from the common stock of stage tradition: it is the vivid variety of
incident and intrigue, the freshness and ease and vigor of the style,
the clear straightforward energy and vivacity of the action, that the
reader finds most praiseworthy in the best comic work of such ready
writers as Middleton and Dekker. The dialogue has sometimes touches of
real humor and flashes of genuine wit: but its readable and enjoyable
quality is generally independent of these. Very witty writing may be
very dreary reading, for want of natural animation and true dramatic
movement: and in these qualities at least the rough-and-ready work of
our old dramatists is seldom if ever deficient.

It is, however, but too probable that the reader's enjoyment may be
crossed with a dash of exasperation when he finds a writer of real
genius so reckless of fame and self-respect as the pressure of want or
the weariness of overwork seems but too often and too naturally to have
made too many of the great dramatic journeymen whose powers were half
wasted or half worn out in the struggle for bare bread. No other excuse
than this can be advanced for the demerit of Middleton's next comedy.
Had the author wished to show how well and how ill he could write at his
worst and at his best, he could have given no fairer proof than by the
publication of two plays issued under his name in the same year 1608.
"The Family of Love" is, in my judgment, unquestionably and incomparably
the worst of Middleton's plays: very coarse, very dull, altogether
distasteful and ineffectual. As a religious satire it is so utterly
pointless as to leave no impression of any definite folly or distinctive
knavery in the doctrine or the practice of the particular sect held up
by name to ridicule: an obscure body of feather-headed fanatics,
concerning whom we can only be certain that they were decent and
inoffensive in comparison with the yelling Yahoos whom the scandalous
and senseless license of our own day allows to run and roar about the
country unmuzzled and unwhipped.

There is much more merit in the broad comedy of "Your Five Gallants," a
curious burlesque study of manners and morals not generally commendable
for imitation. The ingenious and humorous invention which supplies a
centre for the picture and a pivot for the action is most singularly
identical with the device of a modern detective as recorded by the
greatest English writer of his day. "The Butcher's Story," told to
Dickens b