those inferences which I have attempted to reach by systematic deduction. [Sidenote: Fletcher easily distinguisht from Shakspere.] In truth, a question of this sort is infinitely more easy of decision where Fletcher is the author against whose claims Shakspeare's are to be balanced, than it could be if the poet's supposed assistant were any other ancient English dramatist. If a drama were presented to us, where, as in some of Shakspeare's received works, he had taken up the ruder sketch of an older poet, and exerted his skill in altering and enlarging it, it would be very difficult indeed to discriminate between the original and his additions. [Sidenote: Shakspere's Histories: their fault.] He has often, especially in his earlier works, and in his histories more particularly, much of that exaggeration of ideas, and that strained and labouring force of expression, which marked the Hercules-like infancy of the English Drama. [Sidenote: Marlowe.] [Sidenote: Marlowe's magnificence like Shakspere sometimes.] The stateliness with which Marlowe paces the tragic stage, and the magnificence of the train of solemn shews which attend him like the captives in a Roman procession of triumph, bear no distant likeness to the shape which Shakspeare's genius assumes in its most lofty moods. And with those also who followed the latter, or trode side by side with him, he has many points of resemblance or identity. [Sidenote: Jonson.] [Sidenote: Massinger.] [Sidenote: Middleton.] Jonson has his seriousness of views, his singleness of purpose, his weight of style, and his "fulness and frequency of sentence;" Massinger has his comprehension of thought, giving birth to an involved and parenthetical mode of construction; and Middleton, if he possesses few of his other qualities, has much of his precision and straightforward earnestness of expression.[57:1] In examining isolated passages with the view of ascertaining whether they were written by Shakspeare or by any of those other [57:2]poets, we should frequently have no ground of decision but the insecure and narrow one of comparative excellence. [Sidenote: Fletcher and Shakspere contrasted.] [Sidenote: They differ in _kind_.] When Fletcher is Shakspeare's only competitor, we are very seldom driven to adopt so doubtful a footing; we are not compelled to reason from difference in _degree_, because we are sensible of a striking dissimilarity in _kind_. [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] We observe ease and elegance of expression opposed to energy and quaintness; brevity is met by dilation, and the obscurity which results from hurry of conception has to be compared with the vagueness proceeding from indistinctness of ideas; lowness, narrowness, and poverty of thought, are contrasted with elevation, richness, and