It being found that he greatly bettered his own parts, those of others
would be submitted to him, and at length whole plays committed to his
revision, of which kind there may be several in the collection of his
works. If the feather-end of his pen is just traceable in "Titus
Andronicus," the point of it is much more evident, and to as good
purpose as Beaumont or Fletcher could have used his to, at the best, in
"Pericles, Prince of Tyre." Nor would it be long before he would submit
one of his own plays for approbation; and then the whole of his dramatic
career lies open before him, with every possible advantage for
perfecting the work, for the undertaking of which he was better
qualified by nature than probably any other man whosoever; for he knew
everything about acting, practically--about the play-house and its
capabilities, about stage necessities, about the personal endowments and
individual qualifications of each of the company--so that, when he was
writing a play, he could distribute the parts before they even appeared
upon paper, and write for each actor with the very living form of the
ideal person present "in his mind's eye," and often to his bodily sight;
so that the actual came in aid of the ideal, as it always does if the
ideal be genuine, and the loftiest conceptions proved the truest to
visible nature.
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