He wrote seven comedies and eight tragedies that have come down to us, and probably others that have perished. Nearly all his comedies are formless and coarse, but with what seems to me a kind of stiff and wilful coarseness, as if he were trying to make his personages speak in what he supposed to be their proper dialect, in which he himself was unpractised, having never learned it in those haunts, familiar to most of his fellow-poets, where it was vernacular. His characters seem, indeed, types, and he frankly proclaims himself an idealist in the dedication of “The Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois” to Sir Thomas Howard, where he says, “And for the authentical truth of either person or action, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a Poem whose subject is not truth, but things like truth?” Of his comedies, “All Fools” is by general consent the best. It is less lumpish than the others, and is, on the whole, lively and amusing. In his comedies he indulges himself freely in all that depreciation of woman which had been so long traditional with the sex which has the greatest share in making them what they are. But he thought he was being comic, and there is, on the whole, no more depressing sight than a naturally grave man under that delusion. His notion of love, too, is coarse and animal, or rather the notion he thinks proper to express through his characters. And yet in his comedies there are two passages, one in praise of love, and the other of woman, certainly among the best of their kind. The first is a speech of Valerio in “All Fools:”-- “I tell thee love is Nature’s second sun Causing a spring of virtues where he shines; And as without the sun, the world’s great eye, All colors, beauties, both of art and nature, Are given in vain to men, so without love All beauties bred in women are in vain, All virtues born in men lie buried; For love informs them as the sun doth colors; And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers, So love, fair shining in the inward man, Brings forth in him the honorable fruits Of valor, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts, Brave resolution and divine discourse: O, ’t is the paradise, the heaven of earth! And didst thou know the comfort of two hearts In one delicious harmony united; As to enjoy one joy, think both one thought, Live both one life and therein double life, * * * * * Thou wouldst abhor thy tongue for blasphemy.” And now let me read to you a passage in praise of women from “The Gentleman Usher.” It is not great poetry, but it has fine touches of discrimination both in feeling and expression:-- “Let no man value at a little price A virtuous woman’s counsel; her winged spirit Is feathered oftentimes with heavenly words, And, like her beauty, ravishing and pure; The weaker body still the stronger soul.