the most curious and amusing pieces of information to be gathered from
the "Bibliographer's Manual"; and it is with a sense of disappointment
proportionate to this sense of curiosity that they will discover the
non-existence of such a comedy, and the existence in its stead of a mere
pamphlet in prose issued under that more than promising title: which
yet, if attainable, ought surely to be reprinted, however dubious may be
its claim to the honor of a great poet's authorship. In no case can it
possibly be of less interest or value than the earliest extant
publication of that poet--"The Transformed Metamorphosis." Its first
editor has given proof of very commendable perseverance and fairly
creditable perspicacity in his devoted attempt at elucidation of this
most astonishing and indescribable piece of work: but no interpretation
of it can hope to be more certain or more trustworthy than any possible
exposition of Blake's "Jerusalem" or the Apocalypse of St. John. All
that can be said by a modest and judicious reader is that any one of
these three effusions may unquestionably mean anything that anybody
chooses to read into the text; that a Luther is as safe as a Loyola,
that a Renan is no safer than a Cumming, from the chance of confutation
as a less than plausible exponent of its possible significance: but
that, however indisputable it may be that they were meant to mean
something, not many human creatures who can be trusted to go abroad
without a keeper will be likely to pretend to a positive understanding
of what that significance may be. To me, the most remarkable point in
Tourneur's problematic poem is the fact that this most monstrous example
of senseless and barbarous jargon that ever disfigured English type
should have been written--were it even for a wager--by one of the
purest, simplest, most exquisite and most powerful writers in the
language.

This extraordinary effusion is the single and certainly the sufficient
tribute of a great poet, and a great master of the purest and the
noblest English, to the most monstrous and preposterous taste or fashion
of his time. As the product of an eccentric imbecile it would be no less
curious than Stanihurst's Virgil: as the work of Cyril Tourneur it is
indeed "a miracle instead of wit." For it cannot be too often repeated
that in mere style, in commanding power and purity of language, in
positive instinct of expression and direct eloquence of inspiration, the
author of "The