chivalrous character and adventure which (if he never can be said to be
fully up to its level in the matter of poetic expression) was evidently a
favourite and constant motive with him. In short, Heywood, even at his
worst, is a writer whom it is impossible not to like. His very considerable
talent, though it stopped short of genius, was united with a pleasant and
genial temper, and little as we know of his life, his dedications and
prefaces make us better acquainted with his personality than we are with
that of much more famous men.

No greater contrast is possible than that between our last two names--Day
and Tourneur. Little is known of them: Day was at Cambridge in 1592-3;
Tourneur shared in the Cadiz voyage of 1625 and died on its return. Both,
it is pretty certain, were young men at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and
were influenced strongly by the literary fashions set by greater men than
themselves. But whereas Day took to the graceful fantasticalities of Lyly
and to the not very savage social satire of Greene, Tourneur (or Turner)
addressed himself to the most ferocious school of sub-Marlovian tragedy,
and to the rugged and almost unintelligible satire of Marston. Something
has been said of his effort in the latter vein, the _Transformed
Metamorphosis_. His two tragedies, _The Atheist's Tragedy_ and _The
Revenger's Tragedy_, have been rather variously judged. The concentration
of gloomy and almost insane vigour in _The Revenger's Tragedy_, the
splendid poetry of a few passages which have long ago found a home in the
extract books, and the less separable but equally distinct poetic value of
scattered lines and phrases, cannot escape any competent reader. But, at
the same time, I find it almost impossible to say anything for either play
as a whole, and here only I come a long way behind Mr. Swinburne in his
admiration of our dramatists. The _Atheist's Tragedy_ is an inextricable
imbroglio of tragic and comic scenes and characters, in which it is hardly
possible to see or follow any clue; while the low extravagance of all the
comedy and the frantic rant of not a little of the tragedy combine to
stifle the real pathos of some of the characters. _The Revenger's Tragedy_
is on a distinctly higher level; the determination of Vindice to revenge
his wrongs, and the noble and hapless figure of Castiza, could not have
been presented as they are presented except by a man with a distinct strain
of genius, both in conception an