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Dyce was so struck with the want of "variety of pause in the versification, that he was inclined on first thoughts to consider the translation an early essay. But I venture to think that the lines are not wanting in variety of pause to any very noticeable extent. In judging of epic blank verse, it is difficult to avoid a reference to Milton; and of course if we compare the rhythm of Marlowe's translation with the rhythm of Paradise Lost-cadit quæstio.. But let us dismiss Milton from our minds, and let us select some of the strongest lines from the translation :—

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Strange sights appeared; the angry threatening gods

Filled both the earth and seas with prodigies.

Great store of strange and unknown stars were seen
Wandering about the north, and rings of fire
Fly in the air, and dreadful bearded stars,
And comets that presage the fall of kingdoms;
The flattering sky glittered in often flames,

And sundry fiery meteors blazed in heaven,
Now spear-like long, now like a spreading touch;
Lightning in silence stole forth without clouds,
And, from the northern climate snatching fire,
Blasted the Capitol; the lesser stars,

Which wont to run their course through empty night,
At noon-day mustered; Phoebe, having filled

Her meeting horns to match her brother's light,
Struck with th' earth's sudden shadow, waxèd pale;
Titan himself, throned in the midst of heaven,

His burning chariot plunged in sable clouds,
And whelmed the world in darkness, making men
Despair of day; as did Thyestes' town,

Mycenae, Phoebus flying through the east.
Fierce Mulciber unbarrèd Aetna's gate,

Which flamed not on high, but headlong pitched
Her burning head on bending Hespery.

Coal-black Charybdis whirled a sea of blood.
Fierce mastives howled. The vestal fires went out ;
The flame in Alba, consecrate to Jove,
Parted in twain, and with a double point
Rose, like the Theban brothers' funeral fire.
The earth went off her hinges; and the Alps

Shook the old snow from off their trembling laps."

That passage can be read throughout with pleasure. Though not wholly free from monotony, the lines are not stiff; the pause at the end of the line occurs somewhat too frequently to thoroughly satisfy the ear, but as a whole, the passage is at once massive and flexible. I suspect that the translation was intended chiefly as a metrical experiment. As the rhymed heroics of the translation of the Amores were the prelude to Hero and Leander, so the blank verse of the First Book of Lucan may have been a preparatory exercise for a projected epic. The reader will note with some surprise the unusual number of double-endings in the translation of Lucan. In less than 700 lines the double-endings are no fewer than 109;1 while in Edward II. and the Jew of Malta (which are each about thrice the length of the translation), the double-endings are 107 and 70 respectively. We should naturally expect to find the proportion higher in dramatic than epic blank verse. In the former we look for greater freedom and a less accentuated rhythm; in the latter for a fuller and more sonorous volume of sound. Milton uses double-endings very sparingly.

1 These figures are given by Mr. Fleay.

The delightful song "Come live with me, and be my love" was first printed, without the fourth and sixth stanzas, in the Passionate Pilgrim, 1599. It is well known that, though Shakespeare's name is on the titlepage, the pieces in this collection are by various hands. The complete song first appeared, with the author's name, C. Marlowe, subscribed, in that most charming of Elizabethan anthologies, England's Helicon, 1600. Of all pastoral ditties, "Come live with me" is the best and most popular. Sir Hugh Evans trolled snatches from it in the Merry Wives of Windsor; and all lovers of the Complete Angler remember how Maudlin sang to Piscator and his pupil the "smooth song made by Kit Marlowe," her mother following with the reply of Sir Walter Raleigh (if his it be): "They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good." Donne and Herrick tried-but all in vain-to recapture the fresh dainty notes. An exquisite fragment of Marlowe's, beginning, "I walked along a stream for pureness rare," is preserved in England's Parnassus, 1600. Dyce thought that the lines were extracted from some printed composition now unknown; but I do not share Dyce's confidence that the editor of the anthology, Robert Allot, never resorted to manuscript sources.

It is now time to set down what is known of Marlowe's personal history. One thing it is pleasant to record,that he was under the patronage of Sir Thomas Walsingham. To this worthy patron Hero and Leander was dedicated in 1598 by Edward Blunt, the publisher, in language which showed a genuine regard for the deceased

poet's memory. I give the dedication in full, as it has not received due attention from Marlowe's editors :"Sir,-We think not ourselves discharged of the duty we owe to our friend when we have brought the breathless body to the earth; for albeit the eye there taketh his ever-farewell of that beloved object, yet the impression of the man that hath been dear unto us, living an afterlife in our memory, there putteth us in mind of farther obsequies due unto the deceased; and namely of the performance of whatsoever we may judge, shall make to his living credit and to the effecting of his determinations prevented by the stroke of death. By these meditations (as by an intellectual will) I suppose myself executor to the unhappily deceased author of this poem; upon whom knowing that in his lifetime you bestowed many kind favours, entertaining the parts of reckoning and worth which you found in him with good countenance and liberal affection, I cannot but see so far into the will of him dead, that whatsoever issue of his brain should chance to come abroad, that the first breath it should take might be the gentle air of your liking; for since his self had been accustomed thereunto, it would prove more agreeable and thriving to his right other foster-countenance whatsoever." conventional in such language as this. Edward Blount had a sincere admiration and pity for Marlowe. "The impression of the man that hath been dear unto us!" Surely these are tender and pathetic words! When vials of venom were being poured on the dead man's head, it required some courage to speak

VOL. I.

children than any

There is nothing
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out generously and manfully; and, therefore, let us give honour to the magnanimous publisher.

The 66 name atheist" has a very ugly sound. "Agnostic," "materialist," and the like, are gentleman-like designations, but a person who styles himself "atheist" is regarded in polite society as blunt and boorish. In Marlowe's time there were no fine distinctions. Any who ventured to impugn the authenticity of the biblical narrative spoke and wrote at their own deadly peril. In February 1589 Francis Kett, fellow of Benet College, Cambridge, the College of which Marlowe had been a member,—was burnt at Norwich for holding unorthodox views about the Trinity and about Christ's divinity. Such being the state of society, prudence would naturally have dictated that each man should keep his private views to himself, or at least that he should have explained them only to his most intimate friends. "In divinity I keep the road," says that champion of orthodoxy, Sir Thomas Browne, who exposed the vulnerable points in the scriptural narrative with more acumen and gusto than the whole army of "free-thinkers" from Antony Collins downwards. It would have been well if Marlowe had "kept the road." Unfortunately he seems to have lost no opportunity of expounding his heretical opinions. The passage referring to Marlowe in Greene's Groat's Worth of Wit, that crazy death-bed wail of a weak and malignant spirit, has been often quoted before, but must be given here once again :-" Wonder not (for with thee will I first beginne), thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Green, who hath said with thee, like the foole in

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