XII

I have reviewed, perhaps at intolerable length, the authentic work of Marlowe as a dramatist. One play, which bears his name upon the title-page, and which passed till recently for his, namely, 'Lust's Dominion, ' must be attributed to a feebler though imitative hand. Nor do I think we can with certainty assign to Marlowe any definite portions of the Shaksperian Histories. That he had a hand in the first draughts which went to form 'Henry VI.' can be accepted; and that his influence may be traced in 'Edward III.' is a tenable theory. But in the absence of external evidence, it would be vain to draw conjecture further, especially when we have seen that the whole manner of that epoch is saturated with the master's style.

Marlowe was great as a dramatist; but as a poet he was still greater. Even in his tragedies it is the poet, rather than the playwright, who commands our admiration. His characters are too often the mouthpieces of their maker's passionate oratory, rather than beings gifted with a complex, independent vitality. At another time I hope to study' Hero and Leander,' in combination with Venus and Adonis,' 'Salmacis and Hermaphroditus,' and a few other narrative poems of this epoch; works in which our chiefest dramatists expressed their sense of beauty, unimpeded by theatrical necessities. It will then be seen into how clear and lofty a region of pure poetry Marlowe soared; and in how true a sense he deserves the name of pioneer and maker. Marlowe's contemporaries hailed in him a morning star of song, and marked him out as the young Apollo of his age. Not the dramatist, but the inspired artist, moved their panegyric when they wrote of him. Let me conclude this essay with some of their testimonies, selecting only those which seem to catch a portion of his spirit. Chapman shall speak first of the dead friend who

Stood

Up to the chin in the Pierian flood,

And drank to me half this Musaan story,
Inscribing it to deathless memory.

POETIC TRIBUTES TO MARLOWE

Peele shall follow with his tribute to the poet's grave⚫

Unhappy in thine end,

Marley, the Muses' darling for thy verse,
Fit to write passions for the souls below,
If any wretched souls in passion speak.

Drayton shall tell how

Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had; his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,

Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

535

Petowe, less renowned, less skilful, but hardly less discrimina.
Ling, sings of

Marlo admired, whose honey-flowing vein
No English writer can as yet attain,
Whose name in Fame's immortal treasury
Truth shall record to deathless memory,

Marlo, late mortal, now framed all divine

and hails his entrance into the heaven of poetry; where:
Marlo, still-admirèd Marlo 's gone

To live with beauty in Elysium—
Immortal beauty, who desires to hear
His sacred poesies sweet in every ear.

These laurels, which were showered on Marlowe's hearse, are still evergreen. The most impassioned singer of our own day, Charles Algernon Swinburne, has scattered the roses and lilies of high-sounding verse and luminous prose upon that poet's tomb. One of the noblest, as he is now the eldest of our poets, Richard Horne, has digested the romance of his untimely death into a worthy tragedy. Yet why should we use the language of the grave in speaking about Marlowe ?

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again.

His nightingales, 'the glad dear angels of the spring' of English poetry, survive and fill our ears with music. They are not dead, although

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,

That sometime grew within this learned man,

INDEX