s
moral collapse of all energy in the face of death in the two characters
is significant. Massinger would have carried out the scene in quite
another tone. Some of the Fletcher scenes in this play, in which he has
an unusually large share, are surprisingly good, and remind us of
Fletcher at his best, in _Philaster_ and the earlier plays. He fails
here, as he always does, in the delineation of character. Nowhere is
this break-down more characteristic than in Buckingham and Barnavelt. It
gives the end of our play quite a wrench, and deprives Barnavelt of the
sympathies which we had been forced to turn on him through his intrepid
behaviour in the great trial scene. We had almost gained the conviction
that his aims were really pure, and here we are called on to witness his
utter collapse, in which he almost whines for pardon for his sins, and,
like all worthless fellows without character seems actually to soften in
gratitude to the man who sent him to his death.

This conclusion, I say, weakens the dramatic power of the close, but it
does not prevent Sir John Barnavelt from occupying a high place among
our dramatic treasures. R. BOYLE.

ST. PETERSBURG,
New Year's Eve, 1882.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Vid. Appendix.

[2] Reprinted in Mrs. Bray's _Tamar and the Tavy_.

[3] Printed in _The Court and Times uf Charles the First_, &c. Edited,
with an introduction and notes, by the author of _Memoirs of Sophia
Dorothea, Consort of George I_., &c. (Vol. i. p. 104. London, 1848.)
8vo.

[4] Mr. Fleay thinks that _Dick of Devonshire_ was written by
R. Davenport. "The conduct of the plot," he observes, "the
characterisation, the metre, the language are very like the _City
Nightcap_." The reader must judge between us. I find it difficult to
believe that Davenport could have preserved throughout five acts such
clear directness of style.

[5] The old form of "pop-gun."

[6] Xeres.

[7] Cadiz.

[8] Span. picaro, a rogue or thief. Nares quotes several instances of
"picaro" and "picaroon" from our early writers.

[9] It would be an improvement to read "enkindled," or "kindled at the
first."

[10] Cf. Heywood's _Faire Maid of the West_: part one (Works, II. 306),
"And joyne with you a ginge of lusty ladds." The meaning is "band,
company." The word is not uncommon among Elizabethan writers, and is
also found much earlier.

[11] Span. caraca, a ship of large size. Nares quotes from Beaumont and
Fletcher.