of its diction, the fiery majesty of its
verse. There never was such a thunder-storm of a play: it quickens and
exhilarates the sense of the reader as the sense of a healthy man or boy
is quickened and exhilarated by the rolling music of a tempest and the
leaping exultation of its flames. The strange and splendid genius which
inspired it seems now not merely to feel that it does well to be angry,
but to take such keen enjoyment in that feeling, to drink such deep
delight from the inexhaustible wellsprings of its wrath, that rage and
scorn and hatred assume something of the rapturous quality more
naturally proper to faith and hope and love. There is not a breath of
rant, not a pad of bombast, in the declamation which fills its dazzling
scenes with fire: the language has no more perfect models of style than
the finest of its more sustained and elevated passages. The verse is
unlike any other man's in the solemn passion of its music: if it reminds
us of Shakespeare's or of Webster's, it is simply by right of kinship
and equality of power with the most vivid and sonorous verse that rings
from the lips of Coriolanus or of Timon, of Brachiano or the Duchess of
Malfy; not by any servility of discipleship or reverberation of an
imitative echo. It is so rich and full and supple, so happy in its
freedom and so loyal in its instinct, that its veriest audacities and
aberrations have an indefinable harmony of their own. Even if we admit
that Tourneur is to Webster but as Webster is to Shakespeare, we must
allow, by way of exception to this general rule of relative rank, that
in his noblest hours of sustained inspiration he is at least the equal
of the greater dramatist on the score of sublime and burning eloquence,
poured forth in verse like the rushing of a mighty wind, with fitful
breaks and pauses that do but enhance the majestic sweetness and
perfection of its forward movement, the strenuous yet spontaneous energy
of its triumphant ardor in advance.

To these magnificent qualities of poetry and passion no critic of the
slightest note or the smallest pretention to poetic instinct has ever
failed to do ample and cordial justice: but to the truthfulness and the
power of Cyril Tourneur as a dramatic student and painter of human
character not only has such justice not generally been done, but grave
injustice has been too generally shown. It is true that not all the
agents in the evolution of his greater tragedy are equally or
suffic