s disputable by no one who
has an inkling of the qualities which confer a right to be named in the
same day with the greatest writer of all time.

Aeschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. "But in any
wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness": this is
the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is
the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the
principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with
the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration
and of light. The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is
darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident,
than the impression of the doctrine of Aeschylus. Fate, irreversible and
inscrutable, is the only force of which we feel the impact, of which we
trace the sign, in the upshot of "Othello" or "King Lear." The last step
into the darkness remained to be taken by "the most tragic" of all
English poets. With Shakespeare--and assuredly not with
Aeschylus--righteousness itself seems subject and subordinate to the
masterdom of fate: but fate itself, in the tragic world of Webster,
seems merely the servant or the synonyme of chance. The two chief agents
in his two great tragedies pass away--the phrase was, perhaps,
unconsciously repeated--"in a mist": perplexed, indomitable, defiant of
hope and fear; bitter and sceptical and bloody in penitence or
impenitence alike. And the mist which encompasses the departing spirits
of these moody and mocking men of blood seems equally to involve the
lives of their chastisers and their victims. Blind accident and
blundering mishap--"such a mistake," says one of the criminals, "as I
have often seen in a play"--are the steersmen of their fortunes and the
doomsmen of their deeds. The effect of this method or the result of this
view, whether adopted for dramatic objects or ingrained in the writer's
temperament, is equally fit for pure tragedy and unfit for any form of
drama not purely tragic in evolution and event. In "The Devil's
Law-case" it is offensive, because the upshot is incongruous and
insufficient: in "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfy" it is
admirable, because the results are adequate and coherent. But in all
these three plays alike, and in these three plays only, the peculiar
tone of Webster's genius, the peculiar force of his imagination, is
distinct and absolute in its fuln