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 incomparable glory of its triumphant and sublime perfection. Marlowe perhaps might have made something of it, though the task would have taxed his energies to the utmost, and overtasked the utmost of his skill; Dekker could make nothing. The Empress of Babylon is but a poor slipshod ragged prostitute in the hands of this poetic beadle: 'non ragioniam di lei, ma guarda e passa.'

Of the three plays in which Dekker took part with Webster, the two plays in which he took part with Ford, and the second play in which he took part with Middleton, I have spoken respectively in my several essays on those other three poets. The next play which bears his name alone was published five years later than the political or historical sketch or study which we have just dismissed; and which, compared with it, is a tolerable if not a creditable piece of work. It is difficult to abstain from intemperate language in speaking of such a dramatic abortion as that which bears the grotesque and puerile inscription, 'If this be not a good Play, the Devil is in it.' A worse has seldom discredited the name of any man with a spark of genius in him. Dryden's delectable tragedy of 'Amboyna,' Lee's remarkable tragicomedy of 'Gloriana,' Pope's elegant comedy of 'Three Hours after Marriage,' are scarcely more unworthy of their authors, more futile or more flaccid or more