me to raise the latter to that higher class of tragedy which represents the fatal conflict of what is noblest in humanity with "inauspicious stars."
It is in his style that the conscious deliberate character of Webster's art is most immediately obvious. Style. His diction is studiously appropriate, studiously heightened and impassioned. He specially commends the "full and heightened style of Master Chapman," and the influence of Chapman is, I think, observable in the elaborateness and "metaphysical" character of his metaphors. But it was from Shakespeare that he learned the power of thrilling and pregnant figure and phrase. Some of his finest touches are directly traceable to King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra. But Webster's style is more elaborated than Shakespeare's: it wants the flowing facility of which Jonson complains. Even the most imaginative touches smell a little of the lamp—appear to be laid on from without, although with a fine sense of what is appropriate, rather than to spring spontaneously from the heart of the passion.
A certain grave dignity of style is all that is distinctive in Appius and Virginia or in Webster's comedies. The tragic theme of the former he has treated in a strangely hard and external way. Into the comedies he has put little or none of the sardonic wit which he labours so strenuously in the famous tragedies. Webster has earned his place among the greatest of the Elizabethans by two plays, the theme of which appealed to his genius, at once tragic and melodramatic, and on which he expended
