| “Keeps the soul in tune, At whose sweet music all our actions dance,” |
and is able to physic
| “The sickness of a mind Broken with griefs.” |
Of that morality—or of that deference to the binding power within man and the ruling power above him—tragedy is the truest expounder, even when it illustrates by contrasts; but the tragic poet who merely places the problem before us, and bids us stand aghast with him at its cruelty, is not to be reckoned among the great masters of a divine art.
Bibliography.—The best edition of Ford is that by Gifford, with notes and introduction, revised with additions to both text and notes by Alexander Dyce (1869). An edition of the Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford appeared in 1840, with an introduction by Hartley Coleridge. The Best Plays of Ford were edited for the “Mermaid Series” in 1888, with an introduction by W.H. Havelock Ellis, and reissued in 1903. A.C. Swinburne’s “Essay on Ford” is reprinted among his Essays and Studies (1875). Perkin Warbeck and ’Tis Pity were translated into German by F. Bodenstedt in 1860; and the latter again by F. Blei in 1904. The probable sources of the various plays are discussed in Emil Koeppel’s Quellenstudien zu den Dramen George Chapman’s, Philip Massinger’s und John Ford’s (1897).
(A. W. W.)
FORD, RICHARD (1796-1858), English author of one of the earliest and best of travellers’ Handbooks, was the eldest son of Sir Richard Ford, who in 1789 was member of parliament for East Grinstead, and for many years afterwards chief police magistrate of London. His mother was the daughter and heiress of Benjamin Booth, a distinguished connoisseur in art. He was called to the bar, but never practised, and in 1830-1833 he travelled in Spain, spending much of his time in the Alhambra and at Seville. His first literary work (other than contributions to the Quarterly Review) was a pamphlet, An Historical Inquiry into the Unchangeable Character of a War in Spain (Murray, 1837), in reply to one called the Policy of England towards Spain, issued under the patronage of Lord Palmerston. He spent the winter of 1839-1840 in Italy, where he added largely to his collection of majolica; and soon after his return he began, at John Murray’s invitation, to write his Handbook for Travellers in Spain, with which his name is chiefly associated. He died on the 1st of September 1858, leaving a fine private collection of pictures to his widow (d. 1910), his third wife, a daughter of Sir A. Molesworth.