him malicious beyond the scope of human cruelty and outrage. It was inherent apparently in this poet's conception of life that evil should be proclaimed predominant. His cynicism stands self-revealed in the sentence he puts into Antonio's mouth, condemning Vendice to death:-- You that would murder him would murder me. Even justice, in his view, rests on egotism. And yet Tourneur has endowed Vendice with redeeming qualities. The hero of this crooked play is true to his ideal of duty, true to his sense of honour. He dies contented because he has perfected his revenge, preserved his sister's chastity, and converted his mother at the poniard's point. Where all are so bad and base, Vendice appears by comparison sublime. If we are to admire tone and keeping in a work of art, we certainly find it here; for the moral gradations are relentlessly scaled within the key of sin and pollution. The only character who stirs a pulse of sympathy is vicious. Castiza is a mere lay figure, and her mother one of the most repulsive personages of the Jacobean drama. Webster presents a larger mass of dramatic work to the critic. Beside the tragedies included in this volume, he wrote another tragedy, _Appius and Virginia_, a tragi-comedy entitled _The Devil's Law-case_, and is said to have had a share in the history-play of _Sir Thomas Wyatt_, and in three comedies, _Northward Ho, Westward Ho,_ and _A Cure for a Cuckold. The Devil's Law-case_ shows how much this playwright depended on material supplied him, and how little he could trust his own inventive faculty. It starts with an involved plot of Italian deceit and contemplated crime, which Webster develops in his careful but not very lucid manner. We feel that we are working toward some sinister _dénouement_, when suddenly, by a twist of the hand, a favourable turn is given to events, and the play ends happily--violating probability, artistic tone, and the ethical integrity of the chief character, Romelio. From _The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt_ in its present mangled and misshapen form it is impossible to disengage Webster's handiwork with any certainty. The same may be said about the brisk and well-wrought pieces _Northward Ho_ and _Westward Ho_. Yet I see no reason to dispute Webster's share in these three plays. _A Cure for a Cuckold_[2] requires more particular comment. This comedy was ascribed by the publisher Kirkman to John Webster and William Rowley. But the ascription stands for absolutely nothing, unless we can discover corroborative internal evidence of Webster's collaboration. Such evidence I do not find, although there is certainly nothing in the play to disprove Kirkman's assertions. It should be added that a delicate little piece of serio-comic workmanship lies embedded in the otherwise trashy _Cure for a Cuckold_. Mr. Edmund Gosse early saw and twice pointed out how easily this play within the