what the circumstances of the literary life then were, is quite enough to explain the hard struggle he seems to have undergone. It may be said that I am comparing a mighty genius with a second-rate intellect. Are there any points in which Massinger can hold his own against Shakspere? Granted that he falls short in passion, imagination,(442) wit, diction, rhythm, lyric rapture, where does he shine? It may at first hearing sound snobbish to point out that he was a University man, but a good deal of truth lies hidden in that simple phrase. Shakspere’s plays are marked by many faults of construction, taste, and detail; he who never blotted a line should certainly, as Ben Jonson remarked, have blotted a good many. It always seems to me that this is a line of thought which is too much ignored by those who believe that Shakspere wrote his own plays, and that Bacon had nothing to do with them. The Baco-Shaksperians point, and very justly, to the surprising knowledge and culture shown in the plays; they refuse to believe that all this can have come from the brain of a Warwickshire rustic, forgetting the faults which are so glaring, faults which are precisely those which a learned and accurate scholar like Bacon would have avoided. Now Massinger is a correct and artistic writer. The little tricks of style which were so dear to his mighty predecessor, the pun, the alliteration,(443) the conceit, the verbal quibble,(444) are far less obtrusive; he is free from that affectation and precious obscurity which are so marked in Shakspere’s later style. And one small point may be noticed in passing here, as an indication of good breeding: the characters in Massinger very seldom address one another by name. It is significant that Greedy and Overreach both offend in this way.(445) Though it is true that these faults were common to the age, they are so marked in Shakspere that it is impossible to ignore them in any estimate of the man. In the details of style, then, Massinger can claim credit for being more correct. In a word, what he lacks in genius and poetry he supplies to a certain extent by good taste and education. He shares this advantage with his age, which was learning to correct the errors of the past; the English language was advancing rapidly to more maturity and balance than it had in the previous generation.