BEN JONSON’S “Discoveries” are, as he says in the few Latin words prefixed to them, “A wood—Sylva—of things and thoughts, in Greek ‘ὕλη’” [which has for its first meaning material, but is also applied peculiarly to kinds of wood, and to a wood], “from the multiplicity and variety of the material contained in it. For, as we are commonly used to call the infinite mixed multitude of growing trees a wood, so the ancients gave the name of Sylvæ—Timber Trees—to books of theirs in which small works of various and diverse matter were promiscuously brought together.” In this little book we have some of the best thoughts of one of the most vigorous minds that ever added to the strength of English lit…
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