tin versification; the rather overpraised _Ordinary_
of Cartwright, Ben Jonson's most praised son; _The City Match_ by Dr.
Jasper Mayne. All these figure in the last, and most of them have figured
in the earlier editions of Dodsley, with a few others hardly worth separate
notice. Mr. Bullen's delightful volumes of _Old Plays_ add the capital play
of _Dick of Devonshire_ (see _ante_), the strange _Two Tragedies in One_ of
Robert Yarington, three lively comedies deriving their names from originals
of one kind or another, _Captain Underwit_, _Sir Giles Goosecap_, and _Dr.
Dodipoll_, with one or two more. One single play remains to be mentioned,
both because of its intrinsic merit, and because of the controversy which
has arisen respecting the question of priority between it and Ben Jonson's
_Alchemist_. This is _Albumazar_, attributed to one Thomas Tomkis, and in
all probability a university play of about the middle of James's reign.
There is nothing in it equal to the splendid bursts of Sir Epicure Mammon,
or the all but first-rate comedy of Face, Dol, and Subtle, and of Abel
Drugger; but Gifford, in particular, does injustice to it, and it is on the
whole a very fair specimen of the work of the time. Nothing indeed is more
astonishing than the average goodness of that work, even when all
allowances are made; and unjust as such a mere enumeration as these last
paragraphs have given must be, it would be still more unjust to pass over
in silence work so varied and so full of talent.[63]

[63] A note may best serve for the plays of Thomas Goff (1591-1629), acted
at his own college, Christ Church, but not published till after his death.
The three most noteworthy, _The Raging Turk_, _The Courageous Turk_, and
the _Tragedy of Orestes_, were republished together in 1656, and a comedy,
_The Careless Shepherdess_, appeared in the same year. The tragedies, and
especially _The Raging Turk_, have been a byword for extravagant frigidity,
though, as they have never been printed in modern times, and as the
originals are rare, they have not been widely known at first hand. A
perusal justifies the worst that has been said of them: though Goff wrote
early enough to escape the Caroline dry-rot in dramatic versification. His
lines are stiff, but they usually scan.

CHAPTER XII

MINOR CAROLINE PROSE

The greatest, beyond all doubt, of the minor writers of the Caroline period
in prose is Robert Burton. Less deliberately quaint than F