s weigh so lightly on the spirit of the Sophoclean Orestes that
the slaughter of a mother seems to be a less serious undertaking for his
unreluctant hand than the subsequent execution of her paramour. The
immeasurable superiority of Aeschylus to his successors in this quality
of instinctive righteousness--if a word long vulgarized by theology may
yet be used in its just and natural sense--is shared no less by Webster
than by Shakespeare. The grave and deep truth of natural impulse is
never ignored by these poets when dealing either with innocent or with
criminal passion: but it surely is now and then ignored by the artistic
quietism of Sophocles--as surely as it is outraged and degraded by the
vulgar theatricalities of Euripides. Thomas Campbell was amused and
scandalized by the fact that Webster (as he is pleased to express it)
modestly compares himself to the playwright last mentioned; being
apparently of opinion that "Hippolytus" and "Medea" may be reckoned
equal or superior, as works of tragic art or examples of ethical
elevation, to "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfy"; and being no
less apparently ignorant, and incapable of understanding, that as there
is no poet morally nobler than Webster so is there no poet ignobler in
the moral sense than Euripides: while as a dramatic artist--an artist in
character, action, and emotion--the degenerate tragedian of Athens,
compared to the second tragic dramatist of England, is as a mutilated
monkey to a well-made man. No better test of critical faculty could be
required by the most exacting scrutiny of probation than is afforded by
the critic's professed or professional estimate of those great poets
whose names are not consecrated--or desecrated--by the conventional
applause, the factitious adoration, of a tribunal whose judgments are
dictated by obsequious superstition and unanimous incompetence. When
certain critics inform a listening world that they do not admire
Marlowe and Webster--they admire Shakespeare and Milton, we know at once
that it is not the genius of Shakespeare--it is the reputation of
Shakespeare that they admire. It is not the man that they bow down to:
it is the bust that they crouch down before. They would worship Shirley
as soon as Shakespeare--Glover as soon as Milton--Byron as soon as
Shelley--Ponsard as soon as Hugo--Longfellow as soon as Tennyson--if the
tablet were as showily emblazoned, the inscription as pretentiously
engraved.

The nobilit