"]
One work only of Dekker's too often overtasked and heavy-laden genius
remains to be noticed: it is one which gives him a high place forever
among English humorists. No sooner has the reader run his eye over the
first three or four pages than he feels himself, with delight and
astonishment, in the company of a writer whose genius is akin at once to
Goldsmith's and to Thackeray's; a writer whose style is so pure and
vigorous, so lucid and straightforward, that we seem to have already
entered upon the best age of English prose. Had Mr. Matthew Arnold,
instead of digging in Chapman for preposterous barbarisms and
eccentricities of pedantry, chanced to light upon this little treatise,
or had he condescended to glance over Daniel's compact and admirable
"Defence of Rhyme," he would have found in writers of the despised
Shakespearean epoch much more than a foretaste of those excellent
qualities which he imagined to have been first imported into our
literature by writers of the age of Dryden. The dialogue of the very
first couple introduced with such skilful simplicity of presentation at
the opening of Dekker's pamphlet is worthy of Sterne: the visit of the
gossip or kinswoman in the second chapter is worthy of Moliere, and the
humors of the monthly nurse in the third are worthy of Dickens.
Pages:
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118