of the artist, never with the 'bragging and simpering petulance of the social poetaster and parasitic plagiarist; but the other inadmissible thing he has too often admitted within the precinct of his work. The dull brutality of his lame and laborious farce is a fault quite unlike the faults of his fellows; his cold and dry manner makes his buffoonery at once rancid and insipid; while the "bluff beastliness" of Jonson's plebeian part, the overflowing and boyish wantonness of Fletcher, the foul-mouthed fidelity of Decker's transcripts from the low life of his period, even the rank breadth of Marston's shameless satire, may admit of excuse in the sight of art, the pointless and spiritless license of Ford's attempts at comedy can be neither honourably excused nor reasonably explained. Of Shakespeare alone we can be sure that no touch is wrong, no tone too broad, no colour too high for the noble and necessary purposes of his art; but of his followers, if excuse be needed for their errors and excesses, the most may plead in palliation either the height of spirits and buoyancy of blood, or the passion of a fierce sincerity, or the force and flavour of strong comic genius, or the relief given by contrast to the high pure beauty of the main work; all alike may plead the freedom of the time, the freshness of young life and energy of the dawn, working as they did when the art was new-born, too strong a child of earth and heaven and too joyous to keep always a guard on its ways and words, to walk always within bounds and speak always within compass. But Ford is no poetic priest or spiritual witness against evil, whose lips have been touched with the live coal of sacred satire, and set on fire of angry prophecy; the