e compared with the greater poet; he suddenly
rises and dilates to the stature and the strength of a model whom
usually he can but follow afar off. Marston, as a tragic poet, is not
quite what Webster would be if his fame depended simply on such scenes
as those in which the noble mother of Vittoria breaks off her daughter's
first interview with Brachiano--spares, and commends to God's
forgiveness, the son who has murdered his brother before her eyes--and
lastly appears "in several forms of distraction," "grown a very old
woman in two hours," and singing that most pathetic and imaginative of
all funereal invocations which the finest critic of all time so justly
and so delicately compared to the watery dirge of Ariel. There is less
refinement, less exaltation and perfection of feeling, less tenderness
of emotion and less nobility of passion, but hardly less force and
fervor, less weighty and sonorous ardor of expression, in the very best
and loftiest passages of Marston: but his genius is more uncertain, more
fitful and intermittent, less harmonious, coherent, and trustworthy than
Webster's. And Webster, notwithstanding an occasional outbreak into
Aristophanic license of momentary sarcasm through the sardonic lips of
such a cynical ruffian as Ferdinand or Plamineo, is without exception
the cleanliest, as Marston is beyond comparison the coarsest writer of
his time. In this as in other matters of possible comparison that
"vessel of deathless wrath," the implacable and inconsolable poet of
sympathy half maddened into rage and aspiration goaded backward to
despair--it should be needless to add the name of Cyril Tourneur--stands
midway between these two more conspicuous figures of their age. But
neither the father and master of poetic pessimists, the splendid and
sombre creator of Vindice and his victims, nor any other third whom our
admiration may discern among all the greatest of their fellows, can be
compared with Webster on terms more nearly equal than those on which
Webster stands in relation to the sovereign of them all.

THOMAS DEKKER

Of all English poets, if not of all poets on, record, Dekker is perhaps
the most difficult to classify. The grace and delicacy, the sweetness
and spontaneity of his genius are not more obvious and undeniable than
the many defects which impair and the crowning deficiency which degrades
it. As long, but so long only, as a man retains some due degree of
self-respect and respect for t