writer whatever." This is high praise, but it is more than confirmed by the verdict of Lamb,* who says “the death-scene of Marlowe's King moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted." But, if I may presume to speak after such authorities, the pity and terror fail to exalt the character of Edward in the reader's mind, while the last scene of Faustus fills the soul with love and admiration as for a departed hero.

The Massacre of Paris is not only a fragment, but the little that remains to us has come down in a most corrupt state.† Mr. Dyce, however, considers that, "after every allowance has been made on these accounts, it must be regarded as the very worst of Marlowe's dramas." The nobles of the French court appear to me, however, to have more marked individuality of character than those in Edward II., where the Barons resemble each other as closely as if they had been painted by Kneller, in his later days, when the grasping old Westphalian was thinking of his dividends rather than his fame.‡

In the tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage, which, in Mr. Collier's opinion, was written in 1590, although not printed till 1594, Marlowe was assisted, or perhaps rather his work was completed, by his old opponent Thomas Nash. However this may be, the production must be regarded on the whole as a very pleasing poem, every now and then swelling into real beauty, and at the worst times not sinking lower than other poets at the time were apt to do. Occasionally we come upon such a line as,

"Gentle Achates reach the tinder-box,"

which, if I were a proper biographer, I should at once assign to Nash, while just afterwards we stumble upon passages of such genuine vigour and beauty as nobody but the writer of a life of the lesser genius would give to any one but Marlowe. Take for instances the lines in which Æneas describes the opening of the Wooden Horse :

"Then he unlocked the horse, and suddenly,

From out his entrails, Neoptolemus,

Setting his spear upon the ground, leapt forth,
And after him a thousand Grecians more,

In whose stern faces shined the quenchless fire

That after burnt the pride of Asia ;"

and the charming verses in which Dido indulges her fancy in equipping the ships of her lover:

"I'll give thee tackling made of rivelled gold,

Wound on the barks of odoriferous trees,

Oärs of massy ivory, full of holes,

• Lamb's Dramatic Specimens, p. 26.

In the note at p. 336 on the words "Enter a soldier."

I have made no mention of the play of Lust's Dominion; or, The Lacivious Queen, which was first printed as Marlowe's in 1657, but was proved by Mr. Collier, in 1826, to be the joint work of Thomas Dekker, William Houghton, and John Day. Hazlitt, who was not aware of the above fact, criticized it as a play of Marlowe's, and assigned it a high place among his dramas. The verdict of Mr. Collier has been emphatically endorsed by Mr. Dyce.

Through which the water shall delight to play;
Thy anchors shall be hewed from crystal rocks,
Which, if thou loose, shall shine above the waves;
The masts, whereon thy swelling sails shall hang,
Hollow pyramides of silver plate;

The sails of folded lawn, where shall be wrought
The wars of Troy, but not Troy's overthrow;
For ballace, empty Dido's treasury!

Take what ye will, but leave Æneas here."

I now come to the poem of Hero and Leander, or The Sestiad, as I supposé Marlowe must have intended to call it (from the town of Sestos, in which the scene is laid); a name which Chapman retained, or perhaps invented, when he completed the poem and divided it into books. In Marlowe's time it was supposed that the Musæus who wrote the Greek poem on which the Sestiads were founded, was in very deed the ancient Athenian bard whom modern criticism has dismissed from his position as the flesh and blood predecessor of Hesiod and Homer, and fixed in nubibus along with Orpheus and other "semi-mythological personages." It is fortunate that the respect which Marlowe must have felt for what was then regarded as the most ancient of human compositions did not lead him into a repetition of the fatal blunder of a line for line translation. In fact he may almost be said to have lost sight of his original altogether, and to have given full swing to his rich and thick-coming fancies. Malone told Thomas Warton that, in addition to the two first Sestiads, Marlowe left behind him "about a hundred lines of the third;" which, however, in my opinion are not to be looked for in the place assigned to them, where all is manifestly Chapman's, but in the episode of Teras, and other portions of the fifth Sestiad, where the higher hand I of Marlowe seems to me easily discernible. Chapman was a true and excellent poet, in some respects Marlowe's superior, but altogether different from him in lines of thought and modes of expression, and labouring besides under the immense disadvantage of singing as it were in falsetto, by endeavouring to work in the style and spirit of another man's performance. The age was not the age of mocking-birds, but of genuine songsters of the grove, who each piped the wood notes that were native to him, and which persist in making themselves heard sweet and clear in the midst of any attempt at imitating another. The popularity of this poem was unbounded. Contemporary literature is full of allusions to it: Shakspeare and Ben Jonson have introduced quotations from it into their works; and Taylor the Water Poet tells us that his brother "scullers" sweetened their toil by chanting its couplets as they rowed along the Thames.

But before this time arrived, the short and troubled career of this greatly gifted man had come to a dark and melancholy close. During the six years which elapsed between his quitting Cambridge and his death, we know literally nothing of him, except that = he must have composed the works above enumerated; that he had the evil reputation of being a free liver and a free-er thinker; and that he had tried his fortune upon the stage. The curtain is for a moment lifted, but it is only to show him in the agonies of

a violent death. In the last week of May, 1593, he was carousing at Deptford, in-to say the least-very doubtful company; and taking offence at some real or supposed insult to himself or his female companion, he unsheathed his dagger to avenge it, and in the scuffle which ensued received a mortal wound in the head from his own weapon. It is a convenient custom in fatal brawls like these to cast the blame on the dead man and the stranger who can make no answer himself, and is without friends to represent the matter in a fairer light. In the present case, too, the narratives which have come down to us were written long after the event, and by men whose purpose it was to represent him in the blackest light as the object of the direct vengeance of the Almighty. I shall not, therefore, detain the reader by pointing out the improbabilities and discrepancies in their stories, which are given at the foot of the page,* and only wish I could convince myself that, in the following passage of the Hero and Leander, Chapman intended us to understand that the dying bed of the poet was watched over by some "associate" or "friend beloved," who listened to and treasured up his "late desires."

"Then, now, most strangely intellectual fire

That, proper to my soul, hast power to inspire

* "Not inferior to any of the former in atheisme and impietie, and equal to al in maner of punishment, was one of our own nation, of fresh and late memorie, called Marlin, by profession a scholler, brought up from his youth in the Universitie of Cambridge, but by practice a playmaker and a poet of scurrilitie, who by giving too large a swing to his owne wit, and suffering his lust to have the full reines, fell (not without just desert) to that outrage and extremitie, that hee denied God and his sonne Christ, and not onely in word blasphemed the Trinitie, but also (as is credibly reported) wrote bookes against it, affirming our Saviour to be but a deceiver, and Moses to be but a conjurer and seducer of the people, and the holy Bible to bee but vaine and idle stories, and all religion but a device of policie. But see what a hooke the Lord put into the nostrils of this barking dogge! So it fell out, that as he purposed to stab one, whom he ought a grudge unto, with his dagger, the other party perceiving so avoyded the stroke, that, withal catching hold of his wrest, hee stabbed his owne dagger into his owne head, in such sort that, notwithstanding all the meanes of surgerie that could bee wrought, hee shortly after died thereof: the manner of his death being so terrible (for hee even cursed and blasphemed to his last gaspe, and together with his breath an oath flew out of his mouth) that it was not only a manifest signe of God's judgement, but also an horrible and fearfulle terror to all that beheld him. But herein did the justice of God most notably appeare, in that hee compelled his owne hand which had written those blasphemies, to bee the instrument to punish him, and that in his braine which had devised the same."-Beard's Theatre of God's Judgements. 1597. In the first edition of his book, Beard states that Marlowe was killed "in the streets of London," which is important, as showing on what vague information he wrote. "As the poet Lycophron was shot to death by a certain rival of his, so Christopher Marlow was stabd to death by a bawdy servingman, a rival of his in his lewd love."-More's Palladio Tamia. 1598. "Not inferior to these was one Christopher Marlow, by profession a playmaker, who as it was reported, about fourteen years ago wrote a book against the Trinitie. But see the effects of God's justice! It so hapned that at Detford, a little village about three miles distant from London, as he meant to stab with his poniard one name Ingram, that had invited him thither to a feast, and was then playing at tables, hee quickly perceiving it, so avoyded the thrust, that with all drawing out his dagger for his defence, hee stabd this Marlowe into the eye, in such sort, his braynes comming out, at the daggers point, hee shortly after dyed. Thus did God, the true executioner of divine justice, work the end of impious atheists."-Sir William Vaughan's Golden Grove, Moralized in three books. 1600.

Let any one who is inclined to place implicit reliance on evidence of this description take up the works of Peter Pindar, Esq., 5 vols. 8vo, 1812, and turn to the note at p. 493 of vol. iii., and read what is there specifically asserted as to the career of the living William Gifford.

Her burning faculties, and with the wings
Of thy unspherèd flame, visits't the springs
Of spirits immortal. Now, as swift as Time
Doth follow motion, find th' eternal clime
Of his free soul, whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood,
And drunk to me half this Musæan story,
Inscribing it to deathless memory:

Confer with it, and make my pledge as deep

That neither's draught be consecrate to sleep:
Tell it how much his late desires I tender

(If yet it know not), and to light surrender
My soul's dark offspring."

But whatever our opinions may be as to the attending circumstances, the parish register leaves us in no doubt as to the main fact by recording the burial of “Christopher Marlow, slaine by ffrancis Archer, the 1 of June, 1593." The old church of St. Nicholas at Deptford has been enlarged and rebuilt, and restored and re-restored, till nothing of the original except the old grey tower remains, and it is vain even to guess at the spot in which the body of the young poet was laid. He died we may well suppose in the worst inn's worst room, and his grave was dug we may be certain in the obscurest corner of the churchyard; but even had it been otherwise, all knowledge of the locality would have passed away during the dark hundred years in which Christopher Marlowe became a name unknown.* The Reverend Daniel Lysons was a "man of letters," well read in "standard authors," and had made a narrow scrutiny of the Deptford registers; but, in 1796, when he published his account of the "Towns, Villages, and Hamlets within Twelve Miles of London," he passed over the record above quoted as one in which no human being was likely to feel interest. He bestows twentysix quarto pages on this particular parish, and devotes several of them to extracts from the registers, which he says commence in the year 1563. In his anxiety that every entry of importance should be preserved, he is careful to transcribe the particulars of the

A century ago the ignorance of the general public regarding the early English writers was something portentous. John Monck Mason, when he published his edition of Massinger in 1779, informs his readers that "notwithstanding my partiality for this kind of reading, and some pains I had taken to gratify it, I never heard of Massinger till about two years ago, when a friend of mine, who knew my inclination, lent me a copy of his works!" Dean Stanley, however, goes too far when he tells us of Michael Drayton that "after the lapse of not much more than a hundred years, Goldsmith, in his visit to the Abbey, could say, when he saw his monument, 'Drayton ! I never heard of him before."" But Goldsmith does not make the remark in propriâ persona, but puts it into the mouth of his learned Chinese, Lien Chi Altanghi. It would hardly be more unfair to say that Addison imagined that St. Paul's had been hollowed out of a mountain. The mention of Drayton suggests the propriety of quoting his eloquent lines:

"Next 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."

baptism of "Phineas Pett, son of Peter Pett," on the 8th of November, 1570, and the burial of "Mr. Ephraim Paget, Rector of St. Edmund, Lombard Street;" the interment, also, on the 26th of August, 1631, of "William Shewers and John Finicke, two children, which, playing together, shut themselves into a hutch and were smothered." If Mr. Lysons, therefore, had ever heard our poet's name, it is certain that the fact of his being slain by Francis Archer would have found a niche in his Environs. He has, however, preserved one item which in a manner connects itself indirectly with our subject. When Captain Pearse and Lieut. Logan were interred in the churchyard of St. Nicholas after being "shot to death for losing the Saphire cowardly;" we may be sure they were laid in the same dark corner which contained the dust of Marlowe.

The dagger of Francis Archer averted one trouble which was hanging ominously over his victim's head. A very few days before the poet's death a "note" of his "damnable opinions and judgment of religion, and scorn of God's work," had been laid before Elizabeth's council, with a view to the institution of proceedings against him. These charges, it is to be observed, were drawn up by one Richard Bames or Bame, who was himself hanged at Tyburn in the course of the following year for some degrading offence; and they besides include matter, such as that about coining, which could never have been seriously spoken by any man of ordinary common sense. As authority, therefore, they are of themselves utterly worthless; but, even supposing the whole of them to be the clumsy fabrication of a scoundrelly professional informer, there is no smoke without fire, and the man who could thus be charged must have been well known as a free thinker and reckless speaker. In the present day the speculations, after being purged of grossness and manifest exaggerations, would not, in their general scope, appear novelties to any bearded man who did not chance to be a "great arithmetician" suddenly converted into a South African bishop; but in the Tudor times they found no being, certainly no utterance, save among such intellectual Bohemians as formed the Greene and Marlowe circle. When the latter commenced his career one of the great turning-points of English history was about to commence. The Queen of Scots was put to death, and the Armada destroyed; and the common dread of Spanish conquest and Papal tyranny being for ever removed, the Englishmen who had merely drifted away from Catholicism, and the Englishmen who had become Protestants from conviction, having no longer occasion to stand side by side, had for the first time leisure to look each other in the face, and to recognise the full extent of the gulf which separated them. Elizabeth at this moment held such a commanding position in the hearts of her people that it was quite in her power to have bridged over this chasm of differences, and to have become the founder of a really national Church. Not only did she neglect this opportunity, but, by following the bent of her own, and her father's Fidei Defensor inclinations, she drove the Puritans into a position where nothing was left for earnest men but to close their ranks and withdraw themselves farther than ever from their opponents. Happily the vigorous rule of

I have merely selected this entry on account of its early date. This fine old family of master shipwrights were among the most faithful servants of their country for fully a hundred years.