unworthy of Boccaccio; and no comedy of the time-Shakespeare's always excepted-has a scene in it of richer and more original humour than brightens the narrative which relates the woes of the husband who invites his friends to dinner and finds everything under lock and key. Hardly in any of Dekker's plays is the comic dialogue so masterly as here-so vivid and so vigorous in its lifelike ease and spontaneity. But there is not one of the fifteen chapters, devoted each to the description of some fresh humour,' which would not deserve, did space and time allow of it, a separate note of commentary. The book is simply one of the very finest examples of humorous literature, touched now and then with serious and even tragic effect, that can be found in any language; it is generally and comparatively remarkable for its freedom from all real coarseness or brutality, though the inevitable change of manners between Shakespeare's time and our own may make some passages or episodes seem now and then somewhat over particular in plain-speaking or detail. But a healthier, manlier, more thoroughly goodnatured and goodhumoured book was never written; nor one in which the author's real and respectful regard for womanhood was more perceptible through the veil of a satire more pure from bitterness and more honest in design.

The list of works over which we have now glanced is surely not inconsiderable: and yet the surviving productions of Dekker's genius or necessity are but part of the labours of his life. If he wanted-as undoubtedly he would seem to have wanted-that 'infinite capacity for taking pains' which Carlyle professed to regard as the synonym of genius, he was at least not deficient in that rough and ready diligence which is habitually in harness, and cheerfully or resignedly prepared for the day's work. The names of his lost plays-all generally suggestive of some true dramatic interest, now graver and now lighter-are too numerous to transcribe: but one at least of them must excite unspeakable amazement as well as indiscreet curiosity in every reader of Ariosto or La Fontaine who comes in the course of the catalogue upon such a title as Jocondo and Astolfo. How on earth the famous story of Giocondo could possibly be adapted for representation on the public stage of Shakespearean London is a mystery which the execrable cook of the execrable Warburton has left for ever insoluble and inconceivable : for to that female fiend, the object of Sir Walter Scott's antiquarian imprecations, we owe, unless my memory misguides me, the loss of this among other irredeemable treasures.

To do justice upon the faults of this poet is easy for any sciolist: to do justice to his merits is less easy for the most competent scholar and the most appreciative critic. In despite of his rare occasional spurts or outbreaks of self-assertion or of satire, he seems to stand before us as a man of gentle, modest, shiftless and careless nature,

irritable and placable, eager and unsteady, full of excitable kindliness and deficient in strenuous principle; loving the art which he professionally followed, and enjoying the work which he occasionally neglected. There is no unpoetic note in his best poetry such as there is too often--nay, too constantly-in the severer work and the stronger genius of Ben Jonson. What he might have done under happier auspices, or with a tougher fibre of resolution and perseverance in his character, it is waste of time and thought for his most sympathetic and compassionate admirers to assume or to conjecture: what he has done, with all its shortcomings and infirmities, is enough to secure for him a distinct and honourable place among the humourists and the poets of his country.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

BISHOPS AND SISTERS-IN-LAW.

I WROTE a paper, published in the September number of this Review, on marriage with a deceased wife's sister, in which I endeavoured to show the evils of the law which makes such marriages invalid, and also that there was no reason, religious, theological, or social, which called for it. The Bishop of Oxford has written a paper, which appears in the November number, and which I should suppose was meant as an answer to mine, save that positively there is no answer nor attempt at an answer contained in it.

Now a way of seeing whether one thing contains another is to look into the supposed container, and see if the supposed contained is there. And I invite those interested in the matter to do so with the Bishop's paper. But that is not enough. For it may be that some will not take the trouble, and that others will give only the 'open verdict' that they do not see it. I propose, therefore, to prove the negative, viz. that the answer is not there. Four misrepresentations of what I said, are.

The evils I pointed out were two:

1. That it was a hardship and cruelty when two persons having that affection for each other which made them desirous of marrying and which promised a happy union, whose age, position in life, and other circumstances were suitable, and who particularly desired the marriage that the woman might take care of her deceased sister's children, were not allowed by law to marry-I say, I pointed out that pain and grief were caused, which required a justification.

Does the Bishop of Oxford in his paper deny it? Certainly not. He begins by saying that I describe all pairs of attached brothers and sisters in law as two thoroughly well conducted persons.' With all respect to the Right Reverend Prelate this is not-well, not correct. I cannot see why he should have said it, as no one would believe I did. I did not say 'all;' I do not suppose persons who desire to marry their deceased wife's sisters are better or worse than the average of mankind. But for those who are well conducted I claimed, and do claim, concern. How does the Bishop show his? He says that the same engaging portrait may be painted with a variety of kinsfolk for the sisters.' And he gives a case where a man went through the form of marriage with a half-brother's

daughter. Does the Bishop really mean to say that a marriage of a man with his deceased wife's sister is in any way like marriage with a sister in blood, or the child of that sister, or her brother? Is not such a marriage loathsome and abhorrent—is it not certain that no such feeling is entertained towards a marriage with a deceased wife's sister? Is it an argument to say that because some marriages of kin ought not to take place, therefore others ought not? The Right Reverend Prelate proceeds: The course of true love never did run smooth, and infinitely various are the obstacles to marriage which youthful affection must be content to incur.' Parental sternness, which may have a justification or not. The Court of Chancery has more wanton cruelty to repent of than all the defenders of the Christian law of marriage.' Why, what an argument is this! There are some obstacles to marriage between persons desirous of contracting it which give pain; therefore let us have another, though it does the same! If those obstacles ought not to exist, then they afford no justification. If they ought, it is for a reason. Are they wanton ? To justify the law, a reason should be shown. Does the Bishop think that because we suffer from aches and pains from our natures and make, that we ought not to complain when beaten? You complain he has broken your leg and hurt you; but infinitely various are the other sufferings you must be content to endure, therefore why complain of this? The course of life never does run smooth.' Two people who are madly in love,' or even without the 'madly,' are comical. objects, much laughed at; but I suppose that a sincere affection between a man and his wife is a desirable and respectable thing, worth the Right Reverend Prelate's consideration. I say, then, that no answer is given, or attempted, to the argument that the law causes pain and suffering, and needs a justification.

2. I said that where families occupied a single room, it was certain that when a woman was called in to take care of children who had lost their mother, there was a danger of illicit intercourse if the father and the woman could not marry; that the deceased wife's sister was constantly so called in, and then the danger arose; and that there were thousands of cases where there was but one room for all the family, so this mischief and evil did exist, and largely. Does the Bishop deny it? Not at all. He admits it, but attempts to extenuate it. He says the person who looks after the children of the deceased wife is not always, nor indeed often, her sister.' Well, but then she is sometimes. As to often,' let us see what he says. 'The natural person is her mother; she takes the little ones to her own home, or stays at their home till some plan can be devised for their care.' Sometimes it is the man's own sister, sometimes sister-in-law. But in a large proportion of these cases they are out at service, &c. ; neighbours help, and so forth. The notion that a working man's family has its store of sisters living unemployed at home in readiness

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to help a brother-in-law, is a fancy picture.' I agree, except that a notion is not a picture. But it is one of the Bishop's painting; as is also the fancy picture of the mother neglecting her own husband's family to help her son. I repeat, the natural person to apply to is the deceased wife's unmarried sister-there are such sisters, if not a store of them. Marriage is their probable lot or destiny, and they and the man not only see no objection to it between them, but desire it. The Bishop, then, does not deny that the evil I have pointed out exists, more or less. He admits it. The very arrangements of the poor to avoid it show its existence.

Against this opinion of the Bishop I will put that of Mr. Edwin Chadwick, who has been so kind as to write me the following letter. There is no one more competent than he, if so much so, to speak on this subject.

There are in the different classes of society large conditions of widowers, of the wages classes, that are overlooked, which appear to me to make this question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister a poor woman's question as well as a poor man's question. In the course of inquiries into the conditions of juvenile delinquency it frequently occurred that, besides the hereditary mendicants, there were lads or girls from another class of whom the accounts given were that their mother had died, that their father had abandoned them, and that they had been turned out of home, and had become castaways upon the street. In cholera visitations, by which the mothers were killed, this was conspicuously the result. It very frequently appeared that such abandonments had been the work of the stepmother occupying the single-roomed mud cottage, or the single living rooms which make up frequently the conditions of from fifty to sixty per cent. of the urban population. I was assured that it was generally the case for the mother of a family to make her dying request to her husband that he would get her sister to come and take charge of their children, feeling very certain that if he married a stranger to their family the stepmother would not put up with their children, and would drive them away. It frequently occurs that the only person whom the widower of the wage class can get immediately to take care of the children of the deceased wife is her sister; and when she does undertake the charge in the only living room, what must generally follow from the prohibition of his marriage with her? With stepmothers of the well-to-do or the higher classes the position is widely different. The children have their separate rooms, and will be committed to the charge of nurses and governesses. Stepmothers of the higher classes are subjected to high social influences, and step-children of their class have rarely any ground of complaint. But the prohibition of marriage with the deceased wife's sister, from all that I heard of it, imposes upon the wage classes (especially those who have only one living room, often the majority of the most heavily death-rated districts) conditions of cruelty, of moral disorder, and often of crime.

3. I said there was no prohibition of these marriages in the New or Old Testament. Does the Bishop make out that there is? He begins by saying:

For my present purpose it is not necessary to enter into the theological argument. Lord Bramwell devotes half his article to the theology of which he speaks so lightly. It would be foreign to my immediate purpose to follow on this track.

It is sufficient to reassert the facts that marriage between persons near of kin is prohibited in the Scripture, and that no distinction between relationship by affinity or consanguinity is there to be found.