Could Rabelais himself have described them better, or with vigor of humorous expression more heartily and enjoyably characteristic of his own all but incomparable genius?

The good old times, as remote in Shakespeare’s day as in our own, were never more delightfully described than by Rowley in this noble and simple phrase:  “Then was England’s whole year but a St. George’s day.”

Webster wished that what he wrote might be read by the light of Shakespeare:  an admirer of Rowley might hope and must wish that he should be read by the light of Lamb.  His comedies have real as well as realistic merit:  not equal to that of Dekker’s or Middleton’s at their best, but usually not far inferior to Heywood’s or to theirs.  The first of them, “A New Wonder:  A Woman Never Vext,” has received such immortal honor from the loving hand of Lamb that perhaps the one right thing to say of it would be an adaptation of a Catholic formula:  “Agnus locutus est:  causa finita est.”  The realism is so thorough as to make the interest something more than historical:  and historically it is so valuable as well as amusing that a reasonable student may overlook the offensive “mingle-mangle” of prose and verse which cannot but painfully affect the nerves of all not congenitally insensitive readers, as it surely must have ground and grated on the ears of an audience accustomed to enjoy the prose as well as the verse of Shakespeare and his kind.  No graver offence can be committed or conceived by a writer with any claim to any but contemptuous remembrance than this debasement of the currency of verse.

The character of Robert Foster is so noble and attractive in its selfless and manful simplicity that it gives us and leaves with us a more cordial sense of sympathetic regard and respect for his creator than we could feel if this gallant and homely figure were withdrawn from the stage of his invention.  The female Polycrates who suffers under the curse of inevitable and intolerable good-fortune is an admirable creature of broad comedy that never subsides or overflows or degenerates into farce.

“A Match at Midnight” is as notable for vivid impression of reality, but not so likely to leave a good taste—­as Charlotte Bronte might haye said—­in the reader’s mouth.  Ancient Young, the hero, is a fine fellow; but Messrs. Earlack and Carvegut are hardly amusing enough to reconcile us to toleration of such bad company.  It is cleverly composed, and the crosses and chances of the night are ingeniously and effectively invented and arranged:  there is real and good broad humor in the parts of the usurer and his sons and the attractive but unwidowed Widow Wag.  And I am not only free to admit but desirous to remark that a juster and more valuable judgment on such plays as these than any that I could undertake to deliver may very possibly be expected from readers whom they may more thoroughly arride—­to use a favorite phrase of the all, but impeccable critic, the all but infallible judge, whose praise has set the name of Rowley so high in the rank of realistic painters and historic naturalists forever.