Truth is the trial of itself
And needs no other touch,
And purer than the purest gold,
Refine it ne’er so much.

These lines are commonly attributed to Ben Jonson’s lyric “To Truth,” a short moral poem circulating in early seventeenth-century England. Jonson wrote many such epigrammatic pieces that reflect the period’s humanist interest in ethical clarity and the testing of character. In this poem, “truth” is imagined as something whose authenticity is self-evident—unlike claims that require external validation or rhetorical ornament. The imagery of assaying and refining gold draws on familiar early modern practices of testing precious metals, making the point vivid for Jonson’s contemporaries: genuine truth, like pure gold, withstands scrutiny and does not depend on further “touch” or proof to be what it is.

Jonson’s lines assert that truth is self-authenticating: it “tries” (tests) itself and does not require external validation. The comparison to gold—traditionally assayed and refined to prove its quality—suggests that genuine truth remains unchanged by scrutiny, argument, or repeated “refining.” The stanza also implies a moral or epistemic confidence typical of early modern sententiae: while human judgments can be corrupted or mistaken, truth has an intrinsic clarity that ultimately withstands examination. Read this way, the verse functions as a compact defense of integrity and plain dealing, and as a rebuke to sophistry, rumor, or the need for social endorsement to establish what is real.