CHAPTER IV.
I did not hold the reader’s attention long to the nightmare tragedies of Webster and Ford, though they show shining passages of amazing dramatic power. Marston was touched upon, and that satiric vein of his, better known perhaps than his more ambitious work. We spoke of Massinger, whose money-monster, Giles Overreach, makes one think of the railway wreckers of our time; then came the gracious and popular Beaumont and Fletcher, twins in work and in friendship; the former dying in the same year with Shakespeare, and Fletcher dying the same year with King James (1625). I spoke of that Prince Harry who promised well, but died young, and of Charles, whose sad story will come to ampler mention in our present talk. We made record of the death of Ben Jonson—of the hack-writing service of James Howell—of the dilettante qualities of Sir Henry Wotton, and of the ever-delightful work and enduring fame of the old angler, Izaak Walton. And last we closed our talk with sketches of two poets: the one, George Herbert, to whom his priestly work and his saintly verse were “all in all;” and the other, Robert Herrick, born to a goldsmith’s craft, but making verses that glittered more than all the jewels of Cheapside.