And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
Their minds, and muses on admired themes;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit;

If these had made one poem's period,

And all combined in beauty's worthiness,

Yet should there hover in their restless heads

One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,
Which into words no virtue can digest."

Marlowe made snatches at this forbidden fruit with vigorous leaps, and not without bringing away a prize now and then such as only the fewest have been able to reach. Of fine single verses I give a few as instances of this:

Here is a couplet notable for dignity of poise describing Tamburlaine :

"Of stature tall and straightly fashioned,
Like his desire, lift upward and divine."

"For every street like to a firmament
Glistered with breathing stars."

"Unwedded maids

Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the queen of Love."

This from "Tamburlaine" is particularly charac

teristic:

แ 'Nature

Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,

Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all."

One of these verses reminds us of that exquisite one of Shakespeare where he says that Love is

"Still climbing trees in the Hesperides."

But Shakespeare puts a complexity of meaning into his chance sayings, and lures the fancy to excursions of which Marlowe never dreamt.

But, alas, a voice will not illustrate like a stereopticon, and this tearing away of fragments that seem to bleed with the avulsion is like breaking off a finger from a statue as a specimen.

The impression he made upon the men of his time was uniform; it was that of something new and strange; it was that of genius, in short. Drayton says of him, kindling to an unwonted warmth, as if he loosened himself for a moment from the choking coils of his Polyolbion for a larger breath:

"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."

And Chapman, taking up and continuing Marlowe's half-told story of Hero and Leander, breaks forth suddenly into this enthusiasm of invocation:

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Then, ho! most strangely intellectual fire

That, proper to my soul, hast power to inspire

Her burning faculties, and with the wings
Of thy unspherèd flame visit'st the springs
Of spirits immortal, now (as swift as Time
Doth follow motion) find the eternal clime
Of his free soul whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood."

Surely Chapman would have sent his soul on no such errand had he believed that the soul of Marlowe was in torment, as his accusers did not scruple to say that it was, sent thither by the manifestly Divine judgment of his violent death.

Yes, Drayton was right in classing him with "the first poets," for he was indeed such, and so continues, that is, he was that most indefinable thing, an original man, and therefore as fresh and contemporaneous to-day as he was three hundred years ago. Most of us are more or less hampered by our own individuality, nor can shake ourselves free of that chrysalis of consciousness and give our "souls a loose," as Dryden calls it in his vigorous way. And yet it seems to me that there is something even finer than that fine madness, and I think I see it in the imperturbable sanity of Shakespeare, which made him so much an artist that his new work still bettered his old. I think I see it even in the almost irritating calm of Goethe, which, if it did not quite make him an artist, enabled him to see what an artist should be, and to come as near to being one as his nature allowed. Marlowe was certainly not an artist in the larger sense, but he was cunning in words and periods and the musical modulation of them. And even this is a very rare gift. But his mind could never submit itself to a

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controlling purpose, and renounce all other things for the sake of that. His plays, with the single exception of " Edward II.,” have no organic unity, and such unity as is here is more apparent than real. Passages in them stir us deeply and thrill us to the marrow, but each play as a whole is ineffectual. Even his "Edward II." is regular only to the eye by a more orderly arrangement of scenes and acts, and Marlowe evidently felt the drag of this restraint, for we miss the uncontrollable energy, the eruptive fire, and the feeling that he was happy in his work. Yet Lamb was hardly extravagant in saying that "the death scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted." His tragedy of "Dido, Queen of Carthage," is also regularly plotted out, and is also somewhat tedious. Yet there are many touches that betray his burning hand. There is one passage illustrating that luxury of description into which Marlowe is always glad to escape from the business in hand. Dido tells Æneas:

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Eneas, I'll repair thy Trojan ships

Conditionally that thou wilt stay with me,
And let Achates sail to Italy;

I'll give thee tackling made of rivelled gold,
Wound on the barks of odoriferous trees;
Oars of massy ivory, full of holes

Through which the water shall delight to play;
Thy anchors shall be hewed from crystal rocks
Which, if thou lose, 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 ballast, empty Dido's treasury;

Take what ye will, but leave Æneas here.
Achates, thou shalt be so seemly clad

As sea-born nymphs shall swarm about thy ships
And wanton mermaids court thee with sweet songs,
Flinging in favors of more sovereign worth
Than Thetis hangs about Apollo's neck,

So that Æneas may but stay with me."

But far finer than this, in the same costly way, is the speech of Barabas in "The Jew of Malta," ending with a line that has incorporated itself in the language with the familiarity of a proverb:

"Give me the merchants of the Indian mines
That trade in metal of the purest mould;
The wealthy Moor that in the Eastern rocks
Without control can pick his riches up,
And in his house heap pearl like pebble-stones,
Receive them free, and sell them by the weight;
Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacynths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,

And seld-seen costly stones of so great price
As one of them, indifferently rated,

May serve in peril of calamity

To ransom great kings from captivity.

This is the ware wherein consists my wealth:

Infinite riches in a little room.'

This is the very poetry of avarice.

Let us now look a little more closely at Marlowe as a dramatist. Here also he has an importance less for what he accomplished than for what he suggested to others. Not only do I think that Shakespeare's verse caught some hints from his,