at
unmitigated grossness which, according to Burke's famous aphorism, is
responsible for half the evil of vice. He is still alive to generous and
tender emotions, though it can scarcely be said that his morality has
much substance in it. It is a sentiment, not a conviction, and covers
without quenching many ugly and brutal emotions.

In Fletcher's wild gallants, still adorned by a touch of the chivalrous;
reckless, immoral, but scarcely cynical; not sceptical as to the
existence of virtue, but only admitting morality by way of parenthesis
to the habitual current of their thoughts, we recognise the kind of
stuff from which to frame the Cavaliers who will follow Rupert and be
crushed by Cromwell. A characteristic sentiment which occurs constantly
in the drama of the period represents the soldier out of work. We are
incessantly treated to lamentations upon the ingratitude of the
comfortable citizens who care nothing for the men to whom they owed
their security. The political history of the times explains the
popularity of such complaints. Englishmen were fretting under their
enforced abstinence from the exciting struggles on the Continent. There
was no want of Dugald Dalgettys returning from the wars to afford models
for the military braggart or the bluff honest soldier, both of whom go
swaggering through so many of the plays of the time. Clarendon in his
Life speaks of the temptations which beset him from mixing with the
military society of the time. There was a large and increasing class,
no longer finding occupation in fighting Spaniards and searching for
Eldorado, and consequently, in the Yankee phrase, 'spoiling for a
fight.' When the time comes, they will be ready enough to fight
gallantly, and to show an utter incapacity for serious discipline. They
will meet the citizens, whom they have mocked so merrily, and find that
reckless courage and spasmodic chivalry do not exhaust the
qualifications for military success.

Massinger represents a different turn of sentiment which would be
encouraged in some minds by the same social conditions. Instead of
abandoning himself frankly to the stream of youthful sentiment, he feels
that it has a dangerous aspect. The shadow of coming evils was already
dark enough to suggest various forebodings. But he is also a moraliser
by temperament. Mr. Ward says that his strength is owing in a great
degree to his appreciation of the great moral forces; and the remark is
only a confirmation