This 'tis that strikes me silent, seals my lips,
And apts me rather to sleep out my time,
Than I would waste it in contemned strifes
With these vile Ibides, these unclean birds,
That make their mouths their clysters, and still purge
From their hot entrails.[395] But I leave the monsters
To their own fate. And since the Comic Muse
Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try
If Tragedy have a more kind aspect.
Leave me! There's something come into my thought
That must and shall be sung, high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof.
_Friend._ I reverence these raptures, and obey them.
Such was the noble strain in which Jonson replied to his detractors in
the town and to his rivals about him. Yet this poem, composed with all
the dignity and force of the bard, was not suffered to be repeated. It
was stopped by authority. But Jonson, in preserving it in his works,
sends it "TO POSTERITY, that it may make a difference between their
manners that provoked me then, and mine that neglected them ever."