insincere. Certainly, in our day, it will not hold. If any one
wishes to hear coarse language in 'good society' he can hear it, I am
told, in Paris: but one questions whether Parisian society be now
'under the sway of a more energetic principle of virtue' than our
own. The sum total of the matter seems to be, that England has found
out that on this point again the old Puritans were right. And
quaintly enough, the party in the English Church who hold the
Puritans most in abhorrence are the most scrupulous now upon this
very point; and, in their dread of contaminating the minds of youth,
are carrying education, at school and college, to such a more than
Puritan precision that with the most virtuous and benevolent
intentions they are in danger of giving lads merely a conventional
education,--a hot-house training which will render them incapable
hereafter of facing either the temptations or the labour of the
world. They themselves republished Massinger's 'Virgin Martyr,'
because it was a pretty Popish story, probably written by a Papist--
for there is every reason to believe that Massinger was one--setting
forth how the heroine was attended all through by an angel in the
form of a page, and how--not to mention the really beautiful ancient
fiction about the fruits which Dorothea sends back from Paradise--
Theophilus overcomes the devil by means of a cross composed of
flowers. Massinger's account of Theophilus' conversation will, we
fear, make those who know anything of that great crisis of the human
spirit suspect that Massinger's experience thereof was but small:
but the fact which is most noteworthy is this--that the 'Virgin
Martyr' is actually one of the foulest plays known. Every pains has
been taken to prove that the indecent scenes in the play were not
written by Massinger, but by Dekker; on what grounds we know not. If
Dekker assisted Massinger in the play, as he is said to have done, we
are aware of no canons of internal criticism which will enable us to