the moral sense than Euripides: while as a dramatic artist--an artist in
character, action, and emotion--the degenerate tragedian of Athens,
compared to the second tragic dramatist of England, is as a mutilated
monkey to a well-made man. No better test of critical faculty could be
required by the most exacting scrutiny of probation than is afforded by
the critic's professed or professional estimate of those great poets
whose names are not consecrated--or desecrated--by the conventional
applause, the factitious adoration, of a tribunal whose judgments are
dictated by obsequious superstition and unanimous incompetence. When
certain critics inform a listening world that they do not admire
Marlowe and Webster--they admire Shakespeare and Milton, we know at once
that it is not the genius of Shakespeare--it is the reputation of
Shakespeare that they admire. It is not the man that they bow down to:
it is the bust that they crouch down before. They would worship Shirley
as soon as Shakespeare--Glover as soon as Milton--Byron as soon as
Shelley--Ponsard as soon as Hugo--Longfellow as soon as Tennyson--if the
tablet were as showily emblazoned, the inscription as pretentiously
engraved.

The nobility of spirit and motive which is so distinguishing a mark of
Webster's instinctive genius or natural disposition of mind is proved by
his treatment of facts placed on record by contemporary annalists in the
tragic story of Vittoria Accoramboni, Duchess of Bracciano. That story
would have been suggestive, if not tempting, to any dramatic poet: and
almost any poet but Shakespeare or Webster would have been content to
accept the characters and circumstances as they stood nakedly on record,
and adapt them to the contemporary stage of England with such dexterity
and intelligence as he might be able to command. But, as Shakespeare
took the savage legend of Hamlet, the brutal story of Othello, and
raised them from the respective levels of the Heimskringla and the