_Siquid tamen_, etc. _Id._ 386. The form _Maeci_ was restored about this
time by Bentley.
43. _Companies of Players._ See Mr. Sidney Lee’s _Life of Shakespeare_, p.
34.
_we are told by Ben Johnson._ See p. 22. But Heminge and Condell tell us
so themselves in the preface to the Folio: “His mind and hand went
together: and what he thought he uttered with that easinesse, that wee
have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”
_Vos, O._ _Ars poetica_, 291.
_Poets lose half the Praise_, etc. These lines are not by the Earl of
Roscommon, but by Edmund Waller. They occur in Waller’s prefatory verses
to Roscommon’s translation of Horace’s _Ars poetica_.
Dennis’s criticism of Jonson is apparently inspired by Rymer’s remarks on
_Catiline_ (_Short View_, pp. 159-163). “In short,” says Rymer, “it is
strange that Ben, who understood the turn of Comedy so well, and had found
the success, should thus grope in the dark and jumble things together
without head or tail, without rule or proportion, without any reason or
design.”