For some time Ford merely assisted other dramatists in their compositions; it was not until 1628 that he produced “The Lover’s Melancholy,” which he dedicated to the “Noble Society of Gray’s Inn.” This play was suggested by Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” from which Ford, as well as Sterne, freely borrowed. After describing the rapidity, the impelling necessity with which the works of Massinger and Jonson were produced, it is agreeable to think of an author who was able “to write up to his own ideal.” Ford not only disdained all pandering to the public taste, but even regarded the emolument arising from his plays as a secondary consideration, after he was once fairly established in his profession. Nor was it then thought incompatible to unite the character of a play-writer with that of a lawyer. The Templars, and other learned societies, were the great patrons of the drama. Often were the quaint halls of the Temple and of Gray’s Inn formed into temporary theatres for some favourite piece; and the talk of the young Templar was always of Blackfriars, the Curtain, or the Rose--of Will Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, and Ford. Ford conceived that his powers lay in the delineation of dark and horrible crimes; in the exhibition of a mysterious and hopeless melancholy. The moral of his dramas, whatever aspect it may bear in our days, was intended to be good; but the grossness of the times marred that intention, and his works show how impossible it is to be at once moral and indelicate. Even _Penthea_ in the “Broken Heart,” exquisitely as her character is drawn, lessens our sympathy by expressions which no woman of the present day would utter in the presence of a lover, and that lover for ever severed from her by her indissoluble bonds with another man. But Ford wrote in the spirit and language of his time, with a high purpose, and a coarse taste. “His genius,” it has been well remarked, “is as a telescope, ill-adapted for neighbouring objects, but powerful to bring within the sphere of vision what nature has wisely placed at an unsociable distance.”[237] Footnote 237: Hartley Coleridge. He chose for the subject of his historical play the story of “Perkin Warbeck.” With great skill he made this hero believe in his own royalty; and he has left in this play, according to the opinion of good judges, the best specimen of an historical tragedy after Shakspeare.