and spontaneous and accurate expression.  I can only conjecture that this greatest of the Shakespeareans was misguided out of his natural line of writing as exemplified and perfected in the tragedy of Vittoria, and lured into this cross and crooked by-way of immetrical experiment, by the temptation of some theory or crotchet on the score of what is now called naturalism or realism; which, if there were any real or natural weight in the reasoning that seeks to support it, would of course do away, and of course ought to do away, with dramatic poetry altogether:  for if it is certain that real persons do not actually converse in good metre, it is happily no less certain that they do not actually converse in bad metre.  In the hands of so great a tragic poet as Webster a peculiar and impressive effect may now and then be produced by this anomalous and illegitimate way of writing; it certainly suits well with the thoughtful and fantastic truculence of Bosola’s reflections on death and dissolution and decay—­his “talk fit for a charnel,” which halts and hovers between things hideous and things sublime.  But it is a step on the downward way that leads to the negation or the confusion of all distinctions between poetry and prose; a result to which it would be grievous to think that the example of Shakespeare’s greatest contemporary should in any way appear to conduce.

The doctrine or the motive of chance (whichever we may prefer to call it) is seen in its fullest workings and felt in its furthest bearings by the student of Webster’s masterpiece.  The fifth act of “The Duchess of Malfy” has been assailed on the very ground which it should have been evident to a thoughtful and capable reader that the writer must have intended to take up—­on the ground that the whole upshot of the story is dominated by sheer chance, arranged by mere error, and guided by pure accident.  No formal scheme or religious principle of retribution would have been so strangely or so thoroughly in keeping with the whole scheme and principle of the tragedy.  After the overwhelming terrors and the overpowering beauties of that unique and marvellous fourth act, in which the genius of this poet spreads its fullest and its darkest wing for the longest and the strongest of its flights, it could not but be that the subsequent action and passion of the drama should appear by comparison unimpressive or ineffectual; but all the effect or impression possible of attainment under the inevitable burden of this difficulty is achieved by natural and simple and straightforward means.  If Webster has not made the part of Antonio dramatically striking and attractive—­as he probably found it impossible to do—­he has at least bestowed on the fugitive and unconscious widower of his murdered heroine a pensive and manly grace of deliberate resignation which is not without pathetic as well as poetical effect.  In the beautiful and well-known scene where the echo from his wife’s unknown and new-made grave seems to respond to his