually struggle to attain. We find Jonson struggling to distinguish properly between genuine and false reformers, true and false art, proper and improper symbolism, and his masques often reveal his ambivalent attitude toward the symbolism and conventions of the genre. Evidently he feared that his own symbolic method—dictated in part by genre, occasion, and his royal audience—might be confounded with mere obscurantism.

Jonson introduces satirical references to Rosicrucians, alchemists, or other occult philosophers into his masques at moments when he is particularly anxious to distinguish between his own art and the pretenses of those who take seriously the claims of the Hermetic tradition. While Jonson himself may utilize symbols drawn from Platonic philosophy, he reminds us that he is creating a fiction; in contrast, the alchemists in Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court and the Rosicrucians of The Fortunate Isles and their Union are engaged in deception, endeavoring, in a dangerous departure from nature, to delude rather than to enlighten their audiences. The occultist and the false poet both attempt to obscure their intellectual emptiness with false "hieroglyphicks," which may be distinguished from genuine symbols in that they mean nothing. In Mercury Vindicated, Mercury himself ridicules the claims of the alchemists who have promised social advancement through magic:

A poore Page o' the Larder, they haue made obstinately beleeue, he shalbe Phisician for the Houshold, next Summer: they will giue him a quantity of the quintessence, shall serue him to cure kibes, or the mormall o' the shinne…. A child o' the Scullery steales all their coales for 'hem too, and he is bid sleepe secure, hee shall finde a corner o' the Philosophers stone for 't, vnder his bolster…. And so the Blacke guard are pleased with a toy.

Jonson does not, however, confine his satire to deflating the ambitions of the working classes. Mercury continues to mock the even more incredible dreams of the court:

But these are petty Engagements, and (as I saide) below the staires; Marry aboue here, Perpetuity of beauty, (doe you heare, Ladies) health, Riches, Honours, a matter of Immortality is nothing. They will calcine you a graue matron (as it might bee a mother o' the maides) and spring vp a yong virgin, out of her ashes, as fresh as a Phoenix: Lay you an old Courtier o' the coales like a sausedge, or a bloatherring, and after they ha' broil'd him enough, blow a soule into him with a paire of bellowes, till hee start vp into his galliard, that was made when Monsieur was here. They professe familiarly to melt down all the old sinners o' the suburbes once in halfe a yeere, into fresh gamesters againe. Get all the crack'd maiden-heads, and cast 'hem into new Ingots, halfe the wenches o' the towne are Alchymie.

Professor Brooks-Davies is correct to point out that the alchemists and Rosicrucians of the masques are purveyors of a false, unauthorized revelation, and his discussion of Mercury as the bearer of genuine heavenly knowledge is in many ways illuminating. But I would emphasize that at the moment in the masque when Mercury turns to the king, he is rejecting a belief in literal magic and relying instead upon the knowledge channeled through traditional religious and political institutions. The moment of transformation which Jonson made central to the masque form is a literary symbol for the power of reason, education, and selfdiscipline, aided by divine grace, to effect moral reform in both the individual and society. As Stephen Orgel has observed, "When magic appears in the masques, it is regularly counteracted not by an alternative sorcery, black magic defeated by white magic, but by the clear voice of reason, constancy, heroism" (Illusion, 56). The characters who are associated with the royal family and with virtuous noblemen do not perform magical ceremonies, a genuine alchemy, or exorcism; as Jonson reminds us in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, their virtue derives from the cultivation of reason, symbolized by the "hill of knowledge" in which the courtiers of the masque have received their "roial education". Daedalus, the true artist who "doth in sacred harmony comprize his precepts" is the composer of the final songs and designer of the emblematic dances which "figure out" or illustrate, a lesson in moderation, the Aristotelian golden mean. Unlike the unnatural and monstrous antimasque, the final dances are pleasurable, yet orderly, like a well-governed life; one cannot tell "which lines are Pleasures, and which not. " The dancers' controlled and "numerous" movements are visual symbols of the reasonable life, in which the emotions are not denied but are controlled by reason. Jonson insists, perhaps somewhat anxiously, that an apt member of the audience will be enlightened:

Using such an emblem to communicate moral and religious truths is quite distinct from the enthusiast's pompous use of esoteric style in order to pretend to possess profound knowledge and to conceal the actual emptiness of one's head—or, to use the metaphor of The Alchemist and earlier works, the fact that the light of the soul is obscured by the vapors of one's humor.

Jonson's own annotations for the printed editions of the masques frequently reveal his anxious efforts to assure the reader—and perhaps himself—that he can utilize allegorical symbols without being guilty of obscurity. The clearest example is Hymenaei, which Jonson prefaces with the assertion that the soul of a masque is not the ephemeral spectacle, but the meaning, which must be based on sound learning and "should alwayes lay hold on more remou'd mysteries.' The soul of Hymenaei, a wedding masque, is the mysterious power of love and reason to effect harmonious union on all levels of creation: in marriage, in the commonwealth, and in the cosmos. Jonson asserts that those who have criticized his use of philosophy in the masque possess "little, or (let me not wrong 'hem) no braine at all," and in the annotation to line 112, explaining the correspondences between the microcosm and the body politic, he excuses himself for expounding what should be obvious: "And, for the Allegorie, though here it be very cleare, and such as might well escape a candle, yet because there are some, must complaine of darknesse, that haue but thicke eyes, I am contented to hold them this Light." Despite his use of terms such as "mystery" and "mystical" (gloss to line 40, evidently meaning "allegorical"), Jonson planned from the outset to make sure that the proper interpretation of the masque was communicated, for he provides a character whose name is "Reason" to act as explicator. Reason provides order within the masque and simultaneously explains the significance of symbolic movements and costumes, emphasizing the concepts of universal order and harmony which inform both the masque itself and the marriage ceremony. Apparently the commentary of Reason was deemed by some spectators to be inadequate, and, like an impatient scholar endeavoring to make clear to a dull class the glories of a masterpiece of philosophical literature, Jonson subsequently added the marginal notes, including, in the note to line 320, a long quotation from Macrobius explaining that Zeus's golden chain symbolizes the unity of all levels of creation as they descend from, and are illuminated by, the Divine Mind. For a man who insisted that we must not "draw out our Allegory too long, lest either wee make our selves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is childish" (Discoveries), and who declared that the chief vice of style was to require an interpreter, the need to provide the glosses apparently provoked some ambivalence—as well as anger. At the same time, Jonson insists that his glosses only emphasize what should have been obvious to an intelligent, rational observer. Such insistence is consistent with Jonson's affirmation of Reason—not the Mens or intuition—as the highest of human faculties. Although he draws on some of the same aspects of the Platonic tradition as did Pico, Ficino, Agrippa, Bruno, and Dee, Jonson omits all reference to poetic "frenzy," intuition, or prophetic imagination, insisting repeatedly that Reason and authority are the proper guides. Despite his use of Neoplatonism in Hymenaei, Jonson's commentary reveals that his sym bolism is intended not as a shadow of a mystery which could not be understood in rational terms, but rather as an analogy which may be interpreted with perfect clarity.

Despite all of these distinctions and explanations, Jonson never feels entirely at ease with mythological symbolism and fantasy, and his quarrels with Inigo Jones, whom he accused of sacrificing meaning to appearances, were no doubt intensified by his discomfort in being required by social and economic circumstances to use a genre whose conventions in some ways violated the standards enunciated in detail in Discoveries, in The Alchemist, and in many of his nondramatic poems. Jonson's struggle to maintain his personal and artistic integrity was genuine, and with regard to his apparent idealization of the king as well as his use of myth and symbolism, it is misleading to recognize only the element of self-interest in his endeavor to fulfill the role of court poet. Throughout the Renaissance, humanists had professed that one could influence a monarch most effectively not by confronting that ruler with direct criticism, but by creating an image to which one wished the ruler to conform, and Jonson often asserts his allegiance to this tradition. In his dedicatory epistle to his Epigrams, entitled "To the Great Example of Hon or and Vertue, the Most Noble William, Earle of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlayne," Jonson reveals candidly his awareness that his depiction of the virtue of historical persons was idealized: "If I haue praysed, unfortunately, any one, that doth not deserue; or, if all answere not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them: I hope it will be forgiuen me, that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like the persons." Jonson's fear of becoming a flatterer is revealed with even greater clarity in the poem "To My Muse," which begins with a rejection of the Muse who had inspired him to commit "most fierce idolatrie" by praising a "worthless lord." The Muse had not only betrayed the poet by leading him into praising an unworthy subject, the speaker complains, but had even denied him his material reward, leaving him in the same poverty in which he began. At the very conclusion of the poem, however, after he has expressed his self-condemnation in the most severe terms, Jonson reverses his line of argument, consoling himself with the traditional assertion that the poetry of praise may serve as a scourge as well as a compliment:

In the most successful of his masques, Jonson's apparent idealization of the English monarchy and its court is accompanied by hints that the ideal is a fiction. A prominent example is Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, which concludes with a song underscoring the transitory nature of the masque itself and reminding us that virtue must be continually reestablished through hard labor:

If the imagery of darkness is insufficient to remind us that the ideal realm of the masque is not fully embodied in the actual world, the final two lines leave no doubt that Jonson perceives virtue to be a "stranger" in the mortal realm. Even at the court of James, perfect virtue is not an accomplished fact, and the purpose of the masque is not merely to congratulate the king and his court, but to inspire them to continued labor.

In The Fortunate Isles, Jonson's most sustained satire on occult philosophy in the masques, Merefool, a "Melancholique Student" who resembles the gulls of The Alchemist, is mocked for falling prey to two illusions. First, he believes that the Rosicrucians have the power to provide a familiar spirit which can make him "Principall Secretarie to the Starres," permitting him to "Know all their signatures, and combinations" and attain the power to command the elements. Secondly, he fails to understand that the masque in which he himself appears as a character is a fiction. The spirit Jophiel—having made excuses for failing to produce the spirits of Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, or Plato—finally presents two sturdy English satirists, Henry Scogan and John Skelton. Having been regaled by the two poets' verses, Mere-fool expresses profound gratitude and naive admiration:

     Mere-foole
What! are they vanish'd! where is skipping Skelton?
Or morall Scogan? I doe like their shew
And would haue thankt 'hem, being the first grace
The Company of the Rosie-Crosse hath done me.
     Iophiel
The company o' the Rosie-crosse! you wigion,
The company of Players. Go, you are,
And wilbe stil your selfe, a Mere-foole;

…..

See, who has guld you.

These lines have the effect of identifying as fiction not only the preceding segment of the masque but also the subsequent vision of England as a nation in which

There is no sicknes, nor no old age knowne
To man, nor any greife that he dares owne.
There is no hunger there, nor enuy of state.
Nor least ambition in the Magistrate.
But all are euen-harted, open, free,
And what one is, another striues to be.

These lines are delivered by Proteus, the archetypal shape-shifter, who embodies the spirit of acting and theatrical illusion. The audience is "gulled," however, only if it is so naive as to imagine with Merefool that the vision is to be taken literally. In the context of this theatrically self-conscious masque, the final chorus, addressed to King James, is not a recognition of existing perfection, but a fervent entreaty, or perhaps a prayer:

And may thy subiects hearts be all one flame,
Whilst thou dost keepe the earth in firme estate,
And 'mongst the winds, do'st suffer no debate,
But both at Sea, and Land, our powers increase,
With health, and all the golden gifts of Peace.

Even those works which make us intensely aware of ideals of perfection sustain our interest through devices which call attention to the gap between poetic ideals and social realities. This intriguing compound of idealism and satiric realism, the struggle to conform to the conventions of the poetry of praise while retaining a degree of objectivity, and the use of highly imaginative, symbolic poetry in a context which underscores the symbol's fictional, illusory quality are all characteristic of the artist who provides the transition between the literary art of the Elizabethan Renaissance and the more restrained, conservative, and socially cautious movement which we now term English neoclassicism. We can understand Jonson's desire for objectivity and his modulation of Renaissance ideals as a corollary of the reaction against subjectivity which eventually destroyed the fervent ideals of the magicians and contributed to Baconian science. Too often we assume that politically conservative thinkers of the early seventeenth century always regarded the new science as prideful meddling into the secrets of God's creation. In an important article on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century intellectual history, however, Donald Greene has pointed out that the new insistence on the need for empirical verification of the individual's observation of nature frequently came to be considered a healthy—and Christian—skepticism with regard to the powers of the human mind. Bacon and his followers believed that the old scientists—both the Scholastics and the magicians—depended too much upon individual genius. The belief that the human mind contained innate Ideas which were keys to ultimate truth about the structure of the cosmos was specifically singled out by the new scientists as a prideful dependence upon the powers of the individual intellect. In Abraham Cowley's ode "To the Royal Society," for example, we find this attitude, anticipated in many ways by Jonson, in highly developed form. Referring to the lingering desire to retain the methods of the old scientists, Cowley writes:

Many of the old scientists (as well as several of the earlier founders of the new science, such as Kepler) believed that because the Creator had revealed Himself in the symbolic forms of the natural world, the knowledge of nature was inseparable from the knowledge of God. The exploration of nature served to awaken the archetypal Ideas within the human mind, and these in turn made it possible for us to see more clearly the significant forms and structures behind physical reality. Such knowledge was the common province of the scientist (or magician), the poet, the sculptor, the philosopher, or the enlightened statesman—in other words, of all artists. For Bacon, however, this faith in the powers of the individual mind was hubris. In Baconian science there are no innate ideas, and consequently knowledge tends to become fragmented. The symbolic approach to the interpretation of nature is no longer viable, and there is an increasing tendency to separate religion from natural philosophy. Although Bacon still suggests that the scientist may be moved to admire the rational design of the cosmos, he does not feel intensely God's immediate presence in the natural world. He accepts the Christian revelation, but he is suspicious of intensely emotional religious feeling, and like Jonson, he relies upon traditional institutions, rather than subjective illumination, as the proper guide in matters of religious doctrine. He sees in nature no vestiges of the divine presence, no glimpses of an immanent spirit. Rather, he attributes the perception of such things to the individual's deceptive imagination, which may be influenced by fear or desire. "Astrology, Natural Magic, and Alchemy," Bacon writes in The Advancement of Learning (1605), "have had better intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of man than with his reason." These arts have noble purposes, but in practice they are "full of error and vanity; which the great professors themselves have sought to veil over and conceal by enigmatical writings, and referring themselves to auricular traditions, and such other devices to save the credit of impostures."

Bacon agrees with Jonson that those who practice such imposture are likely to be credulous and gullible themselves: their pride contributes simultaneously to "delight in deceiving, and aptness to be deceived; imposture and credulity; which, although they appear to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning, and the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most part concur." As those who are busily inquisitive also tend to be garrulous, "so upon the like reason a credulous man is a deceiver: as we see it in fame, that he that will easily believe rumours will as easily augment rumours and add somewhat to them of his own." Obscurity of style, in Jonson's plays and literary theory as in Bacon's account of the errors of traditional learning, is quite frequently the attempt of confused, ignorant, and pretentious authors to conceal their own intellectual poverty from both themselves and their audiences.

Jonson's enthusiasts in The Alchemist and in other works are the victims of Bacon's Idols of the Mind, particularly the Idol of the Tribe: they fail to acknowledge the limitations imposed upon their powers of intellect and perception by flaws inherent in human nature itself. Jonson's praise of Bacon's wisdom, virtue, and style in Discoveries, culminating with the observation that Bacon was "one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had beene in many Ages," underscores the two authors' deeply shared values. I would emphasize, however, not that Jonson was influenced by Bacon, but rather that the two men shared the desire to moderate, qualify, or restrain the heroic or poetic enthusiasms of the Elizabethan era. Jonson was in some respects more conservative than Bacon, especially with regard to the possibility of social progress and the amelioration of our fallen condition. But Jonson's conception of human nature is, nonetheless, much closer to Bacon's than to that of the magicians, for in Bacon's view progress would eventually result not from the work of a lone, inspired genius, but through the cooperative efforts of a vast community of scientists, all of whom would continually strive to correct one another's errors of judgment and perception.

Jonson is forever devising ingenious artistic strategies for criticizing or containing those passions, fears, and delights which lay deep within his own nature. What we know of Jonson's life confirms William Drummond's judgment that he was "passionately kynde and angry," as well as "oppressed with fantasie, which hath ever mastered his reason." Frequently quoted is Jonson's revelation to Drummond that he had spent an entire night watching his great toe, about which he had seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fighting in his imagination; much more moving is Jonson's account of having been moved to fearful prayer by a prophetic vision which presaged the death of his eldest son by the plague. The boy appeared, Jonson told Drummond, "of a Manlie shape & of that Grouth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection." For a student of The Alchemist, the following anecdote, also recorded in Drummond's record of his conversations with Jonson, is even more directly pertinent: "He can set Horoscopes, but trusts not in them, he with ye consent of a friend Cousened a lady, with whom he had made ane apointment to meet ane old Astrologer jn the suburbs, which she Keeped & it was himself disguysed jn a Longe Gowne & a whyte beard." Jonson's delight in Subtle and Face's extravagant wit and theatrical talent is obviously genuine; but so is the rational and moral framework through which Jonson consciously sought to contain—perhaps to exorcise—his own ambition and imagination.

In the changing currents of seventeenth-century thought occult philosophy was a key issue, and Jonson's response to the occult tradition and to language which claims to embody mystical insights points clearly toward the solutions to Renaissance problems which subsequent writers will find sensible. His successors in the neoclassical tradition, seeking to restrain uncontrolled individualism, will reject all forms of Platonism and ally themselves with the new Baconian science, which imposes strict limits upon the individual's powers of cognition even as it promises new knowledge through discipline and cooperative effort. As L. A. Beaurline has suggested, Jonson's tendency to set strict limits to works of art such as The Alchemist and to exhaust all possibilities within those self-imposed limitations is parallel to the new scientific frame of mind which delimits its fields of inquiry. I would add, however, that Jonson also endeavored to restrict the very kinds of subjects with which he, as an artist, can deal, striving to treat only those subjects which the conscious, rational intellect can fully control. Ben Jonson's affirmation of rationality and discipline, his ridicule of magical, Puritan, or poetic enthusiasm, and his tendency to limit his own art to the treatment of the practical affairs of social and political life are what make him the acknowledged founder of a new literary movement. Like Pope, Swift, or Samuel Johnson in the next century, all of whom satirized occultism at some point in their major works, Jonson struggles to contain his sympathy for the romantic longing for the absolute which leaves us wavering between exultation and despair and which characterizes so much of Renaissance literature. In his major works he suggests that the subjective quest for esoteric knowledge is selfcentered escapism, and he dramatizes as mere jest the belief that we can totally reform the world. In fact he does not even regard the disillusionment of the romanticist as tragic—that would bring The Alchemist or The Fortunate Isles quite close to Dr. Faustus—but as merely comical. In the speeches of Epicure Mammon, as well as those of other characters, Jonson demonstrates his command of the "mighty line" which expresses the most intense aspirations of the Renaissance, but he almost always deflates the hyperbolic speech with a jest which leaves but little doubt that Jonson willingly reduces his vision of human stature. His art is not often as captivating as that of Marlowe or Shakespeare, because it is not meant to be. Its value is of another order. Its purpose is to convince us that what is genuinely important is not an imaginary vision of humankind's infinite potential or the secrets of another world, but the concrete possibilities of the here and now.