excruciating experience. The rare and faint indications that the writer was or had been an humorist and a poet serve only to bring into fuller relief the reckless and shameless incompetence of the general workmanship.[1] [Footnote 1: As I have given elsewhere a sample of Dekker at his best, I give here a sample taken at random from the opening of this unhappy play: Hie thee to Naples, Rufman; thou shalt find A prince there newly crowned, aptly inclined To any bendings: lest his youthful brows Reach at stars only, weigh down his loftiest boughs With leaden plummets, poison his best thoughts with taste Of things most sensual: if the heart once waste, The body feels consumption: good or bad kings Breed subjects like them: clear streams flow from clear springs. Turn therefore Naples to a puddle: with a civil Much promising face, and well oiled, play the court devil. The vigorous melody of these "masculine numbers" is not more remarkable for its virile force and honied fluency than is the lighter dialogue of the play for such brilliant wit or lambent humor as flashes out in pleasantries like this: _King_. What are you, and whence come you? _Rufman_. From Helvetia. _Spendola_. What hell says he? _Jovinelli_. Peace; you shall know hot hell [_sic_] time enough. "I hope here be proofs" that my strictures on the worst work of a poet whose best work I treasure so heartily, and whose best qualities I rate so highly, are rather too sparing than too severe.]