Spanish Friar_. In _Wit
Without Money_, though it is as usual amusing, the stage preference for a
"roaring boy," a senseless crack-brained spendthrift, appears perhaps a
little too strongly. _The Beggar's Bush_ is interesting because of its
early indications of cant language, connecting it with Brome's _Jovial
Crew_, and with Dekker's thieves' Latin pamphlets. But the faults and the
merits of Fletcher have scarcely found better expression anywhere than in
_The Humorous Lieutenant_. Celia is his masterpiece in the delineation of
the type of girl outlined above, and awkward as her double courtship by
Demetrius and his father Antigonus is, one somehow forgives it, despite the
nauseous crew of go-betweens of both sexes whom Fletcher here as elsewhere
seems to take a pleasure in introducing. As for the Lieutenant he is quite
charming; and even the ultra-farcical episode of his falling in love with
the king owing to a philtre is well carried off. Then follows the
delightful pastoral of _The Faithful Shepherdess_, which ranks with
Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_ and with _Comus_, as the three chiefs of its style
in English. _The Loyal Subject_ falls a little behind, as also does _The
Mad Lover_; but _Rule a Wife and have a Wife_ again rises to the first
class. Inferior to Shakespere in the power of transcending without
travestying human affairs, to Jonson in sharply presented humours, to
Congreve and Sheridan in rattling fire of dialogue, our authors have no
superior in half-farcical, half-pathetic comedy of a certain kind, and they
have perhaps nowhere shown their power better than in the picture of the
Copper Captain and his Wife. The flagrant absurdity of _The Laws of Candy_
(which put the penalty of death on ingratitude, and apparently fix no
criterion of what ingratitude is, except the decision of the person who
thinks himself ungratefully treated), spoils a play which is not worse
written than the rest. But in _The False One_, based on Egyptian history
just after Pompey's death, and _Valentinian_, which follows with a little
poetical license the crimes and punishment of that Emperor, a return is
made to pure tragedy--in both cases with great success. The magnificent
passage which Hazlitt singled out from _The False One_ is perhaps the
author's or authors' highest attempt in tragic declamation, and may be
considered to have stopped not far short of the highest tragic poetry.

[49] It may perhaps be well to mention that the referenc