This is as good an instance as may be of the want of taste, of sense of congruity, and of the delicate discrimination that makes style, which strikes and sometimes even shocks us in the Old Dramatists. This was a disadvantage of the age into which they were born, and is perhaps implied in the very advantages it gave them, and of which I have spoken. Even Shakespeare offends sometimes in this way. Good taste, if mainly a gift of nature, is also an acquisition. It was not impossible even then. Samuel Daniel had it, but the cautious propriety with which it embarrassed him has made his drama of “Cleopatra” unapproachable, in more senses than one, in its frigid regularity. His contemplative poetry, thanks to its grave sweetness of style, is among the best in our language. And Daniel wrote the following sentences, which explain better than anything I could say why his contemporaries, in spite of their manifest imperfections, pleased then and continue to please: “Suffer the world to enjoy that which it knows and what it likes, seeing whatsoever form of words doth move delight, and sway the affections of men, in what Scythian sort soever it be disposed and uttered, that is true number, measure, eloquence, and the perfection of speech.” Those men did “move delight, and sway the affections of men,” in a very singular manner, gaining, on the whole, perhaps, more by their liberty than they lost by their license. But it is only genius that can safely profit by this immunity. Form, of which we hear so much, is of great value, but it is not of the highest value, except in combination with other qualities better than itself; and it is worth noting that the modern English poet who seems least to have regarded it, is also the one who has most powerfully moved, swayed, and delighted those who are wise enough to read him. One more passage and I have done. It is from the same play of “Old Fortunatus,” a favorite of mine. The Soldan of Babylon shows Fortunatus his treasury, or cabinet of bric-à-brac:--