compact of fearlessness and fun, audacity and loyalty, so perfectly realized and rendered in this quaint and fascinating play.  The admixture of what a modern boy would call cheek and chaff with the equally steadfast and venturesome resolution of the indomitable young scapegrace is so natural as to make the supernatural escapades in which it involves him quite plausible for the time to a reader of the right sort:  even as (to compare this small masterpiece with a great one) such a reader, while studying the marvellous text of Meinhold, is no more sceptical than is their chronicler as to the sorceries of Sidonia von Bork.  And however condemnable or blameworthy the authors of “The Witches of Lancashire” may appear to a modern reader or a modern magistrate or jurist for their dramatic assumption or presumption in begging the question against the unconvicted defendants whom they describe in the prologue as “those witches the fat jailor brought to town,” they can hardly have been either wishful or able to influence the course of justice toward criminals of whose evident guilt they were evidently convinced.  Shadwell’s later play of the same name, though not wanting in such rough realistic humor and coarse-grained homespun interest as we expect in the comic produce of his hard and heavy hand, makes happily no attempt to emulate the really noble touches of poetry and pathos with which Heywood has thrown out into relief the more serious aspect of the supposed crime of witchcraft in its influence or refraction upon the honor and happiness of innocent persons.  Og was naturally more in his place and more in his element as the second “fat jailor” of Lancashire witches than as the second English dramatic poet of Psyche:  he has come closer than his precursors, closer indeed than could have been thought possible, to actual presentation of the most bestial and abominable details of demonolatry recorded by the chroniclers of witchcraft:  and in such scenes as are rather transcribed than adapted from such narratives he has imitated his professed master and model, Ben Jonson, by appending to his text, with the most minute and meticulous care, all requisite or more than requisite references to his original authorities.  The allied poets who had preceded him were content to handle the matter more easily and lightly, with a quaint apology for having nothing of more interest to offer than “an argument so thin, persons so low,” that they could only hope their play might “pass pardoned, though not praised.”  Brome’s original vein of broad humor and farcical fancy is recognizable enough in the presentation of the bewitched household where the children rule their parents and are ruled by their servants; a situation which may have suggested the still more amusing development of the same fantastic motive in his admirable comedy of “The Antipodes.”  There is a noticeable reference to “Macbeth” in the objurgations lavished by the daughter upon the mother under the influence of a revolutionary spell: