utiful quality is more duly tempered and toned down to more rational
compliance with the demands of reason and probability, whether natural
or dramatic--is here to be recognized in the redemption of a cowardly
bully, and his conversion from a lying ruffian into a loyal and worthy
sort of fellow. The same gallant spirit of sympathy with all noble
homeliness of character, whether displayed in joyful search of adventure
or in manful endurance of suffering and wrong, informs the less
excellently harmonious and well-built play which bears the truly and
happily English title of "Fortune by Land and Sea." It has less romantic
interest than the later adventures of the valiant Bess and her Spencer
with the amorous King of Fez and his equally erratic consort; not to
mention the no less susceptible Italians among whom their lot is
subsequently cast: but it is a model of natural and noble simplicity, of
homely and lively variety. There is perhaps more of the roughness and
crudity of style and treatment which might be expected from Rowley than
of the humaner and easier touch of Heywood in the conduct of the action:
the curious vehemence and primitive brutality of social or domestic
tyranny may recall the use of the same dramatic motives by George
Wilkins in "The Miseries of Enforced Marriage": but the mixture or
fusion of tender and sustained emotion with the national passion for
enterprise and adventure is pleasantly and peculiarly characteristic of
Heywood.

In "The Wise Woman of Hogsdon" the dramatic ability of Heywood, as
distinct from his more poetic and pathetic faculty, shows itself at its
best and brightest. There are not many much better examples of the sort
of play usually defined as a comedy of intrigue, but more properly
definable as a comedy of action. The special risk to which a purveyor of
this kind of ware must naturally be exposed is the tempting danger of
sacrificing propriety and consistency of character to effective and
impressive suggestions or developments of situation or event; the
inclination to think more of what is to happen than of the persons it
must happen to--the characters to be actively or passively affected by
the concurrence or the evolution of circumstances. Only to the very
greatest of narrative or dramatic artists in creation and composition
can this perilous possibility be all but utterly unknown. Poets of the
city no less than poets of the court, the homely Heywood as well as the
fashionable Fl