None of this incredulous aversion of which I spoke do we feel in reading Otway's _Venice Preserved_. Dryden averred that he could not move the feelings as could Otway, who, while inferior in reflection, poetic expression, and versification, was a greater master of pathos and passion. On the latter acts of _Venice Preserved_ we are hurried breathlessly, as by the impetus of a mighty wave, shaken to the very depths--yet not, I think, unendurably, as by the hideous and gratuitous cruelty of Ferdinand exercised upon a little-offending sister in Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_, where horror upon horror is accumulated upon her head, to thrill and harrow us; and so powerful is the poet that only those can experience the pleasure which art should extract from pain, who enjoy the sight of an execution, or sniff gladly in a torture-chamber the fumes of spilt blood. We begin to breathe freely only when the monster, having filled up the measure of his unnatural malice, utters the fine line that first shows a faint relenting toward humanity: Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young. The Elizabethans were superior to their successors in isolated passages, and for the most part incomparably so in their lyrics. Therefore, they are well represented in the "Dramatic specimens" of Charles Lamb. Otway could not be so represented; his excellence lies in the noble organic harmony and sanity of his whole creation, as in its emotional intensity, from which little can be detached that shall be admirable out of its own vital relation. I do not say that Dryden and Otway never attempt to enlist interest illegitimately in their tragedies by relying upon strained situations, and abnormal traits of character; but I believe they do so less than their predecessors. And I hardly think Mr. Symonds' excuse for the Elizabethans a valid one, when he urges that the men and women of that time were really as inconsistent as the playwrights represent them. I do not know that we have any historical instance of just that queer kind of inconsistency which we find in their pages, though I admit that not only history, but our own experience also, furnishes very strange examples of self-contradiction. Yet one can only say that the examples of it in the older drama are not, for the most part, rendered credible and probable to us. And, so far, therefore, this is not a drama which can be always and universally interesting, except in the supreme examples. In the same way Otway's and Wycherley's indecencies would hardly (one supposes) interest a Victorian audience. The intellectual, or ethical, atmosphere must not be too unfamiliar and alien.