There is less
refinement, less exaltation and perfection of feeling, less tenderness
of emotion and less nobility of passion, but hardly less force and
fervor, less weighty and sonorous ardor of expression, in the very best
and loftiest passages of Marston: but his genius is more uncertain, more
fitful and intermittent, less harmonious, coherent, and trustworthy than
Webster's. And Webster, notwithstanding an occasional outbreak into
Aristophanic license of momentary sarcasm through the sardonic lips of
such a cynical ruffian as Ferdinand or Plamineo, is without exception
the cleanliest, as Marston is beyond comparison the coarsest writer of
his time. In this as in other matters of possible comparison that
"vessel of deathless wrath," the implacable and inconsolable poet of
sympathy half maddened into rage and aspiration goaded backward to
despair--it should be needless to add the name of Cyril Tourneur--stands
midway between these two more conspicuous figures of their age. But
neither the father and master of poetic pessimists, the splendid and
sombre creator of Vindice and his victims, nor any other third whom our
admiration may discern among all the greatest of their fellows, can be
compared with Webster on terms more nearly equal than those on which
Webster stands in relation to the sovereign of them all.
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