we find a vein of harshness and bitterness in her angry grief which Shakespeare or indeed Webster would have tempered and sweetened. In the faultless and most exquisite scene where she commits to the princess her legacies of "three poor jewels," this bitterness disappears, and the sentiment is as delicate and just as the expression; while the gracious gentleness of Calantha gives a fresh charm of warmth and sympathy to her stately presence and office in the story. The quality of pity here made manifest in her brings her own after suffering within reach of our pity. Again, in the previous interview of Ithocles with Penthea, and above all in her delirious dying talk, there is real and noble pathos, though hardly of the most subtle and heart-piercing kind; and in the parts of Ithocles and Orgilus there is a height and dignity which ennoble alike the slayer and the slain. None could give this quality better than Ford: this, the most complete and equal of his works, is full of it throughout.

From the "high-tuned poem," as he justly calls it, which he had here put forth in evidence of his higher and purer part of power, the fall, or collapse rather, in his next work was singular enough. I trust that I shall not be liable to any charge of Puritan prudery though I avow that this play of "Love's Sacrifice" is to me intolerable. In the literal and genuine sense of the word, it is utterly indecent, unseemly and unfit for handling. The conception is essentially foul because it is essentially false; and in the sight of art nothing is so foul as falsehood. The incestuous indulgence of Giovanni and Annabella is not improper for tragic treatment; the obscene