revolting tragedy. The misanthropy of Macilente in "Every Man out of his Humour" is tragic; it is the Timonism of a thoroughly ill-conditioned foul-mouthed churl. The scene between Volpone, Corvino, and Celia ("The Fox,” iii. 5)— the foul abuse of his wife by Corvino, and the struggle between Volpone and Celia-is monstrously tragic: if the moralist desired to heal spiritual diseases by such an exhibition, he has not scrupled to administer a very strong medicine. The opening scene of "The Alchemist," between the sharpers Subtle and Face and their confederate and common mistress Dol, might pass in a modern sensational drama from the south side of the Thames but for the coarseness and the power of the language: it is a unique revelation of hellish discord and odious patching-up of a villanous alliance; and its initiatory fascination was doubtless a chief cause in making "The Alchemist " Jonson's most successful play.

The most generally pleasing remains of Jonson's genius are his occasional songs, his Masques, and his "Sad Shepherd." The "Sad Shepherd" is not quite complete; but, though not without a few blots and stains, it contains some of Jonson's finest poetry. The shepherdess Amie is such a sweet creation that one is indignant at the dramatist for the vulgar and wholly superfluous immodesty of one of her expressions in her first confession of unrest: to the pure all things are pure, but it exposes the simple shepherdess to unnecessary ridicule from the ordinary reader. One is surprised to find such sympathy with simple innocence in rare but rough Ben-all the more that the "Sad Shepherd" was written in his later years, when he was exacerbated by failure and poverty.

"I do remember, Marian, I have oft

With pleasure kist my lambs and puppies soft;
And once a dainty fine roe-fawn I had,
Of whose out-skipping bounds I was as glad
As of my health; and him I oft would kiss;
Yet had his no such sting or pain as this :
They never prick'd or hurt my heart; and for
They were so blunt and dull, I wish no more.

But this that hurts and pricks doth please; this sweet
Mingled with sour, I wish again to meet :
And that delay, methinks, most tedious is
That keeps or hinders me of Karol's kiss."

IV. THOMAS DEKKER (1577-1638).

The skirmish between Marston, Jonson, and Dekker, is one of the most famous “quarrels of authors." Who gave the first offence is a matter of dispute: Jonson said it was Marston and Dekker, and Dekker said it was Jonson. When Jonson caricatured Marston as Crispinus the Poetaster, with a very slight passing thrust at Dekker under the name of Demetrius, he professed that he had received information of their intention to attack him; and when Dekker replied with "Satiromastrix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet," he read Jonson a dignified lecture on his jealous disposition, and represented himself and Marston as acting reluctantly in self-defence. On which side the truth lies, it is impossible to say; the facts are against Jonson, inasmuch as he struck the first blow; and his alleged acquaintance with the evil intentions of Marston and Dekker is such as might easily have been inserted between the first acting of "The Poetaster," and the publication of it. At any rate, Dekker had very much the best of the contest. From Gifford's saying that "Dekker writes in downright passion, and foams through every page," we should infer that he had never read "Satiromastrix," were it not the case that he makes mistakes equally gross concerning plays that he must have read. Dekker writes with the greatest possible lightness of heart, easy mockery, and free abuse. It is absurd to say that he "makes no pretensions to invention, but takes up the characters of his predecessor, and turns them the seamy side without." Tucca is the only

1 All the part of Demetrius looks as if it had been inserted after Jonson was informed of Dekker's intention to "untruss him" in revenge of Marston.

character that he borrows, and a very ingenious idea it is —one of the best parts of the joke-to set Jonson's own free-spoken swaggerer to abuse himself. Dekker's Tucca is much more ably wrought out than Jonson's; he has a much finer command of what Widow Minever calls "horrible ungodly names;" and his devices to obtain money are equally shameless and amusing. All the other characters, and what plot there is, are Dekker's own; he, of course, uses the names Horace, Crispinus, and Demetrius, otherwise there would have been no point in his reply-but he gives them very different characters. William Rufus, whom Gifford supposed to be the "rude and ignorant soldier" of that name, is conjectured to have been no other than Shakespeare" learning's true Mæcenas, poesy's King;" and perhaps to a playwright like Dekker, Shakespeare might appear a true Mæcenas, although at first sight one would naturally think rather of the Earl of Pembroke or some other noble patron of letters. I am surprised that so able a critic as Mr Symonds should say that "Satiromastrix" is not to be named in the same breath with the "Poetaster," and that its success must have been due to the acting. To be sure it does not reproduce the Court of Augustus with the same verisimilitude-its flight is much too light-winged and madding for any such scholarly achievement. The Court of Augustus would have broken the continuity of the play with yawning intervals; the frail, fallible, and romantic Court of William Rufus is more in keeping with its ebullient and victorious humour. "Satiromastrix," the castigation of the satirist, is not in itself a satire so much as a genial confident mockery: it accomplished the main end of such productions—the applause of the playgoers; and I must confess that I for one should have been inclined to give the clever rogue a hand, however badly his counterblast had been put on the stage.

Of Dekker's personal history few particulars are known. The dates both of his birth and of his death are only approximate conjectures. He seems to have made his living by plays, pageants, and prose pamphlets, and to have been

almost as prolific and versatile as Defoe, although his labours did not always suffice to keep him out of "the Counter in the Poultry," and the King's Bench Prison. He is first named in 'Henslowe's Diary' in 1597, and he would seem to have been conjoined with Chettle, Haughton, Day, and Jonson on several plays before the close of the century. The first play published as his was "The Shoemaker's Holiday," in 1600: and the subsequent list is "The Pleasant Comedy of Old Fortunatus," 1600; "Satiromastrix," 1602; "Patient Grissel" (in conjunction with Chettle and Haughton), 1603; "The Honest Whore" (Part I.), 1604; "The Whore of Babylon," 1607; "Westward Ho!" "Northward Ho!" and "Sir Thomas Wyatt" (in conjunction with Webster), 1607; "The Roaring Girl” (in conjunction with Middleton), 1611; "If it be not good, the Devil is in it," 1612; "The Virgin Martyr" (in conjunction with Massinger), 1622; "Match me in London," 1631; "The Wonder of a Kingdom" 1636; "The Sun's Darling (not published till 1656); and "The Witch of Edmonton," 1658 (written in conjunction with Ford).

Dekker was a man of less determined painstaking than Chapman or Jonson, but of greater natural quickness and fineness of vision, more genial warmth of sympathy, and more copious spontaneity of expression. The fertility of his conception and the sweetness of his verse were not surpassed by any of his great contemporaries: his melting tenderness of sympathy and light play of humour are peculiarly his own. He had more in common with Shakespeare than with any of the three sturdy writers whom we have been discussing. Hazlitt complains of Shakespeare's comic Muse, as such, that it is "too good-natured and magnanimous," that it "does not take the highest pleasure in making human nature look as mean, as ridiculous, and as contemptible as possible." This is plainly a characteristic of Shakespeare's comedy as distinguished from the Terentian manner; but I should not call it a fault. I know no reason why this should be placed outside the limits of what is strictly called comedy. I should be inclined to call this the crowning

excellence of English comedy-that it is able to present such a web of the admirable and the ridiculous as life itself appears when viewed in a pleasant mood. This is the kind of comedy that Dekker naturally pursued. He had a very strong propensity towards fun, darted into every opening that promised laughter with the gleefulness of a boy; but he had also a strong love for the virtues, and a genial belief in human goodness, and delighted to picture an honest citizen, a repentant sinner, a relenting father, a merciful prince. Neither his humour nor his love for gentleness of heart was diminished by his poverty and frequent distress. If Dekker, as Jonson said, "was a rogue and not to be trusted," he always took a kinder and more lenient view of humanity than appears in the plays of his enemy, the stern scourge of vice and folly. Dekker's genius had many points of resemblance with Chaucer's.

If, with Hamlet, we take the purpose of playing to be "to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure," Dekker must receive a high place among the dramatists. There is none of them that has preserved so many lifelike intimations of the state of the various classes of society in that age. His plots are loosely constructed; but occasional scenes are wrought out with the utmost vividness, and the most complete and subtle exhibition of character and habits. Dekker's being born in London, and his exceptional acquaintance with strange bedfellows in the course of his miserable life, gave him an advantage as the abstract and brief chronicle of the time over Shakespeare, who was bred in the country, and passed a comparatively prosperous and respectable life in London-apart altogether from the fact that Shakespeare's imagination would not let him rest content with so close a transcript of nature.

V. THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570-1639).

Middleton's comedies come nearer than Dekker's to Hazlitt's idea of "making human nature look as mean, as