Greater than they could make, and scorn'd their smart.
She bow'd herself so low out of her tower,
That wonder 'twas she fell not ere her hour,
With searching the lamenting waves for him;
Like a poor snail, her gentle supple limb
Hung on her turret's top so most downright,
As she would dive beneath the darkness quite,
To find her Jewel;-Jewel!-her Leander,
A name of all earth's jewels pleas'd not her
Like his dear name: "Leander, still my choice,
Come naught but my Leander! O my voice,
Turn to Leander! henceforth be all sounds,
Accents, and phrases, that show all griefs' wounds,
Analys'd in Leander! O black change!

Trumpets, do you, with thunder of your clange,
Drive out this change's horror! My voice faints:
Where all joy was, now shriek out all complaints!"'
Thus cried she; for her mixed soul could tell
Her love was dead: and when the Morning fell
Prostrate upon the weeping earth for woe,
Blushes, that bled out of her cheeks, did show
Leander brought by Neptune, bruis'd and torn
With cities' ruins he to rocks had worn,

To filthy usuring rocks, that would have blood,
Though they could get of him no other good.
She saw him, and the sight was much much more
Than might have serv'd to kill her; should her store
Of giant sorrows speak? Burst,—die,—bleed,
And leave poor plaints to us that shall succeed.
She fell on her love's bosom, hugg'd it fast,
And with Leander's name she breath'd her last.
Neptune for pity in his arms did take them,
Flung them into the air, and did awake them
Like two sweet birds, surnam'd th' Acanthides,
Which we call Thistle-warps, that near no seas

Dare ever come, but still in couples fly,
And feed on thistle-tops, to testify

The hardness of their first life in their last:
The first, in thorns of love, that sorrows past.
And so most beautiful their colours show
As none (so little) like them; her sad brow
A sable velvet feather covers quite,
Even like the forehead-cloth that, in the night,
Or when they sorrow, ladies use to wear:
Their wings, blue, red, and yellow, mix'd
Colours that, as we construe colours, paint
Their states to life; the yellow shows their saint,
The devil Venus, left them; blue, their truth,
The red and black, ensigns of death and ruth.
And this true honour from their love-death sprung,-
They were the first that ever Poet sung.

FINIS.

appear;

EDITOR'S NOTE

Christopher Marlowe's unfinished HERO AND LEANDER has been called "the greatest English narrative poem of love." And not unjustly. Shakespere's VENUS AND ADONIS is labored in comparison, and Keat's ENDYMION but a wistful, uncertain shadow; nor is there any fourth poem of the kind in our language worthy to stand with these three. For in his twenty-ninth year Marlowe had come into his own. The best of his dramas are uneven, incomplete; in the commonest Elizabethan medium, much as his genius might mold it, he was never quite at home; the indirections of the stage were alien to his nature. But in the verses of the Byzantine grammarian, Musaeus, Marlowe found material which demanded a narrative poem, and the "rich, clear, fervent” couplets of HERO AND LEANDER announced a major poet. The poem was first licensed for printing in September, 1593. Already, in May of that year, Marlowe had fallen, stabbed to death in a tavern brawl. To his peculiar kingdom he left no heirs. Nevertheless his friend, George Chapman, scholar, poet, translator of Homer, to whom perhaps, Marlowe had confided the fate of his poem, attempted to complete it, and in 1598, only a little after Edward Blount had published the Marlowe fragment, Paul Linley issued HERO AND LEANDER complete in six "sesty ads," the first two by Marlowe, the last four by Chapman. Chapman's continuation, in the forced comparison with Marlowe's superb beginning, has suffered unjustly. Chapman's verse is easy and vigorous, his narrative has moments of charming grace, and some of his single lines are not unworthy even of Marlowe.

The present edition seeks to present a text of HERO AND LEANDER which, within the limits imposed by modernized spelling and partially modernized punctuation, departs as little as possible from the actual readings of the first two quartos. In the pursuance of this aim the editor has been assisted most by the Hazelwood reprint of the Linley quarto, and by the scholarly Clarendon Press edition of the complete works of Christopher Marlowe. GARRETT MATTINGLY.