it might after all be almost impossible to resist the internal evidence of Fletcher’s handiwork.  Certainly we hear the same soft continuous note of easy eloquence, level and limpid as a stream of crystalline transparence, in the plaintive adieu of the condemned statesman and the panegyrical prophecy of the favoured prelate.  If this, I say, were all, we might admit that there is nothing—­I have already admitted it—­in either passage beyond the poetic reach of Fletcher.  But on the hypothesis so ably maintained by the editor of Bacon there hangs no less a consequence than this:  that we must assign to the same hand the crowning glory of the whole poem, the death-scene of Katherine.  Now if Fletcher could have written that scene—­a scene on which the only criticism ever passed, the only commendation ever bestowed, by the verdict of successive centuries, has been that of tears and silence—­if Fletcher could have written a scene so far beyond our applause, so far above our acclamation, then the memory of no great poet has ever been so grossly wronged, so shamefully defrauded of its highest claim to honour.  But, with all reverence for that memory, I must confess that I cannot bring myself to believe it.  Any explanation appears to me more probable than this.  Considering with what care every relic of his work was once and again collected by his posthumous editors—­even to the attribution, not merely of plays in which he can have taken only the slightest part, but of plays in which we know that he had no share at all—­I cannot believe that his friends would have let by far the brightest jewel in his crown rest unreclaimed in the then less popular treasure-house of Shakespeare.  Belief or disbelief of this kind is however but a sandy soil for conjecture to build upon.  Whether or not his friends would have reclaimed for him the credit of this scene, had they known it (as they must have known it) to be his due, I must repeat that such a miraculous example of a man’s genius for once transcending itself and for ever eclipsing all its other achievements appears to me beyond all critical, beyond all theological credulity.  Pathos and concentration are surely not among the dominant notes of Fletcher’s style or the salient qualities of his intellect.  Except perhaps in the beautiful and famous passage where Hengo dies in his uncle’s arms, I doubt whether in any of the variously and highly coloured scenes played out upon the wide and shifting stage of his fancy the genius of Fletcher has ever unlocked the source of tears.  Bellario and Aspatia were the children of his younger colleague; at least, after the death of Beaumont we meet no such figures on the stage of Fletcher.  In effect, though Beaumont had a gift of grave sardonic humour which found especial vent in burlesques of the heroic style and in the systematic extravagance of such characters as Bessus, {89} yet he was above all things a tragic poet; and though Fletcher had great power of tragic