for the part played by Queen Elizabeth in the crowning struggle of the time:  but his most cordial admirer can hardly consider “The Whore of Babylon” a shining or satisfactory example of dramatic art.  The play which brought Middleton into prison, and earned for the actors a sum so far beyond parallel as to have seemed incredible till the fullest evidence was procured, is one of the most complete and exquisite works of artistic ingenuity and dexterity that ever excited or offended, enraptured or scandalized an audience of friends or enemies:  the only work of English poetry which may properly be called Aristophanic.  It has the same depth of civic seriousness, the same earnest ardor and devotion to the old cause of the old country, the same solid fervor of enthusiasm and indignation, which animated the third great poet of Athens against the corruption of art by the sophistry of Euripides and the corruption of manhood by the sophistry of Socrates.  The delicate skill of the workmanship can only be appreciated by careful and thorough study; but that the infusion of poetic fancy and feeling into the generally comic and satiric style is hardly unworthy of the comparison which I have ventured to challenge, I will take but one brief extract for evidence: 

   Upon those lips, the sweet fresh buds of youth,
   The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl
   Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn
   Upon a bashful rose.

Here for once even “that celestial thief” John Milton has impaired rather than improved the effect of the beautiful phrase borrowed from an earlier and inferior poet.  His use of Middleton’s exquisite image is not quite so apt—­so perfectly picturesque and harmonious—­as the use to which it was put by the inventor.

Nothing in the age of Shakespeare is so difficult for an Englishman of our own age to realize as the temper, the intelligence, the serious and refined elevation of an audience which was at once capable of enjoying and applauding the roughest and coarsest kinds of pleasantly, the rudest and crudest scenes of violence, and competent to appreciate the finest and the highest reaches of poetry, the subtlest and the most sustained allusions of ethical or political symbolism.  The large and long popularity of an exquisite dramatic or academic allegory such as “Lingua,” which would seem to appeal only to readers of exceptional education, exceptional delicacy of perception, and exceptional quickness of wit, is hardly more remarkable than the popular success of a play requiring such keen constancy of attention, such vivid wakefulness and promptitude of apprehension, as this even more serious than fantastic work of Middleton’s.  The vulgarity and puerility of all modern attempts at any comparable effect need not be cited to throw into relief the essential finish, the impassioned intelligence, the high spiritual and literary level, of these crowded and brilliant and vehement five acts.  Their extreme cleverness, their indefatigable ingenuity, would in any case have been remarkable:  but their fulness of active and poetic life gives them an interest far deeper and higher and more permanent than the mere sense of curiosity and wonder.