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 more coherent, more sensibly conceived and more ably constructed, than the rambling history of Wyatt or the hybrid amalgam of prosaic and romantic elements in the compound comedy of 'Westward Ho!' All that is of any great value in this amorphous and incongruous product of inventive impatience and impetuous idleness can be as distinctly traced to the hand of Dekker as the crowning glories of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' can be traced to the hand of Shakespeare. Any poet, even of his time, might have been proud of these verses, but the accent of them is unmistakable as that of Dekker.

Go, let music Charm with her excellent voice an awful silence Through all this building, that her sphery soul May, on the wings of air, in thousand forms Invisibly fly, yet be enjoyed.

This delicate fluency and distilled refinement of expression ought properly, one would say, to have belonged to a poet of such careful and self-respectful genius as Tennyson's: whereas in the very next speech of the same speaker we stumble over such a phrase as that which closes the following sentence:—

We feed, wear rich attires, and strive to cleave The stars with marble towers, fight battles, spend Our blood to buy us names, and, in iron hold, Will we eat roots, to imprison fugitive gold.