It has been said that Massinger is hard and metallic, and devoid of pathos. This charge, again, is largely true. You will not find in him scenes which clutch the heart like those of _Dr. Faustus_, or _The Duchess of Malfi_, or _The Broken Heart_, or _The Maid’s Tragedy_, or _The Wife for a Month_; you will not find the sublimity of Ordella’s self-sacrifice in _Thierry and Theodoret_, or the chivalry of _A Fair Quarrel_; still less will you find anything so appalling as the end of _King Lear_, or _Othello_, or _Romeo and Juliet_. There is plenty of passion in Massinger; like the legendary lion, he lashes with his tail, and you can almost see him in the act; but his rhetoric does not entirely carry you away. Let me recall the fine passage which was quoted just now from _The Roman Actor_.(192) I hope everyone will allow its eloquence; but the repetition of the commonplace phrase, “we cannot help it,”(193) natural and forcible as it is, falls short of the ideal grandeur at which the passage aims. We feel that Fletcher could have made a finer thing of the prison-scene in The _Emperor of the East_. It is significant that the most tender passage in Massinger,(194) where Leonora bids Almira take consolation, has been assigned by some to Fletcher. In other words, Massinger is not in the front rank of genius, but no one would claim for him such a place. Again, one might urge that his plays are not stores of worldly wisdom, like Shakspere’s; his aphorisms are not deep; they do not bite.(195) Consequently he does not lend himself to quotation. Yet this does not of necessity detract from his greatness. No one would question the excellence of the _Waverley Novels_, but Leslie Stephen has pointed out that we only make one quotation from Scott’s novels.(196) Aristotle has told us that “excessive brilliance of diction obscures characters and sentiments.”(197) There are few passages of high poetical emotion in Massinger; there is little magic in the rhythm of individual lines. Like most of his contemporaries he shows at times a strange insensibility to smooth rhythm in the heroic couplet. He has an anapæstic lilt in various parts of the line, inherited from Shakspere, and found in Milton’s early poems, which is not ineffective in its way, and which seems to have aimed at varying the monotony of the ten-syllable line.(198) He has not much power of rhyme,(199) nor are his plays studded with such lyrics as Shakspere and Fletcher could write upon occasion.(200)