runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and metaphors; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and clamorous for disclosure.  Another striking difference between Fletcher and Shakspeare is the fondness of the former for unnatural and violent situations.  He seems to have thought that nothing great could be produced in an ordinary way.  The chief incidents in some of his most admired tragedies show this.[1] Shakspeare had nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that craving after violent situations, and flights of strained and improbable virtue, which I think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibility.  The wit of Fletcher is excellent,[2] like his serious scenes, but there is something strained and far-fetched in both.  He is too mistrustful of Nature, he always goes a little on one side of her.—­Shakspeare chose her without a reserve:  and had riches, power, understanding, and length of days, with her for a dowry.

[Footnote 1:  Wife for a Month, Cupid’s Revenge, Double Marriage, &c.]

[Footnote 2:  Wit without Money, and his comedies generally.]

Faithful Shepherdess.—­If all the parts of this delightful pastoral had been in unison with its many innocent scenes and sweet lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie with Comus or the Arcadia, to have been put into the hands of boys and virgins, to have made matter for young dreams, like the loves of Hermia and Lysander.  But a spot is on the face of this Diana.  Nothing short of infatuation could have driven Fletcher upon mixing with this “blessedness” such an ugly deformity as Chloe, the wanton shepherdess!  If Chloe was meant to set off Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have known that such weeds by juxtaposition do not set off, but kill sweet flowers.

* * * * *

PHILIP MASSINGER.—­THOMAS DECKER.

The Virgin Martyr.—­This play has some beauties of so very high an order, that with all my respect for Massinger, I do not think he had poetical enthusiasm capable of rising up to them.  His associate Decker who wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough for anything.  The very impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this play, like Satan among the Sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast, a raciness, and a glow, in them, which are beyond Massinger.  They are to the religion of the rest what Caliban is to Miranda.

* * * * *

PHILIP MASSINGER.—­THOMAS MIDDLETON.—­WILLIAM ROWLEY.

Old Law.—­There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one’s eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in the circumstances of this sweet tragicomedy, which are unlike anything in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone.  The pathos is of a subtler edge.  Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer geniuses than their associate.

* * * * *