Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/68

Gertrude are alike restored to the favour of the excellent old citizen by the kind offices of his worthy son-in-law, Not only have the poets given proof of gentler morality and a juster sense of justice than the great painter who followed long after in the track of their invention, but they have contrived even to secure our cordial regard for the kindly virtues of the respectable and industrious characters whose aim it is to rise by thrift and honesty; and we salute the promotion of 'Master Deputy's worship' to the proud office of substitute for the alderman of his ward with a satisfaction which no man surely ever felt in the exaltation of Hogarth's Lord Mayor to sit in judgment on his luckless fellow. The figures of Gertrude's gallant knight and his crew of Virginian adventurers, whose expedition finally culminates in a drunken shipwreck on the Thames, are as vivid and as pleasant as any of these other studies; and the scenes in which the jealous usurer is induced by the devices of Quicksilver and Sir Petronel to bring his disguised wife into the company of her paramour and reassure her supposed