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"These dignities,

Like poison, make men swell; this rat's-bane honour,

Oh, 'tis so sweet! they'll lick it till they burst"

shows the utmost virulence of smothered spleen; and his concluding strain of malignant exultation has been but tamely imitated by Young's Zanga:

"Now, tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pew-fellow,* to thee I'll sing,
Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords:
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee

I consecrate my murders, all my stabs," &c.

It may be worth while to observe, for the sake of the curious, that many of Marlowe's most sounding lines consist of monosyllables, or nearly so. The repetition of Eleazer's taunt to the Cardinal, retorting his own words upon him, "Spaniard or Moor, the saucy slave shall die"-may perhaps have suggested Falconbridge's spirited reiteration of the phrase, "And hang a calf's skin on those recreant limbs."

I do not think The Rich Jew of Malta' so characteristic a specimen of this writer's powers. It has not the same fierce glow of passion or expression. It is extreme in act, and outrageous in plot and catastrophe; but it has not the same vigorous filling up. The author seems to have relied on the horror inspired by the subject, and the national disgust excited against the principal character, to rouse the feelings of the audience : for the rest, it is a tissue of gratuitous, unprovoked, and incredible atrocities, which are committed, one upon the back of the other, by the parties concerned, without motive, passion or object. There are, notwithstanding, some striking passages in it, as Ba. rabbas's description of the bravo, Philia Borzot; the relation of

*This expression seems to be ridiculed by Falstaff.

"He sent a shaggy, tattered, staring slave,

That when he speaks draws out his grisly beard,
And winds it twice or thrice about his ear;

Whose face has been a grindstone for men's swords;

his own unaccountable villanies to Ithamore; his rejoicing over his recovered jewels "as the morning lark sings over her young;" and the backwardness he declares in himself to forgive the Christian injuries that are offered him,* which may have given the idea of one of Shylock's speeches, where he ironically disclaime any enmity to the merchants on the same account. It is perhaps hardly fair to compare the Jew of Malta with the Merchant of Venice; for it is evident that Shakspeare's genius shows to as much advantage in knowledge of character, in variety, and stageeffect, as it does in point of general humanity.

Edward II. is, according to the modern standard of composi

His hands are hack'd, some fingers cut quite off,
Who when he speaks, grunts like a hog, and looks
Like one that is employed in catzerie,

And cross-biting; such a rogue

As is the husband to a hundred whores;

And I by him must send three hundred crowns."

"In spite of these swine-eating Christians
(Unchosen nation, never circumcised;

Act IV.

Such poor villains as were ne'er thought upon,
Till Titus and Vespasian conquer'd us)

Am I become as wealthy as I am.

They hoped my daughter would have been a nun;

But she's at home, and I have bought a house

As great and fair as is the Governor's:

And there, in spite of Malta, will I dwell,

Having Ferneze's hand; whose heart I'll have,
Ay, and his son's too, or it shall go hard.

"I am not of the tribe of Levi, I,
That can so soon forget an injury.

We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please;
And when we grin we bite; yet are our looks

As innocent and harmless as a lamb's.

I learn'd in Florence how to kiss my hand,
Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog,
And duck as low as any bare-foot Friar :
Hoping to see them starve upon a stall,
Or else be gather'd for in our synagogue,
That when the offering bason comes to me,
Even for charity I may spit into it

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tion, Marlowe's best play. It is written with few offences against the common rules, and in a succession of smooth and flowing lines. The poet however succeeds less in the voluptuous and effeminate descriptions which he here attempts, than in the more dreadful and violent bursts of passion. Edward II. is drawn with historic truth, but without much dramatic effect. The management of the plot is feeble and desultory; little interest is excited in the various turns of fate; the characters are too worthless, have too little energy, and their punishment is, in general, too well deserved to excite our commiseration; so that this play will bear, on the whole, but a distant comparison with Shakspeare's Richard II. in conduct, power, or effect. But the death of Edward II., in Marlowe's tragedy, is certainly superior to that of Shakspeare's King; and in heart-breaking distress, and the sense of human weakness, claiming pity from utter helplessness and concion, misery, is not surpassed by any writer whatever.

"Edward. Weep'st thou already? List awhile to me,

And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is,

Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus,

Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.

This dungeon where they keep me, is the sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.

Lightborn. Oh villains.

Edward. And here in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.

They give me bread and water, being a king;
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind's distemper'd, and my body's numb'd:
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tatter'd robes!
Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look'd not thus,
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,

And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont."

There are some excellent passages scattered up and down. The description of the King and Gaveston looking out of the palace window, and laughing at the courtiers as they pass, and that of the different spirit shown by the lion and the forest deer,

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when wounded, are among the best. "Come live with me and be my love," to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an answer, is Marlowe's.

Heywood I shall mention next, as a direct contrast to Mar lowe in everything but the smoothness of his verse. As Mar. lowe's imagination glows like a furnace, Heywood's is a gentle, lambent flame, that purifies without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There is nothing supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He makes use of the commonest circumstances of every-day life, and of the easiest tempers, to show the workings, or rather the inefficacy of the passions, the vis inertia of tragedy. His incidents strike from their very familiarity, and the distresses he paints invite our sympathy from the calmness and resignation with which they are borne. The pathos might be deemed purer from its having no mixture of turbulence or vindictiveness in it; and in proportion as the sufferers are made to deserve a better fate. In the midst of the most untoward reverses and cutting injuries, good nature and good sense keep their accustomed sway. He describes men's errors with tenderness, and their duties only with zeal, and the heightenings of a poetic fancy. His style is equally natural, simple, and unconstrained. The dialogue (bating the verse) is such as might be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is beautiful prose put into heroic measure. It is not so much that he uses the common English idiom for everything (for that I think the most poetical and impassioned of our elder dramatists do equally), but the simplicity of the characters and the equable flow of the sentiments do not require or suffer it to be warped from the tone of level speaking, by figurative expressions, or hyperbolical allusions. A few scattered exceptions occur now and then, where the hectic flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they are not the worse for being rare. Thus, in the play called A Woman Killed with Kindness,' Wendoll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his obligations to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying

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And further on, Frankford, when doubting his wife's fidelity, says, with less feeling indeed, but with much elegance of fancy,

"Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs,

Like morning dew upon the golden flow'rs."

So also, when returning to his house at midnight to make the fatal discovery, he exclaims,

"Astonishment,

Fear, and amazement, beat upon my heart,
Even as a madman beats upon a drum.”

It is the reality of things present to their imaginations that makes these writers so fine, so bold, and yet so true in what they describe. Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them "invisible, or dimly seen" through a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such poetical ornaments are however to be met with at considerable intervals in this play, and do not disturb the calm serenity and domestic simplicity of the author's style. The conclusion of Wendoll's declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of its general merits, both as to purity of thought and diction:

"Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful
Bluntly to give my life into your hand,
And at one hazard, all my earthly means.

Go, tell your husband: he will turn me off,

And I am then undone. I care not, I;

'Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he'll kill me;

I care not; 'twas for you. Say I incur

The general name of villain through the world,

Of traitor to my friend: I care not, I;

Poverty, shame, death, scandal, and reproach,
For you I'll hazard all: why what care I?
For you I love, and for your love I'll die."

The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to his wife, and her repentant agony at parting with him, are already before the public, in Mr. Lamb's Specimens. The winding up of this play is rather awkwardly managed, and the moral is, according to established usage, equivocal. It required only Frankford's reconciliation to his wife, as well as his forgiveness of her, for the

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