uncouth hexameters, and Roger Ascham, though he recognized the incapacity of English for scansion, was inclined to adopt an unrhymed metre like the classical iambic. Surrey first solved the problem practically by translating parts of the Eneid into verses of ten syllables without rhyme. But his measure has not much variety or ease. It remained for two devoted admirers of classical art, Sackville and Norton, to employ what Surrey called his "strange metre " in the drama. Their Gorboduc, acted before the Queen in 1561-2, is the first tragedy written in blank verse. The insufferable monotony and dreariness of this play are well-known to all students of our early literature. Yet respect for its antiquity induces me to give a specimen of its quaint style. We must remember in reading these lines that they are the embryon of Marlowe's, Shakspeare's, and Milton's verse.

O mother, thou to murder thus thy child!

Even Jove with justice must with lightning flames
From heaven send down some strange revenge on thee.
Ah, noble prince, how oft have I beheld

Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,
Shining in armour bright before the tilt,

And with thy mistress sleeve tied on thy helm,
And charge thy staff-to please thy lady's eye-

That bowed the headpiece of thy friendly foe!

I have purposely chosen the most animated apostrophe in the whole play, in order that its venerable authors might appear to the best advantage. It will be noticed that notwithstanding much stiffness in the movement of the metre, and some embarrassment in the grammatical construction, we yet may trace variety and emphasis in the pauses of these lines beyond what would have been possible in sequences of rhymed couplets. Mr. Collier, in his History of Dramatic Poetry, mentions two other plays written in blank verse, but not performed on the public stage, before the appearance of Marlowe's Tamburlaine. It is to this tragedy that he assigns the credit of having once and for all established blank verse as the popular dramatic metre of the English. With this opinion all students who have examined the origin of our theatrical literature will, no doubt, agree. But Marlowe did not merely drive the rhymed couplet from the stage by substituting the blank verse of his contemporaries: he created a new metre by the melody, variety, and force which he infused into the iambic, and left models of versification, the pomp and gorgeousness of which Shakspeare and Milton alone can be said to have surpassed. The change which he operated was so thorough and so novel to the playwrights as well as the playgoers of his time, that he met with some determined opposition. Thomas Nash spoke scornfully of "idiot art masters, that intrude themselves to our ears as the alchemists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to attract better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse." In another sneer he described the new measure as "the spacious volubility of a drumming decasyllabon;"

while Robert Greene, who had written many wearisome rhymed dramas, talked of making "verses jet on the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the ear like the fa-burden of Bow bell, daring God out of heaven with that atheist, Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the Sun." But our "licentiate iambic" was destined to triumph. Greene and Nash gave way before inevitable fate, and wrote some better plays in consequence.

Let us inquire what change Marlowe really introduced, and what was his theory of dramatic versification. He found the tensyllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of alternate short and long. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods: one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words to dominate over their form. He did not force his metre to preserve a fixed and unalterable type, but suffered it to assume most variable modalations, the whole beauty of which depended upon their perfect adaptation to the current of his ideas. By these means he was able to produce the double effect of variety and unity, to preserve the fixed march of his chosen metre, and yet, by subtle alterations in the pauses, speed, and grouping of the syllables, to make one measure represent a thousand. Used in this fashion, blank verse became a Proteus. It resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm; but, by the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to rise above the common and prosaic beat of time. Bad writers of blank verse, like Marlowe's predecessors, or like those who in all ages have been deficient in plastic energy and power of harmonious modulation, produce successions of monotonous iambic lines, sacrificing all the poetry of expression to the mechanism of their art. Metre with them ceases to be the organic body of a vital thought, and becomes a mere framework. And bad critics praise them for the very faults of tameness and monotony which they miscall regularity of numbers. It was thus that the sublimest as well as the most audacious of Milton's essays in versifi

cation fell under the censure of Johnson.

It is not difficult to support these eulogies by reference to Marlowe's works; for some of his finest blank verse passages allow themselves to be detached without any great injury to their integrity. The following may be cited as an instance of his full-voiced harmony. Faustus exclaims

Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander's love and Enon's death?
And hath not he who built the walls of Troy
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp
Made music with my Mephostophiles?

* Some of these remarks are repeated from a letter addressed by the author to the Pall Mall Gazette on the versification of Milton.

We feel at once that a new spirit has been breathed into the metrea spirit of undefinable melody. Something is owing to the choice of long resounding, and full-vowelled words; something to the use of monosyllables, as in the third line; something to alliteration; but more than all to the passion of the author, and to the "plastic stress" of his creative genius. This tragedy is full of fine passages, and the soliloquy in which Faustus watches his last moments ebb away, might be quoted as a perfect instance of variety and sustained effect in a situation which could only be redeemed from monotony by consummate art. Edward the Second is not less rich in versification. In order to prove that Marlowe could temper his blank verse to different moods and passions, take this speech, in which the indignant Edward first gives way to anger, and then to misery

Mortimer who talks of Mortimer,

Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer,
That bloody man? Good father, on thy lap
Lay I this head laden with mickle care.
O, might I never ope these eyes again,
Never again lift up this drooping head,
O, never more lift up this dying heart!

The didactic dignity of Marlowe's verse may be gathered from these lines in Tamburlaine,—

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,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

Again, as if wishing to prove what liberties might be taken with the iambic metre without injury to its music, Marlowe wrote these descriptive lines in the Jew of Malta :

Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,

And seld scen costly stones of so great price,

As one of them, indifferently rated,

May serve, in peril of calamity,

To ransom great kings from captivity.

The licence of the first and third line is both daring and successful. The second departs less from the ordinary rhythm, while the four last carry back the period into the usual flow of Marlowe's verse.

The four passages which I have quoted are, perhaps, sufficient to prove that blank verse was not only brought into existence, but also perfected by Marlowe. It is true that, like all great poets, he left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that his metre is marked by an almost extravagant

exuberance, impetuosity, and height of colouring. It seems to flow from him with the rapidity of improvisation, and to follow a law of melody rather felt than studied by its author. We feel that the poet loved to give the rein to his ungovernable fancy, forgetting the thought with which he started, revelling in sonorous words, and pouring forth a stream of images, so that the mind receives at last a vague and various impression of sublimity.

This was the character of very much Elizabethan poetry. Even Shakspeare was not free from intemperance in the use of words.

Marlowe's contemporaries soon caught the trick of sonorous versification. The obscure author of a play which has sometimes been attributed to Marlowe, wrote these lines in the true style of his master :—

Chime out your softest strains of harmony,

And on delicious music's silken wings

Send ravishing delight to my love's ears.

While Peele contented himself with repeating his more honeyed cadences. I will spare the reader any further specimens of the versification in which our poets rioted when Marlowe had unlocked the frozen streams of metre, and made it hurry in such liquid numbers.

It is time to proceed to Shakspeare, who, next to Marlowe, had more influence than any poet on the formation of our blank verse. Coleridge has maintained that his diction and metre were peculiarly his own, unimitated and inimitable. But I believe that a careful comparison of his style with that of his contemporaries will make it evident that he began a period in which versification was refined and purified from Marlowe's wordiness. Shakspeare has more than Marlowe's versatility and power; but his metre is never so extravagant in its pomp of verbal grandeur. He restrains his own luxuriance, and does not allow himself to be seduced by pleasing sounds. His finest passages owe none of their beauty to alliteration, and yet he knew most exquisitely how to use that meretricious handmaid of melody. Nothing can be more seductive than the charm of repeated liquids and vowels in the following lines:

On such a night

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand

Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love

To come again to Carthage.

Nor again did Shakspeare employ big sounding words so profusely as Marlowe, but reserved them for effects of especial solemnity, as in the speech of Timon.

Come not to me again: but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beachéd verge of the salt flood;
Whom once a day with his embosséd froth

The turbulent surge shall cover: thither come,

And let my gravestone be your oracle.

But Shakspeare did not always, or indeed often, employ these somewhat obvious artifices of harmonious diction. The characteristic of his verse is

that it is naturally, unobtrusively, and enduringly musical. We hardly know why his words are melodious, or what makes them always fresh, whereas the more apparent charms of Fletcher and of Marlowe pall upon our ears. Throughout his writings there is a subtle adjustment of sound to sense, of lofty thoughts to appropriate words; the ideas evolve themselves with inexhaustible spontaneity, and a suitable investiture of language is never wanting, so that each cadenced period seems made to hold a thought of its own, and thought is linked to thought and cadence to cadence in unending continuity. Inferior artists have systems of melody, pauses which they repeat, favourite terminations, and accelerations or retardations of the rhythm, which they employ whenever the occasion prompts them. But there is none of this in Shakspeare. He never falls into the commonplace of mannerism. Compare Oberon's speeches with Prospero's, or with Lorenzo's, or with Romeo's, or with Mark Antony's: under the Shakspearian similarity there is a different note in all of these, whereas we know beforehand what form the utterances of Bellario, or Philaster, or Memnon, or Ordella in Fletcher must certainly assume. As a single instance of the elasticity, self-restraint, and freshness of the Shakspearian blank verse; of its freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, or Fletcher's languor, or Milton's involution; of its ringing sound and lucid vigour, the following celebrated passage from Measure for Measure may be quoted. It illustrates the freedom from adventitious ornament and the organic continuity of Shakspeare's versification, while it also exhibits his power of varying his cadences and suiting them to the dramatic utterance of his characters.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not whither;

To lie in cold oblivion and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling ;- -'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on Nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

Each of Shakspeare's contemporaries and successors among the dramatists commanded a style of his own in blank verse composition. It was so peculiarly the function of the stage and of the playwrights at that particular epoch to perfect this metre, that I do not think some detailed examination of the language of the drama will be out of place. Coleridge observes that "Ben Jonson's blank verse is very masterly and individual." To this criticism might be added that it is the blank verse of a scholar-pointed, polished, and free from the lyricisms of his age. It lacks harmony and is often laboured but vigorous and solid it never fails to be. This pane