qualities and shortcomings in common; they are studious and often elegant in style, sometimes impressive or at least effective in incident, generally inadequate to the chance of excellence offered by the subject; not so much through careless laxity and incoherence—for the sign of labour and finish is visible upon each; they have evidently been wrought up to the height and fullness of his design—as through a want cf constructive power and mastery of his own conceptions. "The Lover's Melancholy" is the best of the three, as having the best things in it; two of these are exquisite; the well-known episode of the lute-player and nightingale, and the reunion of Palador and Eroclea. There are touches of power and tenderness in the part of Meleander, and the courtship of Parthenophil by Thamasta is gracefully and skilfully managed, without violence or offence. The winding-up of a story ill and feebly conducted through the earlier parts of the play is far more dexterous and harmonious than its development; and this is about all that need be said of it. Between the two beautiful versions of Strada's pretty fable by Ford and Crashaw there will always be a diversity of judgment among readers; some must naturally prefer the tender fluency and limpid sweetness of Ford, others the dazzling intricacy and affluence in refinements, the supple and cunning implication, the choiceness and subtlety of Crashaw.

Something better than Ford has left us might have been made of "The Fancies Chaste and Noble" and "The Lady's Trial." In the former play the character of Flavia is admirably conceived; there were excellent