rival (his
mistress), whom no doubt she secretly curses in her heart, giving
rise to many pretty _equivoques_ by the way on the confusion of sex,
and either made happy at last by some surprising turn of fate, or
dismissed with the joint pity of the lovers and the audience. Donne
has a copy of verses to his mistress, dissuading her from a
resolution, which she seems to have taken up from some of these
scenical representations, of following him abroad as a page. It is so
earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in sense, in wit, and pathos,
that it deserves to be read as a solemn close in future to all such
sickly fancies as he there deprecates.

* * * * *

JOHN FLETCHER.

_Thierry and Theodoret_.--The scene where Ordella offers her life a
sacrifice, that the king of France may not be childless, I have
always considered as the finest in all Fletcher, and Ordella to be
the most perfect notion of the female heroic character, next to
Calantha in the Broken Heart. She is a piece of sainted nature. Yet,
noble as the whole passage is, it must be confessed that the manner
of it, compared with Shakspeare's finest scenes, is faint and
languid. Its motion is circular, not progressive. Each line revolves
on itself in a sort of separate orbit. They do not join into one
another like a running-hand. Fletcher's ideas moved slow; his
versification, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at every turn; he
lays line upon line, making up one after the other, adding image to
image so deliberately, that we see their junctures. Shakspeare
mingles everything, runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and
metaphors; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched
and clamorous for disclosure. Another striking difference between
Fletcher and Shakspeare is the fondness of the former for unnatural
and violent situations. He seems to have thought that nothing great
could be produced in an ordinary way. The chief incidents in some of
his most admired tragedies show this.[1] Shakspeare had nothing of
this contortion in his mind, none of that craving after violent
situations, and flights of strained and improbable virtue, which I
think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibility. The wit of
Fletcher is excellent,[2] like his serious scenes, but there is
something strained and far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of
Nature, he always goes a little on one side of her.--Shakspeare chose
her without a reserve