pacity for the work assigned to him by recent criticism. The speech of
Buckingham, for example, on his way to execution, is of course at first
sight very like the finest speeches of the kind in Fletcher; here is the
same smooth and fluent declamation, the same prolonged and persistent
melody, which if not monotonous is certainly not various; the same pure,
lucid, perspicuous flow of simple rather than strong and elegant rather
than exquisite English; and yet, if we set it against the best examples
of the kind which may be selected from such tragedies as _Bonduca_ or
_The False One_, against the rebuke addressed by Caratach to his cousin
or by Caesar to the murderers of Pompey--and no finer instances of tragic
declamation can be chosen from the work of this great master of
rhetorical dignity and pathos--I cannot but think we shall perceive in it
a comparative severity and elevation which will be missed when we turn
back from it to the text of Fletcher. There is an aptness of phrase, an
abstinence from excess, a "plentiful lack" of mere flowery and
superfluous beauties, which we may rather wish than hope to find in the
most famous of Shakespeare's successors. But if not his work, we may be
sure it was his model; a model which he often approached, which he often
studied, but which he never attained. It is never for absolute truth and
fitness of expression, it is always for eloquence and sweetness, for
fluency and fancy, that we find the tragic scenes of Fletcher most
praiseworthy; and the motive or mainspring of interest is usually
anything but natural or simple. Now the motive here is as simple, the
emotion as natural as possible; the author is content to dispense with
all the violent or far-fetched or fantastic excitement from which
Fletcher could hardly ever bring himself completely to abstain. I am not
speaking here of those tragedies in which the hand of Beaumont is
traceable; to these, I need hardly say, the charge is comparatively
inapplicable which may fairly be brought against the unassisted works of
his elder colleague; but in any of the typical tragedies of Fletcher, in
_Thierry and Theodoret_, in _Valentinian_, in _The Double Marriage_, the
scenes which for power and beauty of style may reasonably be compared
with this of the execution of Buckingham will be found more forced in
situation, more fanciful in language than this. Many will be found more
beautiful, many more exciting; the famous interview of Thie