Cicero calls his style "copious and polished," Quintilian, "sweet, pure and flowing"; Longinus says he was "the most Homeric of historians"; Dionysius, his countryman, prefers him to Thucydides, and regards him as combining in an extraordinary degree the excellences of sublimity, beauty and the true historical method of composition.
Like this tragedy, The Broken Heart was probably founded upon some Italian or other novel of the day; but since in the latter instance there is nothing revolting in the main idea of the subject, the play commends itself as the most enjoyable, while, in respect of many excellences, an unsurpassed specimen of Ford's dramatic genius.
Educability, defects or excellences, or peculiarities of mind or body, can be handed on from parent to offspring by protoplasmic continuity in reproduction.
But from a purely literary point of view, also, it is distinguished by great excellences.
He was one of the first to bring to light the characteristic excellences of Gothic art.