elevation of nature. In the strongest scene of the play he showed this scorpion of revenge, stooping to feign a pander's part, tempting his mother and his sister as none but a moral leper could have done. In the minor scéne of the duke's murder, he made him malicious beyond the scope of human cruelty and outrage. It was inherent apparently in this poet's conception of life that evil should be proclaimed predominant. His cynicism stands self-revealed in the sentence he puts into Antonio's mouth, condemning Vendice to death::

You that would murder him would murder me.

Even justice, in his view, rests on egotism. And yet Tourneur has endowed Vendice with redeeming qualities. The hero of this crooked play is true to his ideal of duty, true to his sense of honour. He dies contented because he has perfected his revenge, preserved his sister's chastity, and converted his mother at the poniard's point. Where all are so bad and base, Vendice appears by comparison sublime. If we are to admire tone and keeping in a work of art, we certainly find it here; for the moral gradations are relentlessly scaled within the key of sin and pollution. The only character who stirs a pulse of sympathy is vicious. Castiza is a mere lay figure, and her mother one of the most repulsive personages of the Jacobean drama.

Webster presents a larger mass of dramatic

work to the critic. Beside the tragedies included in this volume, he wrote another tragedy, Appius and Virginia, a tragi-comedy entitled The Devil's Law-case, and is said to have had a share in the history-play of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and in three comedies, Northward Ho, Westward Ho, and A Cure for a Cuckold. The Devil's Lawcase shows how much this playwright depended on material supplied him, and how little he could trust his own inventive faculty. It starts with an involved plot of Italian deceit and contemplated crime, which Webster develops in his careful but not very lucid manner. We feel that we are working toward some sinister dénouement, when suddenly, by a twist of the hand, a favourable turn is given to events, and the play ends happily -violating probability, artistic tone, and the ethical integrity of the chief character, Romelio. From The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt in its present mangled and misshapen form it is impossible to disengage Webster's handiwork with any certainty. The same may be said about the brisk and well-wrought pieces Northward Ho and Westward Ho. Yet I see no reason to dispute Webster's share in these three plays. A Cure for a Cuckold1 requires more particular comment. This comedy was ascribed by the publisher Kirkman to John Webster and William Rowley. But the ascription stands for absolutely nothing, unless

This play will be included in another volume of the Mermaid Series.

we can discover corroborative internal evidence of Webster's collaboration. Such evidence I do not find, although there is certainly nothing in the play to disprove Kirkman's assertions. It should be added that a delicate little piece of serio-comic workmanship lies embedded in the otherwise trashy Cure for a Cuckold. Mr. Edmund Gosse early saw and twice pointed out how easily this play within the play could be detached from the rest; and the Honourable S. E. Spring Rice has recently printed, at Mr. Daniel's private press, a beautiful edition of what, following Mr. Gosse's suggestion, he calls Love's Graduate. I should like to believe that "piece of silver-work," as Mr. Gosse has aptly called it, to be truly the creation of Webster, "the sculptor whose other groups are all in bronze." Indeed, there are no reasons why the belief should not be indulged, except that Kirkman's ascription carries but a feather's weight, and that there is nothing special in the style to warrant it. Love's Graduate, rescued from A Cure for a Cuckold by pious hands, is one of the unclaimed masterpieces of this fruitful epoch.

The great length of Webster's two Italian tragedies rendered it impossible to print Appius and Virginia in this volume. That is much to be regretted; for without a study of his Roman play, justice can hardly be done to the scope and breadth of Webster's genius. Of Appius and Virginia Mr. Dyce observed with excellent judgment: "this drama is so remarkable for its

simplicity, its deep pathos, its unobtrusive beauties, its singleness of plot, and the easy, unimpeded march of its story, that perhaps there are readers who will prefer it to any other of our author's productions." Webster, who was a Latin scholar, probably studied the fable in Livy; but its outlines were familiar to English people through Painter's "Palace of Pleasure." He has drawn the mutinous camp before Algidum, the discontented city ruled by a licentious noble, the stern virtues of Icilius and Virginius, and the innocent girlhood of Virginia with a quiet mastery and selfrestraint which prove that the violent contrasts of his Italian plays were calculated for a peculiar effect of romance. When treating a classical subject, he aimed at classical severity of form. The chief interest of the drama centres in Appius. This character suited Webster's vein. He delighted in the delineation of a bold, imperious tyrant, marching through crimes to the attainment of his lawless ends, yet never wholly despic-. able. He also loved to analyse the subtleties of a deep-brained intriguer, changing from open force to covert guile, fawning and trampling on the objects of his hate by turns, assuming the tone of diplomacy and the truculence of autocratic will at pleasure, on one occasion making the worse appear the better cause by rhetoric, on another espousing evil with reckless cynicism. The variations of such a character are presented with force and lucidity in Appius. Yet the whole play lacks

those sudden flashes of illuminative beauty, those profound and searching glimpses into the bottomless abyss of human misery, which render Webster's two Italian tragedies unique. He seems to have been writing under self-imposed limitations, in order to obtain a certain desired effect-much in the same way as Ford did when he composed the irreproachable but somewhat chilling history of Perkin Warbeck.

The detailed criticism of Webster as a dramatist, and the study of his two chief tragedies in relation to their Italian sources, would lead me beyond the limits of this Introduction. He is not a poet to be dealt with by any summary method; for he touches the depths of human nature in ways that need the subtlest analysis for their proper explanation. I am, however, loth to close this introduction without a word or two concerning the peculiarities of Webster's dramatic style.1 Owing to condensation of thought and compression of language, his plays offer considerable difficulties to readers who approach them for the first time. So many fantastic incidents are crowded into a single action, and the dialogue is burdened with so much profoundly studied matter, that the general impression is apt to be blurred. We rise from the perusal of his Italian tragedies with a deep

1 It ought, perhaps, to be mentioned that the remarks which follow are adapted in part from an essay on Webster published in my Italian By-ways.