; the broken-down, ruffianly,
light-hearted and light-headed libertine who has married her; and the
devoted old father who watches in the disguise of a servant over the
changes of her fortune, the sufferings, risks, and temptations which try
the purity of her penitence and confirm the fortitude of her constancy.
Of these three characters I cannot but think that any dramatist who ever
lived might have felt that he had reason to be proud. It is strange that
Charles Lamb, to whom of all critics and all men the pathetic and
humorous charm of the old man's personality might most confidently have
been expected most cordially to appeal, should have left to Hazlitt and
Leigh Hunt the honor of doing justice to so beautiful a creation--the
crowning evidence to the greatness of Dekker's gifts, his power of moral
imagination and his delicacy of dramatic execution. From the first to
the last word of his part the quaint sweet humor of the character is
sustained with an instinctive skill which would do honor to a far more
careful and a far more famous artist than Dekker. The words with which
he receives the false news of his fallen daughter's death: "Dead? my
last and best peace go with her!"--those which he murmurs to himself on
seeing her again after seventeen years of estrangement: "The mother's
own face, I ha' not forgot that"--prepare the way for the admirable
final scene in which his mask of anger drops off, and his ostentation of
obduracy relaxes into tenderness and tears. "Dost thou beg for him, thou
precious man's meat, thou? has he not beaten thee, kicked thee, trod on
thee? and dost thou fawn on him like his spaniel? has he not pawned thee
to thy petticoat, sold thee to thy smock, made ye leap at a crust? yet
wouldst have me save him?--What, dost thou hold him? let go his hand: if
thou dost not forsake him, a father's everlasting blessing fall upon
both your heads!" The fusion of humor with pathos into perfection of
exquisite accuracy in expression which must be recognized at once and
remembered forever by any competent reader of this scene is the highest
quality of Dekker as a writer of prose, and is here displayed at its
highest: the more poetic or romantic quality of his genius had already
begun to fade out when this second part of his finest poem was written.
Hazlitt has praised the originality, dexterity, and vivacity of the
effect produced by the stratagem which Infelice employs for the
humiliation of her husband, when