Because he has 'watch'd men, manners too / Heard what times past have said, seen what ours doe', the humanist antiquary earns the praise of the humanist poet. The balanced rhythm of attention that Ben Jonson here ascribes to John Selden is an idealization of what might be called the neoclassical habit of mind, with its alternation between censorious inspection of the present and studious review of the past. Other rhythms support this central one - of collection and dissemination, exemplification and dismissal, learning and teaching:

Jonson represents Selden's classicism as an ideal personal discipline, an ethics. Oddly, however, the ethical poise asserted here is represented without perfect aesthetic poise; the poem seems a less balanced thing than its subject. It is not just the unfortunate effect of the hectic exclamation marks; it is more a matter of the Ciceronian exclamations, with their ellipses constricting the praise as much as the repetitions extend it.