LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 317 



fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like rat-catchers, in the 

 sewers of human nature and of language. In their 

 tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jon- 

 son, or mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman 

 and Webster too often do. Every new edition of an Eliza- 

 bethan dramatist is but the putting of another witness 

 into the box to prove the inaccessibility of Shakespeare's 

 stand-point as poet and artist. 



Webster's most famous works are " The Duchess of 

 Malfy " and " Vittoria Corombona," but we are strongly 

 inclined to call " The Devil's Law-Case " his best play. 

 The two former are in a great measure answerable for 

 the " spasmodic " school of poets, since the extravagances 

 of a man of genius are as sure of imitation as the equa- 

 ble self-possession of his higher moments is incapable of 

 it. Webster had, no doubt, the primal requisite of a 

 poet, imagination, but in him it was truly untamed^ and 

 Aristotle's admirable distinction between the Horrible 

 and the Terrible in tragedy was never better illustrated 

 and confirmed than in the "Duchess" and "Vittoria." 

 His nature had something of the sleuth-hound quality 

 in it, and a plot, to keep his mind eager on the trail, 

 must be sprinkled with fresh blood at every turn. We 

 do not forget all the fine things that Lamb has said of 

 Webster, but, when Lamb wrote, the Elizabethan drama 

 was an El Dorado, whose micaceous sand, even, was 

 treasured as auriferous, and no wonder, in a genera- 

 tion which admired the " Botanic Garden." Webster is 

 the Gherardo della Notte of his day, and himself calls 

 his "Vittoria Corombona" a "night-piece." Though he 

 had no conception of Nature in its large sense, as some- 

 thing pervading a whole character and making it consist- 

 ent with itself, nor of Art, as that which dominates an 

 entire tragedy and makes all the characters foils to each 

 other and tributaries to the catastrophe, yet there are 



