I had no eyes to guide me forth the room,

They were so o'ercharg'd with water.

Flam. I will see them.

Fran. de' Med. 'T were much uncharity in you, for your sight

Will add unto their tears.

Flam. I will see them:

They are behind the traverse; I'll discover

Their superstitious howling.

[Draws the curtain. Cornelia, Zanche, and three other
Ladies discovered winding Marcello's corse. A song.

Cor. This rosemary is wither'd; pray, get fresh ;
I would have these herbs grow up in his grave
When I am dead and rotten. Reach the bays;
I'll tie a garland here about his head;

'T will keep my boy from lightning. This sheet
I have kept this twenty year, and every day
Hallow'd it with my prayers. I did not think
He should have wore it.

Zanche. Look you who are yonder.

Cor. O, reach me the flowers.

Zanche. Her ladyship's foolish.

Lady. Alas, her grief

Hath turn'd her child again!

Cor. You're very welcome:

There's rosemary for you; and rue for you;

[To Flamineo.

Heart's-ease for you; I pray make much of it:

I have left more for myself.

Fran. de' Med. Lady, who's this?

Cor. You are,

Flam. So.

I take it, the grave-maker.

Zanche. "Tis Flamineo.

Cor. Will you make me such a fool? Here's a white hand :

Can blood so soon be wash'd out? Let me see:

When screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops,

And the strange cricket i' the oven sings and hops,
When yellow spots do on your hands appear,

Be certain then you of a corse shall hear.

Out upon 't, how 't is speckled! h'as handled a toad, sure.
Cowslip-water is good for the memory:

Pray, buy me three ounces of 't.

Flam. I would I were from hence.

Cor. Do you hear, sir?

I'll give you a saying which my grandmother

Was wont, when she heard the bell toll, to sing o'er
Unto her lute.

Flam. Do, an you will, do.

Cor. Call for the robin-red breast and the wren,

[Cornelia doth this in several forms of distraction.

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,

To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm,
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he 'll dig them up again.'
They would not bury him 'cause he died in a quarrel;
But I have an answer for them:

'Let holy church receive him duly,

Since he paid the church-tithes truly.'
His wealth is summ'd, and this is all his store;
This poor men get, and great men get no more.
Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop.
Bless you all, good people!

[Exeunt Cornelia, Zanche, and Ladies. Flam. I have a strange thing in me, to the which

I cannot give a name, without it be

Compassion. I pray, leave me."

In the trial scene the defiant haughtiness of Vittoria, entrenched in her illustrious birth, against the taunts of the Cardinal, making one think of Browning's Ottima, "magnificent in sin," excites a sympathy which must check itself if it would not become admiration. She dies with the same unconquerable spirit, not shaming in death at least the blood of the Vitelli that ran in her veins. As

to Flamineo, I think it plain that but for Iago he would never have existed; and it has always interested me to find in Webster more obvious reminiscences of Shakespeare, without conscious imitation of him, than in any other dramatist of the time. Indeed, the style of Shakespeare cannot be imitated, because it is the expression of his individual genius. Coleridge tells us that he thought he was copying it when writing the tragedy of "Remorse," and found, when all was done, that he had reproduced Massinger instead. Iago seems to me one of Shakespeare's most extraordinary divinations. He has embodied in him the corrupt Italian intellect of the Renaissance. Flamineo is a more degraded example of the same type, but without Iago's motives of hate and revenge. He is a mere incarnation of selfish sensuality. These two tragedies of "Vittoria Corombona" and the "Duchess of Malfi" are, I should say, the most vivid pictures of that repulsively fascinating period that we have in English. Alfred de Musset's "Lorenzaccio " is, however, far more terrible, because there the hor ror is moral wholly, and never physical, as too often in Webster.

There is something in Webster that reminds me of Victor Hugo. There is the same confusion at times of what is big with what is great, the same fondness for the merely spectacular, the same insensibility to repulsive details, the same indifference to the probable or even to the natural, the same leaning toward the grotesque, the same love of effect at whatever cost; and there is also the same

impressiveness of result. Whatever other effect Webster may produce upon us, he never leaves us indifferent. We may blame, we may criticise, as much as we will; we may say that all this ghastliness is only a trick of theatrical blue-light; we shudder, and admire nevertheless. We may say he is melodramatic, that his figures are magic-lantern pictures that waver and change shape with the curtain on which they are thrown: it matters not; he stirs us with an emotion deeper than any mere artifice could stir.

IV

CHAPMAN

As I turn from one to another of the old dramatists, and see how little is known about their personal history, I find a question continually coming back, invincible as a fly with a strong sense of duty, which I shall endeavor to fan away by a little discussion. This question is whether we gain or lose by our ignorance of the personal details of their history. Would it make any difference in our enjoyment of what they wrote, if we had the means of knowing that one of them was a good son, or the other a bad husband? that one was a punctual paymaster, and that the other never paid his washer-woman for the lustration of the legendary single shirt without which he could not face a neglectful world, or hasten to the theatre with the manuscript of the new play for which posterity was to be more thankful than the manager? Is it a love of knowledge or of gossip that renders these private concerns so interesting to us, and makes us willing to intrude on the awful seclusion of the dead, or to flatten our noses against the windows of the living? The law is more scrupulous than we in maintaining the inviolability of private letters. Are we to profit by every indiscretion, by every