Theseus. His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour, for
     the goose carries not the fox.

The enigmas and logical quibbles, which he occasionally intermingles with his verbal conceits, remind us of the old philosophic paradoxes.  Sometimes a riddle is attempted; thus, he asks—­“What was a month old at Cain’s birth, that’s not five weeks old now?” Answer—­“The Moon.”

Taken generally, there is such a remarkable uniformity in Shakespeare’s humour as must acquit him of all charge of plagiarism in this respect, and may go some way towards proving the general originality of his plays.  Certainly, verbal conceits were then in high favour, and the character of Shakespeare’s humour is only one of many proofs that pleasantry had not at this time reached its highest excellence.

To Shakespeare’s kindness and discretion Ben Jonson owed his first introduction to dramatic fame.  The young poet had presented “Every Man in his Humour,” to one of the leading players of the company to which Shakespeare belonged, and the comedian upon reading it, determined to refuse it.  Jonson’s fate was trembling in the balance; he was a struggling man, and, had he been unsuccessful, might have eventually, returned to his bricklayer’s work, but he was destined to be raised up for his own benefit and that of others.  Shakespeare was present when his play was about to be rejected, asked to be allowed to look over it, and, at once recognising the poet’s talent, recommended it to his companions.  From that moment Jonson’s career was secured.  But he was never destined to acquire the lasting fame of Shakespeare.  With him the stream of Comedy was losing its deep and strong reflections, and beginning to flow in a swifter and shallower current, meandering through labyrinths of court and city life.  Perhaps, also, his large amount of humorous illustration, which must have been mostly ephemeral, tended to cut short his fame.  The best of it is interwoven with his several designs and plots, as where, in “The Alchemist,” a gentleman leaves his house in town, and his housekeeper fills it with fortune-tellers vagabonds, who carry on their trade there; and in “The Fox” a rich and childless man is courted by his friends, from whom he obtains presents under the pretence that he will leave them his property.  In this last play a parasite is introduced, and in general these plays abound with classical allusions, sometimes very incongruously intermixed with modern concerns.  An indiscriminating admiration of ancient literature and art was as much one of the features of the day, as was its crude humour—­a cleverness joined to folly and attributed to boobies and simpletons.  Much of this jocosity scarcely deserves the name of humour, and we may remark that in Jonson’s time it did not receive it.  With him humour is thus defined—­

  “To be a quality of air or water,
   And in itself holds these two properties,
   Moisture and fluxure....  Now thus far
   It may by metaphor apply itself
   Unto the general disposition: 
   As when some one peculiar quality
   Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
   All his affects, his spirits, and his power.”