of the atheist who hires his hypocrisy to plead against itself is bright with touches of real rough humour. There is not much of this quality in Tourneur's work, and what there is of it is as bitter and as grim in feature and in flavour as might be expected of so fierce and passionate a moralist: but he knows well how to salt his invective with a due sprinkling of such sharply seasoned pleasantry as relieves the historic narrative of John Knox; whose 'merry'[1] account, for instance, of Cardinal Beaton's last night in this world has the very savour of Tourneur's tragic irony and implacable disgust in every vivid and relentless line of it.
The execution of this poem is singularly good and bad: there are passages of such metrical strength and sweetness as will hardly be found in the dramatic verse of any later English poet; and there are passages in which this poet's verse sinks wellnigh to the tragic level of a Killigrew's, a Shadwell's, or a Byron's. Such terminations as 'of,' 'to,' 'with,' 'in,' 'and,' 'my,' 'your,' preceding the substantive or the verb which opens the next verse, make us feel as though we were reading 'Sardanapalus' or 'The Two Foscari'—a sensation not easily to be endured. In a poet so far
- ↑ These thingis we wreat mearelie.—Works of John Knox, vol. i., p. 180.
