"He that in the sun is neither beam nor moat, He that's not mad after a petticoat, He for whom poor men's curse dig no grave, He that is neither lord's nor lawyer's slave, He that makes This his sea and That his shore, He that in 's coffin is richer than before, He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff. He that upon his death-bed is a swan. And dead no crow,--he is a Happy Man." As Dekkar wrote under the constant goad of necessity, he seems to have been indifferent to the requirements of art. That "wet-eyed wench, Care," was as absent from his ink as from his soul. Even his best plays, "Old Fortunatus," "The Wonder of a Kingdom," and another whose title cannot be mentioned, are good in particular scenes and characters rather than good as wholes. Occasionally, as in the character of Signior Orlando Friscobaldo, he strikes off a fresh, original, and masterly creation, consistently sustained throughout, and charming us by its lovableness, as well as thrilling us by its power; but generally his sentiment and imagination break upon us in unexpected felicities, strangely better than what surrounds them. These have been culled by the affectionate admiration of Lamb, Hunt, and Hazlitt, and made familiar to all English readers. To prove how much finer, in its essence, his genius was than the genius of so eminent a dramatist as Massinger, we only need to compare Massinger's portions of the play of "The Virgin Martyr" with Dekkar's. The scene between Dorothea and Angelo, in which she recounts her first meeting with him as a "sweet-faced beggar-boy," and the scene in which Angelo brings to Theophilus the basket of fruits and flowers which Dorothea has plucked in Paradise, are inexpressibly beautiful in their exquisite subtlety of imagination and artless elevation of sentiment. It is difficult to understand how a writer capable of such refinements as these should have left no drama which is a part of the classical literature of his country. One of these scenes--that between Dorothea, the Virgin Martyr, and Angelo, an angel who waits upon her in the disguise of a page--we cannot refrain from quoting, familiar as it must be to many readers:-- "_Dor._ My book and taper. "_Ang._ Here, most holy mistress. "_Dor._ Thy voice bends forth such music, that I never Was ravished with a more celestial sound. Were every servant in the world like thee, So full of goodness, angels would come down To dwell with us; thy name is Angelo, And like that name thou art. Get thee to rest; Thy youth with too much watching is oppressed.