it is unnecessary to turn up the great lines in the Duchess of Malfi. Massinger fancied this galley-slave; for he comes with his oar again in the Bondman—
Never did galley-slave shake off his chains,
Or looked on his redemption from the oar....
Now these are mature plays; and the Roman Actor (from which we have drawn the two previous extracts) is said to have been the preferred play of its author.
We may conclude directly from these quotations that Massinger’s feeling for language had outstripped his feeling for things; that his eye and his vocabulary were not in close co-operation. One of the greatest distinctions of several of his elder contemporaries—we name Middleton, Webster, Tourneur—is a gift for combining, for fusing into a single phrase, two or more diverse impressions.
... in her strong toil of grace
of Shakespeare is such a fusion; the metaphor identifies itself with what suggests it; the resultant is one and is unique—
Does the silk worm expend her yellow labours?...
Why does yon fellow falsify highways
And lays his life between the judge’s lips