tragedy; he has touched and transfigured its note of meditative music into a chord of passionate austerity and prophetic awe. This was the key in which all previous poets had played upon the metre which Webster was to put to so deeply different an use. Walking in a valley greene, Spred with Flora summer queene: Where shee heaping all hir graces, Niggard seem'd in other places: Spring it was, and here did spring All that nature forth can bring. (_Tullies Loue_, p. 53, ed. 1589.) Nights were short, and daies were long; Blossoms on the Hauthorns hung: Philomele (Night-Musiques King) Tolde the comming of the spring. (_Grosart's Barnfield_ [1876], p. 97.) On a day (alack the day!) Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air. (_Love's Labor's Lost_, act iv., sc. iii.) And now let us hear Webster. Hearke, now every thing is still, The Scritch-Owle, and the whistler shrill, Call upon our Dame, aloud, And bid her quickly don her shrowd: Much you had of Land and rent, Your length in clay's now competent. A long war disturb'd your minde, Here your perfect peace is sign'd. Of what is't, fooles make such vaine keeping? Sin their conception, their birth, weeping: Their life, a generall mist of error, Their death, a hideous storme of terror. Strew your haire with powders sweete: Don cleane linnen, bath[e] your feete, And (the foule feend more to checke) A crucifixe let blesse your necke: 'Tis now full tide 'tweene night and day, End your groane, and come away. (_The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy_: 1623: sig. K, K 2.) The toll of the funereal rhythm, the heavy chime of the solemn and simple verse, the mournful menace and the brooding presage of its note, are but the covering, as it were, or the outer expression, of the tragic significance which deepens and quickens and kindles to its close. Aeschylus and Dante have never excelled, nor perhaps have Sophocles and Shakespeare ever equalled in impression of terrible effect, the fancy of bidding a live woman array herself in the raiment of the grave, and do for her own living body the offices done for a corpse by the ministers attendant on the dead.