SOURCE: Introduction to Classic and Cavalier: Celebrating Jonson and the Sons of Ben, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982, pp. xi-xvii.

In the following excerpt, Summers and Pebworth describe Jonson as a varied poet, viewing his idealism as the link between his neo-classical tendencies and his emotionalism.

The recent quickening of critical interest in Ben Jonson's nondramatic poetry has led to a new appreciation of his "subtile sport" and to a new willingness to read him on his own terms. hisstatus as poet has risen steadily over the past two decades. After years of languishing in Donne's shadow, he is now recognized among the most important poets in the language. He is justly celebrated as a selfnominated arbiter of civilized values, as a public poet who articulates the "mysteries of manners, armes, and arts" in weighty judgment and broad generality, as, in fact, a thoroughgoing neo-classicist. But such a view...