f
character is complete. Indeed, if there is any fault to find with it, it
seems to me that Webster has sinned rather by too much detail than by too
little. We could spare several of the minor characters, though none are
perhaps quite so otiose as Delio, Julio, and others in _The Duchess of
Malfi_. We feel (or at least I feel) that Vittoria's villainous brother
Flamineo is not as Iago and Aaron and De Flores are each in his way, a
thoroughly live creature. We ask ourselves (or I ask myself) what is the
good of the repulsive and not in the least effective presentment of the
Moor Zanche. Cardinal Monticelso is incontinent of tongue and singularly
feeble in deed,--for no rational man would, after describing Vittoria as a
kind of pest to mankind, have condemned her to a punishment which was
apparently little more than residence in a rather disreputable but by no
means constrained boarding-house, and no omnipotent pope would have let
Ludivico loose with a clear inkling of his murderous designs. But when
these criticisms and others are made, _The White Devil_ remains one of the
most glorious works of the period. Vittoria is perfect throughout; and in
the justly-lauded trial scene she has no superior on any stage. Brachiano
is a thoroughly lifelike portrait of the man who is completely besotted
with an evil woman. Flamineo I have spoken of, and not favourably; yet in
literature, if not in life, he is a triumph; and above all the absorbing
tragic interest of the play, which it is impossible to take up without
finishing, has to be counted in. But the real charm of _The White Devil_ is
the wholly miraculous poetry in phrases and short passages which it
contains. Vittoria's dream of the yew-tree, almost all the speeches of the
unfortunate Isabella, and most of her rival's, have this merit. But the
most wonderful flashes of poetry are put in the mouth of the scoundrel
Flamineo, where they have a singular effect. The famous dirge which
Cornelia sings can hardly be spoken of now, except in Lamb's artfully
simple phrase "I never saw anything like it," and the final speeches of
Flamineo and his sister deserve the same endorsement. Nor is even the proud
farewell of the Moor Zanche unworthy. It is impossible to describe the
"whirl of spirits" (as the good old-fashioned phrase has it) into which the
reading of this play sets the reader, except by saying that the cause of
that whirl is the secret of the best Elizabethan writers, and that it i