to imprison fugitive gold_.

Which he who can parse, let him scan, and he who can scan, let him
construe. It is alike incredible and certain that the writer of such
exquisite and blameless verse as that in which the finer scenes of "Old
Fortunatus" and "The Honest Whore" are so smoothly and simply and
naturally written should have been capable of writing whole plays in
this headlong and halting fashion, as helpless and graceless as the
action of a spavined horse or a cripple who should attempt to run.

It is difficult to say what part of these plays should be assigned to
Webster. Their rough realistic humor, with its tone of somewhat
coarse-grained good-nature, strikes the habitual note of Dekker's comic
style: there is nothing of the fierce and scornful intensity, the ardor
of passionate and compressed contempt, which distinguishes the savagely
humorous satire of Webster and of Marston, and makes it hopeless to
determine by intrinsic evidence how little or how much was added by
Webster in the second edition to the original text of Marston's
_Malcontent_: unless--which appears to me not unreasonable--we assume
that the printer of that edition lied or blundered after the manner of
his contemporary kind in attributing on the title-page--as apparently he
meant to attribute--any share in the additional scenes or speeches to
the original author of the play. In any case, the passages thus added to
that grimmest and most sombre of tragicomedies are in such exact keeping
with the previous text that the keenest scent of the veriest blood-hound
among critics could not detect a shade of difference in the savor.

The text of either comedy is generally very fair--as free from
corruption as could reasonably be expected. The text of "Sir Thomas
Wyatt" is corrupt as well as mutilated. Even in Mr. Dyce's second
edition I have noted, not without astonishment, the following flagrant
errors left still to glare on us from the distorted and disfigured page.
In the sixth scene a single speech of Arundel's contains two of the most
palpably preposterous:

The obligation wherein we all stood bound
* * * * *
Cannot be concealed without great reproach
To us and to our issue.

We should of course read "cancelled" for "concealed": the sense of the
context and the exigence of the verse cry alike aloud for the
correction. In the sixteenth line from this we come upon an equally
obvious error:

Advice i