Nor is
it rationally conceivable that the Thomas Middleton who soiled some
reams of paper with what he was pleased to consider or to call a
paraphrase of the "Wisdom of Solomon" can have had anything but a poet's
name in common with a poet. This name is not like that of the great
writer whose name is attached to "The Transformed Metamorphosis": there
can hardly have been two Cyril Tourneurs in the field, but there may
well have been half a dozen Thomas Middletons. And Tourneur's abortive
attempt at allegoric discourse is but a preposterous freak of prolonged
eccentricity: this paraphrase is simply a tideless and interminable sea
of limitless and inexhaustible drivel. There are three reasons--two of
them considerable, but the third conclusive--for assigning to Middleton
the two satirical tracts in the style of Nash, or rather of Dekker,
which appeared in the same year with his initials subscribed to their
prefatory addresses. Mr. Dyce thought they were written by the poet
whose ready verse and realistic humor are both well represented in their
text: Mr. Bullen agrees with Mr. Dyce in thinking that they are the
work of Middleton. And Mr. Carew Hazlitt thinks that they are not.
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