The most
grovelling realism could scarcely be so impudent in stupidity as to
pretend an aim at more perfect presentation of truth; the most fervent
fancy, the most sensitive taste, could hardly dream of a desire for more
exquisite expression of natural passion in a form of utterance more
naturally exalted and refined.
In all the vast and voluminous records of critical error there can be
discovered no falsehood more foolish or more flagrant than the vulgar
tradition which represents this high-souled and gentle-hearted poet as
one morbidly fascinated by a fantastic attraction toward the "violent
delights" of horror and the nervous or sensational excitements of
criminal detail; nor can there be conceived a more perverse or futile
misapprehension than that which represents John Webster as one whose
instinct led him by some obscure and oblique propensity to darken the
darkness of southern crime or vice by an infusion of northern
seriousness, of introspective cynicism and reflective intensity in
wrong-doing, into the easy levity and infantile simplicity of
spontaneous wickedness which distinguished the moral and social
corruption of renascent Italy.
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