Mr. Pope remarks, that when Ben got possesion of the stage, he brought critical learning into vogue, and that this was not done without difficulty, which appears from those frequent lessons (and indeed almost declamations) which he was forced to prefix to his first plays, and put into the mouths of his actors, the Grex, Chorus, &c. to remove the prejudices and inform the judgement of his hearers.  Till then the English authors had no thoughts of writing upon the model of the ancients:  their tragedies were only histories in dialogue, and their comedies followed the thread of any novel, as they found it, no less implicitly than if it had been true history.  Mr. Selden in his preface to his titles of honour, stiles Johnson, his beloved friend and a singular poet, and extols his special worth in literature, and his accurate judgment.  Mr. Dryden gives him the title of the greatest man of the last age, and observes, that if we look upon him, when he was himself, (for his last plays were but his dotages) he was the most learned and judicious writer any theatre ever had; that he was a most severe judge of himself as well as others; that we cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it; that in his works there is little to be retrenched or altered; but that humour was his chief province.

Ben had certainly no great talent for versification, nor does he seem to have had an extraordinary ear; his verses are often wanting in syllables, and sometimes have too many.

I shall quote some lines of his poem to the memory of Shakespear, before I give a detail of his pieces.

To the memory of my beloved the author Mr. William Shakespear, and what he hath left us.

  To draw no envy (Shakespear) on thy name,
  Am I thus ample to thy book and fame: 
  While I confess thy writings to be such,
  As neither man nor muse can praise too much. 
  ’Tis true, and all men’s suffrage.  But these ways
  Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise: 
  For silliest ignorance, on these may light,
  Which when it sounds at best but ecchoes right;
  As blind affection, which doth ne’er advance
  The truth; but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
  A crafty malice might pretend his praise,
  And think to ruin where it seem’d to raise. 
  These are, as some infamous baud or whore,
  Should praise a matron:  What could hurt her more? 
  But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
  Above th’ ill fortune of them, or the need. 
  I therefore will begin.  Soul of the age! 
  Th’ applause, delight, the wonder of the stage! 
  My Shakespear rise; I will not lodge thee by,
  Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye,
  A little further to make thee a room: 
  Thou art a monument without a tomb,
  And art alive still, while the book doth live,
  And we have wits to read, and praise to give. 
  That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;