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 poignant simplicity of Decker, the other all the majestic energy of Ford. The rough buffoonery and horseplay of the clown and the familiar we may probably set down to Decker's account; there is not much humour or meaning in it, but it is livelier and less offensive than most of Ford's attempts in that line. The want of connection between the two subjects of the play, Mother Sawyer's witchcraft and Frank Thorney's bigamy, is a defect common to many plays of the time, noble sketches of rough and rapid workmanship; but in this case the tenuity of the connecting link is such that despite the momentary intervention of her familiar the witch is able with perfect truth to disclaim all complicity with the murderer. Such a communion of guilt might easily have been managed, and the tragic structure of the poem would have been complete in harmony of interest.

No words need here be wasted on any verse of Ford's outside the range of his dramatic work; and of his two pamphlets in prose the first is an ephemeral and official piece of compliment, somewhat too dull and stiff in style to be a truly graceful offering "in honour of all fair ladies." The second "handful of discourse" has rather more worth and dignity of moral eloquence. The examples chosen from his own age for praise or blame add some historical interest to his axioms and arguments; the sketch of Raleigh, unhappily imperfect as it is, seems from the fragment left us to have given a vigorous and discerning estimate of "a man known and well deserving to be known." The reader of this treatise will remark, with such comic or tragic reflections as he may find appropriate, the passage in which Ford—having discussed and