drama to the comparative
barbarism of the couplet. This apparent loss of ear and rhythm-sense has
been commented on already in reference to Lovelace, Suckling (himself a
dramatist), and others of the minor Caroline poets; but it is far more
noticeable in drama, and resulted in the production, by some of the
playwrights of the transition period under Charles I. and Charles II., of
some of the most amorphous botches in the way of style that disfigure
English literature.

With the earliest and best work of Philip Massinger, however, we are at any
rate chronologically still at a distance from the lamentable close of a
great period. He was born in 1583, being the son of Arthur Massinger, a
"servant" (pretty certainly in the gentle sense of service) to the Pembroke
family. In 1602 he was entered at St. Alban's Hall in Oxford: he is
supposed to have left the university about 1609, and may have begun writing
plays soon. But the first definite notice of his occupation or indeed of
his life that we have is his participation (about 1614) with Daborne and
Field in a begging letter to the well-known manager Henslowe for an advance
of five pounds on "the new play," nor was anything of his printed or
positively known to be acted till 1622, the date of _The Virgin Martyr_.
From that time onwards he appears frequently as an author, though many of
his plays were not printed till after his death in 1640. But nothing is
known of his life. He was buried on 18th March in St. Saviour's, Southwark,
being designated as a "stranger,"--that is to say, not a parishioner.

Thirty-seven plays in all, or thirty-eight if we add Mr. Bullen's
conjectural discovery, _Sir John Barneveldt_, are attributed to Massinger;
but of these many have perished, Massinger having somehow been specially
obnoxious to the ravages of Warburton's cook. Eighteen survive; twelve of
which were printed during the author's life. Massinger was thus an
industrious and voluminous author, one of many points which make Professor
Minto's comparison of him to Gray a little surprising. He was, both at
first and later, much given to collaboration,--indeed, there is a theory,
not without colour from contemporary rumour, that he had nearly if not
quite as much to do as Beaumont with Fletcher's great work. But oddly
enough the plays which he is known to have written alone do not, as in
other cases, supply a very sure test of what is his share in those which he
wrote conjointly. _The Old La