ve, did space
and time allow of it, a separate note of commentary. The book is simply
one of the very finest examples of humorous literature, touched now
and then with serious and even tragic effect, that can be found in any
language; it is generally and comparatively remarkable for its freedom
from all real coarseness or brutality, though the inevitable change of
manners between Shakespeare's time and our own may make some passages
or episodes seem now and then somewhat over-particular in plain speaking
or detail. But a healthier, manlier, more thoroughly good-natured and
good-humored book was never written; nor one in which the author's real
and respectful regard for womanhood was more perceptible through the
veil of a satire more pure from bitterness and more honest in design.

The list of works over which we have now glanced is surely not
inconsiderable; and yet the surviving productions of Dekker's genius or
necessity are but part of the labors of his life. If he wanted--as
undoubtedly he would seem to have wanted--that "infinite capacity for
taking pains" which Carlyle professed to regard as the synonyme of
genius, he was at least not deficient in that rough-and-ready diligence
which is habitually in harness, and cheerfully or resignedly prepared
for the day's work. The names of his lost plays--all generally
suggestive of some true dramatic interest, now graver and now
lighter--are too numerous to transcribe: but one at least of them must
excite unspeakable amazement as well as indiscreet curiosity in every
reader of Ariosto or La Fontaine who comes in the course of the
catalogue upon such a title as "Jocondo and Astolfo." How on earth the
famous story of Giocondo could possibly be adapted for representation on
the public stage of Shakespearean London is a mystery which the
execrable cook of the execrable Warburton has left forever insoluble and
inconceivable: for to that female fiend, the object of Sir Walter
Scott's antiquarian imprecations, we owe, unless my memory misguides me,
the loss of this among other irredeemable treasures.

To do justice upon the faults of this poet is easy for any sciolist: to
do justice to his merits is less easy for the most competent scholar and
the most appreciative critic. In despite of his rare occasional spurts
or outbreaks of self-assertion or of satire, he seems to stand before us
a man of gentle, modest, shiftless, and careless nature, irritable and
placable, eager and unste