he idlest birth of his
spirit. Let us hope that so foul a thing could not have been done in
even tolerably good verse.

{42} It is not the least of Lord Macaulay's offences against art that he
should have contributed the temporary weight of his influence as a critic
to the support of so ignorant and absurd a tradition of criticism as that
which classes the great writer here mentioned with the brutal if "brawny"
Wycherley--a classification almost to be paralleled with that which in
the days of our fathers saw fit to couple together the names of Balzac
and of Sue. Any competent critic will always recognise in _The Way of
the World_ one of the glories, in _The Country Wife_ one of the
disgraces, of dramatic and of English literature. The stains discernible
on the masterpiece of Congreve are trivial and conventional; the mere
conception of the other man's work displays a mind so prurient and
leprous, uncovers such an unfathomable and unimaginable beastliness of
imagination, that in the present age at least he would probably have
figured as a virtuous journalist and professional rebuker of poetic vice
or artistic aberration.

{63} Since this passage first went to press, I have received from Dr.
Grosart the most happy news that he has procured a perfect copy of this
precious volume, and will shortly add it to his occasional issues of
golden waifs and strays forgotten by the ebb-tide of time. Not even the
disinterment of Robert Chester's "glorified" poem, with its appended
jewels of verse from Shakespeare's very hand and from others only less
great than Shakespeare's, all now at last reset in their strange original
framework, was a gift of greater price than this.

{89} Compare with Beaumont's admirable farce of Bessus the wretched
imitation of it attempted after his death in the _Nice Valour_ of
Fletcher; whose proper genius was neither for pure tragedy nor broad
farce, but for high comedy and heroic romance--a field of his own
invention; witness _Monsieur Thomas_ and _The Knight of Malta_: while
Beaumont has approved himself in tragedy all but the worthiest disciple
of Shakespeare, in farce beyond all comparison the aptest pupil of
Jonson. He could give us no _Fox_ or _Alchemist_; but the inventor of
Bessus and Calianax was worthy of the esteem and affection returned to
him by the creator of Morose and Rabbi Busy.

{92} A desperate attempt has been made to support the metrical argument
in favour of Fletcher's au