From the indisputable fact of Middleton’s partnership in this play Mr. Dyce was induced to assume the very questionable inference of his partnership in the sequel which was licensed for acting five years later.  To me this second part seems so thoroughly of one piece and one pattern, so apparently the result of one man’s invention and composition, that without more positive evidence I should hesitate to assign a share in it to any colleague of the poet under whose name it first appeared.  There are far fewer scenes or passages in this than in the preceding play which suggest or present themselves for quotation or selection:  the tender and splendid and pensive touches of pathetic or imaginative poetry which we find in the first part, we shall be disappointed if we seek in the second:  its incomparable claim on our attention is the fact that it contains the single character in all the voluminous and miscellaneous works of Dekker which gives its creator an indisputable right to a place of perpetual honor among the imaginative humorists of England, and therefore among the memorable artists and creative workmen of the world.  Apart from their claim to remembrance as poets and dramatists of more or less artistic and executive capacity, Dekker and Middleton are each of them worthy to be remembered as the inventor or discoverer of a wholly original, interesting, and natural type of character, as essentially inimitable as it is undeniably unimitated:  the savage humor and cynic passion of De Flores, the genial passion and tender humor of Orlando Friscobaldo, are equally lifelike in the truthfulness and completeness of their distinct and vivid presentation.  The merit of the play in which the character last named is a leading figure consists mainly or almost wholly in the presentation of the three principal persons:  the reclaimed harlot, now the faithful and patient wife of her first seducer; the broken-down, ruffianly, light-hearted and light-headed libertine who has married her; and the devoted old father who watches in the disguise of a servant over the changes of her fortune, the sufferings, risks, and temptations which try the purity of her penitence and confirm the fortitude of her constancy.  Of these three characters I cannot but think that any dramatist who ever lived might have felt that he had reason to be proud.  It is strange that Charles Lamb, to whom of all critics and all men the pathetic and humorous charm of the old man’s personality might most confidently have been expected most cordially to appeal, should have left to Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt the honor of doing justice to so beautiful a creation—­the crowning evidence to the greatness of Dekker’s gifts, his power of moral imagination and his delicacy of dramatic execution.  From the first to the last word of his part the quaint sweet humor of the character is sustained with an instinctive skill which would do honor to a far more careful and a far more famous artist than Dekker.  The words with which