Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/100

 regained the faculty of writing decent verse on occasion. The fine passage quoted by Scott in 'The Antiquary' and taken by his editors to be a forgery of his own, will be familiar to many myriads of readers who are never likely to look it up in the original context. Of two masks called 'Britannia's Honour' and 'London's Tempe' it must suffice to say that the former contains a notable specimen of cockney or canine French which may serve to relieve the conscientious reader's weariness, and the latter a comic song of blacksmiths at work which may pass muster at a pinch as a tolerably quaint and lively piece of rough and ready fancy. But Jonson for the court and Middleton for the city were far better craftsmen in this line than ever was Dekker at his best.

Two plays remain for notice in which the part taken by Dekker would be, I venture to think, unmistakable, even if no external evidence were extant of his partnership in either. As it is, we know that in the winter which saw the close of the sixteenth century he was engaged with the author of 'The Parliament of Bees' and the author of 'Englishmen for My Money' in the production of a play called 'The Spanish Moor's Tragedy.' More than half a century afterward a tragedy in which a Spanish Moor is the principal