sumptuous feast is the sacrifice that he vows to perform. Bills of fare are his holy scriptures, which he never fails to take up with reverence. Lazarillo's page, whose office it is to haunt the kitchens of the great, and bring instant word of forthcoming dishes, in order that his master may devise stratagems and ambuscades to procure a taste of them, one day reports that the Duke's table is to be graced by-the head of an Umbrana. "Is it possible?" cries Lazarillo; can heaven be so propitious to the Duke?" And forthwith he vows to pursue this Umbrana's head with all his strength, mind, and heart. He procures an introduction to the Duke, only to find that the Duke has sent the object of his idolatry to Gondarino: when good fortune has thrown Gondarino in his way, and he is beginning to rejoice, he finds that it has gone to Gondarino's mercer: when he has skilfully engineered an invitation to dine with the mercer, he finds that the mercer has sent it to a woman of doubtful fame. After these and other checks at moments when the Umbrana's head was almost between his teeth, he at last attains it by marrying the mercer's mistress. The intensity of Lazarillo's passion for the rare morsel, his ecstasies when he is on the point of attaining it, his profound dejection and distraction after each temporary repulse to his hopes, are in the maddest vein of mockheroism.

The "Woman-Hater" is a good introduction to Fletcher's gay and daring humour. He indulged it without much regard for decency: he had less veneration than Shakespeare to check him: he is more coolly contemptuous in laying serious respectabilities by the heels. The "Faithful Shepherdess" gives us a more beautiful side of his character, developed with the same freedom and abandonment of himself to the full swing of a ruling sentiment. This masque, though naturally enough condemned when put on the public stage as a drama, furnished Milton with a model for his "Comus," and is in itself one of the finest monuments of our moralising pastoral poetry. Fletcher throws himself unreservedly into the loves and crosses of Amoret

and Perigot, and the pious austerity of the bereaved Clorin, and lets his imagination revel in picturing the scene of their adventures. The wood where the mistakes of a night are enacted is very fitting for a romantic drama :—

"For in that holy wood is consecrate

A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds
By the pale moonshine, dipping often-times
Their stolen children, so to make them free
From dying flesh and dull mortality.
By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn
And given away his freedom; many a troth
Been plighted, which nor Envy nor old Time
Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given,
In hope of coming happiness."

The mad irrepressible humour of the poet, however, broke through the sweet surface of his romantic conception : he spoiled his paradise by introducing, as evil principles, the wantons Cloe and Alexis, and the malignant Sullen Shepherd, and investing them with characters so disgusting, that their gross humour, instead of operating as an elevating contrast, tends rather to throw a taint of ridicule on the whole composition.

From Dryden down to Coleridge, all Fletcher's critics have remarked his success in representing the easy and animated conversation of young gentlemen. Don John in the "Chances," Mirabel in the "Wild Goose Chase," Cleremont in the "Little French Lawyer," Don Jamie and Leandro in the "Spanish Curate," Monsieur Thomas, and many others, use much less abstruse language than Shakespeare's Biron, Gratiano, Benedick, and suchlike, and language consequently better suited to the mouths of young men of blood and fashion. The truth is, that Fletcher's easy, rapid, copious style, preserved by his good taste and sense of humour from conceits, and by his superficial nature from any kind of depth or intricacy, approaches nearer the language of polite conversation than the style of any of his contemporaries: the ease and sprightliness is not

specially put on for young men of spirit, but is a pervading characteristic of his style. There is a similar dash and abandonment in the language of all his personages: he throws himself heartily and impetuously, but not deeply, into a situation, and expresses the sentiment of the moment with unfailing abundance of clear, bright-coloured, gracious, and noble words.

Apart from his fertile humour, which is no less varied than unscrupulous, the main charm of Fletcher lies in the plentiful stream of simple ideas and readily understood feelings, expressed in felicitous and animated language. When we try to grasp the consistency of his characters, and regard his plays as wholes, we discover many evidences of weak characterisation and hasty construction. It is remarkable how few of his personages are throughout admirable, beautiful, or venerable; and this arises not from cynical purpose, as in Jonson, but from sketchiness and shallowness of conception. He is fond of delineating exemplarily virtuous women; but chastity is too often and too prominently their sole claim upon our interest, and many of them pollute their lips with language the reverse of lovely. His magnanimous heroes, also, harp too much on one string: he could not have ventured to show a hero in his domestic and playful side as Shakespeare does with Hotspur. And many of his personages, both male and female-Sorano, Protaldye, Brunhalt, &c., &c.—are abominably vile,-vile almost beyond parallel. One cannot say that in the plays pruned by the revision or enlarged by the co-operation of Beaumont, there is much difference in these respects. There are exquisite passages in the sad stories of Aspatia and Euphrasia, as there are in the stories of Amoret or Evanthe, showing them to be children of the same delicate fancy; but there is a want of body in the appeal that they make to our sympathies: they are, besides, brought into too close contact with the pitch that defiles. And both the "Maid's Tragedy" and "Philaster" are seriously disfigured by the ignoble and repulsive character of the impelling forces: the shameless intrigue of Evadne

and the king is too violent an outrage on decency, too base and animal, to permit any dignity to envelop its tragic consequences; and the easy credence given to the filthy accusations of Megra, so base, unsupported, and obviously malicious, makes us look upon the hero as a fool, and seriously affects his claims to our interest and admiration.

VII. JOHN WEBSTER (?)

Dekker's partner in "Westward Ho!" "Northward Ho!" and "Sir Thomas Wyatt," was to all appearance as different from himself as one man of genius could be from another —a man who sank deep shafts into the mines of tragedy, and built up his plays with profound design and deliberate care. Dekker is not more remarkable for his genial reproduction of city life in loosely contrived scenes, and for his easy unstudied sympathy with deep heart's-sorrowing and keen heart's-bitterness, than Webster is for his penetrating grasp of character, meditated construction of intricate scenes, and elaborate, just, and powerful treatment of terrible situations. One would expect from the joint work of two such men results of the most supreme kind—plays that might compete with the unrivalled Shakespeare. But the excellent qualities of two men cannot be fused into one work of art two minds cannot work as one with the united strength of the strong faculties of both. Of the three joint plays of Dekker and Webster, two of them, "Westward Ho!" and "Northward Ho!" are not distinguishable from the unaided productions of Dekker; while the third, "Sir Thomas Wyatt," in the mutilated and imperfect shape that has been handed down to us, contains strong marks of Webster, and may be regarded as being, in great part, the first effort of his powerful genius.

Concerning Webster's life one can only repeat the same tale of ignorance that must be told concerning so many of our dramatists. He was born free of the Merchant Tailors' Company; began to write for the stage as early as 1601;

and we may conjecture, from his predilection for scenes in courts of law and his elaborate treatment of them, that he had been bred to the profession. His quotations show that he had at least been taught Latin, and so far had received a learned education. His fame rests on three tragedies and a tragic comedy,-" Vittoria Corombona, the White Devil," published in 1612; "The Duchess of Malfi," 1623; "The Devil's Law-Case," a tragi-comedy, 1623; and “Appius and Virginia," not published till 1654.1

In the preface to "Vittoria Corombona," Webster defends himself against the charge of being a slow composer. We find this charge also in a contemporary satirist ('Notes from Blackfriars,' 1620), who draws a very lively picture of "crabbed Websterio : "—

"See how he draws his mouth awry of late,

How he scrubs, wrings his wrists, scratches his pate;

A midwife, help!

Here's not a word cursively I have writ

But he'll industriously examine it;

And in some twelve months thence, or thereabout,
Set in a shameful sheet my errors out."

Webster does not deny the charge; but he answers his critics with a bold tradition : "Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only in three days composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred; 'Thou tellest truth,' quoth he, but here's the difference: thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages.' Webster's characters could not have been drawn nor his scenes constructed in a hurry. Appius and Romelio are unsurpassed as broad and elaborate studies, filled in with indefatigable detail and accommodated with subtle art to a profound conception. In following these masterpieces the student of character is kept in an ecstasy of delight by stroke after stroke of the most unerring art. In every other scene their replies and ways of taking things

1 In an able essay on Webster, in 'Fraser's Magazine,' May 1874, Mr Edmund Gosse pointed out, for the first time, Webster's share in "A Cure for a Cuckold." Mr Gosse's paper is otherwise of special interest.