ted
his equals if not his superiors in poetic if not in dramatic genius.
Even for an editor of the ripest learning and the highest ability there
is comparatively little to do where Mr. Dyce has been before him in the
field. However, we must all give glad and grateful welcome to a new
edition of a noble poet who has never yet received his full meed of
praise and justice: though our gratitude and our gladness may be
quickened and dilated by the proverbial sense of further favors to come.

The first word of modern tribute to the tragic genius of Thomas
Middleton was not spoken by Charles Lamb. Four years before the
appearance of the priceless volume which established his fame forever
among all true lovers of English poetry by copious excerpts from five
of his most characteristic works, Walter Scott, in a note on the
fifty-sixth stanza of the second fytte of the metrical romance of "Sir
Tristrem," had given a passing word of recognition to the "horribly
striking" power of "some passages" in Middleton's masterpiece: which
was first reprinted eleven years later, in the fourth volume of Dilke's
_Old Plays_. Lamb, surprisingly enough, has given not a single extract
from that noble tragedy: it was reserved for Leigh Hunt, when speaking
of its author, to remark that "there is one character of his (De Flores
in 'The Changeling') which, for effect at once tragical, probable, and
poetical, surpasses anything I know of in the drama of domestic life."
The praise is not a whit too high; the truth could not have been better
said.

The play with which Mr. Bullen, altering the arrangement adopted by Mr.
Dyce, opens his edition of Middleton, is a notable example of the best
and the worst qualities which distinguish or disfigure the romantic
comedy of the Shakespearean age. The rude and reckless composition, the
rough intrusion of savorless farce, the bewildering combinations of
incident and the far more bewildering fluctuations of character--all the
inconsistencies, incongruities, incoherences of the piece are forgotten
when the reader remembers and reverts to the passages of exquisite and
fascinating beauty which relieve and redeem the utmost errors of
negligence and haste. To find anything more delightful, more satisfying
in its pure and simple perfection of loveliness, we must turn to the
very best examples of Shakespeare's youthful work. Nay, it must be
allowed that in one or two of the master's earliest plays--in "Two
Gentlemen of V