[Sidenote: Shakspere's obscurity.] The obscurity of other writers is often the mistiness of the evening twilight sinking into night; his is the fitful dimness of the dawn, contending with the retiring darkness, and striving to break out [14:1]into open day. [Sidenote: Fletcher most unlike Shakspere.] Scarcely any writer of Shakspeare's class, or of any other, comes near him either in the faults or the grandeur which are the alternate results of this tendency of mind; but none is more utterly unlike him than the poet to whom, some would say, we must attribute passages in this play so singularly like Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Fletcher diffuse.] Fletcher is diffuse both in his leading thoughts and in his illustrations. [Sidenote: He amplifies, is elaborate, not vigorous.] His intellect did not present truth to him with the instant conviction which it poured on Shakspeare, and his fancy did not force imagery on him with a profusion which might have tempted him to weave its different suggestions into inconsistent forms; he expresses thought deliberately and with amplification; he paints his illustrative pictures with a careful hand and by repeated touches; his style has a pleasing and delicate air which is any thing but vigorous, and often reaches the verge of feebleness. Take a passage or two from the work before us, and do you say, who know Fletcher, whether they be his, or the work of a stronger hand. [Sidenote: Shakspere. Fletcher could not have written these passages,] He only áttributes The faculties of other instruments To his own nerves and act; commands men's ser|vice, And what they gain in't, boot and glory too. ... What man _Thirds_ his own worth, (the case is each of ours,) When that his action's dregged with mind assured 'Tis bad he goes about?--Act I. scene ii. Dowagers, take hands: [15:1]_Let us be widows to our woes_: Delay Commends us to a famishing hope.--Act I. scene i. I do not quote these lines for praise. The meaning of the last quotation in particular is obscure when it stands alone, and not too clear even when it is read in the scene. But I ask you, whether the oracular brevity of each of the sentences is not perfectly in the manner of Shakspeare. A fragment from another beautiful address in the first scene is equally characteristic and less faulty:-- [Sidenote: Shakspere, not Fletcher.]