the natural cadence of these lines would suffice to prove the
greatness of the artist who could express it with such terrible
perfection: but when we compare it, by collation of the two scenes, with
the deep simplicity of tenderness, the child-like accuracy of innocent
emotion, in the passage previously cited, it seems to me that we must
admit, as an unquestionable truth, that in the deepest and highest and
purest qualities of tragic poetry Webster stands nearer to Shakespeare
than any other English poet stands to Webster; and so much nearer as to
be a good second; while it is at least questionable whether even Shelley
can reasonably be accepted as a good third. Not one among the
predecessors, contemporaries, or successors of Shakespeare and Webster
has given proof of this double faculty--this coequal mastery of terror
and pity, undiscolored and undistorted, but vivified and glorified, by
the splendor of immediate and infallible imagination. The most
grovelling realism could scarcely be so impudent in stupidity as to
pretend an aim at more perfect presentation of truth; the most fervent
fancy, the most sensitive taste, could hardly dream of a desire for more
exquisite expression of natural passion in a form of utterance more
naturally exalted and refined.

In all the vast and voluminous records of critical error there can be
discovered no falsehood more foolish or more flagrant than the vulgar
tradition which represents this high-souled and gentle-hearted poet as
one morbidly fascinated by a fantastic attraction toward the "violent
delights" of horror and the nervous or sensational excitements of
criminal detail; nor can there be conceived a more perverse or futile
misapprehension than that which represents John Webster as one whose
instinct led him by some obscure and oblique propensity to darken the
darkness of southern crime or vice by an infusion of northern
seriousness, of introspective cynicism and reflective intensity in
wrong-doing, into the easy levity and infantile simplicity of
spontaneous wickedness which distinguished the moral and social
corruption of renascent Italy. Proof enough of this has already been
adduced to make any protestation or appeal against such an estimate as
preposterous in its superfluity as the misconception just mentioned is
preposterous in its perversity. The great if not incomparable power
displayed in Webster's delineation of such criminals as Flamineo and
Bosola--Bonapartes in the b