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 egotism and pessimistic obduracy of imagination. And the intensity of sympathy with which this crowning creation of the poet's severe and fiery genius is steadily developed and displayed should make any critic of reasonable modesty think more than twice or thrice before he assumes or admits the likelihood or the possibility of so gross an error or so grave a defect in the conception of so great an artist. For if the claim to such a title might be disputed in the case of a claimant who could show no better credentials than his authorship of 'The Atheist's Tragedy'—and even in that far from faultless work of genius there are manifest and manifold signs, not merely of excellence, but of greatness—the claim of the man who could write 'The Revenger's Tragedy' is questionable by no one who has any glimmering of insight or perception as to what qualities they are which confer upon a writer the indisputable title to a seat in the upper house of poets.

This master work of Cyril Tourneur, the most perfect and most terrible incarnation of the idea of retribution impersonate and concentrated revenge that ever haunted the dreams of a tragic poet or the vigils of a future tyrannicide, is resumed and embodied in a figure as original and as impossible to forget, for any one who has ever felt the savage fascination of its presence, as