Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/330

 study of "The Duchess of Malfi" makes deeper impression on a capable student than this negative quality of noble abstinence, the utter and most admirable absence of any chaotic or spasmodic element, the chastity of a controlling instinct which rejects as impossible all hollow extravagance and inflation, "even in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion." For one instance, if the comparison is to be made, we cannot but see that the curse of the Duchess on her brothers is less intemperate in the excess and exaltation of its rage than the curse of Lear on his daughters; which of course is as it should be, but is not what the general verdict of critics on Webster's art and style would have led us to expect. The note of extravagance is far more real and far more patent in the tragic genius of Beaumont and Fletcher. Of their comic power there is here no more question than of Jonson's or Massinger's or any other's; we are concerned merely to examine by comparison the rank among tragic poets of a poet who was nothing if not tragic. In this field, then, we find "those suns of glory, those two lights of men," the Dioscuri of our "heaven of invention," to be swifter and gracefuller runners than Ford, but neither surer of foot nor stronger of hand. Their genius has more of flame and light, less of fire and intensity; more of air and ease, less of force and concentration; more of beautiful and graceful qualities, less of positive and severe capacity; there is more of a charm about it, and less of a spell. With all its great and affluent beauties, 'The Maid's Tragedy" leaves a less absolute and inevitable mark upon the mind of a student than "The Broken Heart." No poet is less