epigram, the loftiest flight of poetry, the subtlest music, and the most luxuriant debauch of fancy. Touched by his hands the thing became an organ capable of rolling thunders and of whispering sighs -of moving with pompous volubility, or gliding like a silvery stream-of blowing trumpet-blasts to battle, or sounding the soft secrets of a lover's heart. I do not assert that Marlowe made it discourse music of so many moods. But what he did with it unlocked the secrets of the verse, and taught successors how to play upon its hundred stops. He found it what Greene calls 'a drumming decasyllabon.' Each line stood alone, formed after the same model, ending with a stronglyaccented monosyllable. Marlowe varied the pauses in its rhythm, combined the structure of succeeding verses into periods, altered the incidence of accent in many divers forms, and left the metre fit to be the vehicle of Shakespeare's or of Milton's thought."

But before we pass on to measure the merits and defects of our poet, we may as well remark the order in which his plays were produced. Editors are, I think, agreed as to their chronological

sequence. "Tamburlaine," which heads the list, was performed in public before the year 1587. It was in two parts, the second part having been speedily produced in order to strengthen the success obtained by the first. "The general welcomes 'Tamburlaine' received," said the Prologue, "When he arrived last upon the stage, Hath made our poet pen his Second Part." It was soon succeeded by four others-by "Dr. Faustus," "The Jew of Malta," "The Massacre of Paris," and "Edward II." The drama of "Dido, Queen of Carthage," may have been begun by the poet in his first and feeblest period of authorship, but it was found unfinished at his death. Nash is thought to have helped to complete it, and possibly the duller parts of this incoherent play were written by him. Besides these dramas, Marlowe made poems and translations. He began to tell in most exquisite verse the lovely story of Hero and Leander. But he was only able to produce two of his so-called sestiads, and thus left us another fragment, which a later, lesser poet, Chapman, had the hardihood to touch. Chapman made it complete by joining on to it four other

sestiads, which only serve to set in stronger relief the supreme beauty of the two that precede them. Marlowe also translated into good rhymes, probably as a college exercise, the “Amores" of Ovid; his clever version, however, was not appreciated by certain critical bishops, who found it their duty to make a public bonfire with the work. Another translation, that of the "First Book of Lucan," in strong blank verse, with some short lyrics, including the famous "Come live with me and be my Love," make up the number of our poet's legacies to literature. These are all. His was a brief career. He died at twenty-nine, in the bright morning of his fame. We keep him in that chamber of our memory where are those poets stolen too soon from the world by Death, the great Robber; he is with all others whom the gods loved-with Otway and Keats, with Chatterton and Shelley, with Chénier and de Guérin. Had time been his, who shall say to what heights he would not have soared. But he had only six stormy years in which to fight his battle for fame, for immortality. Then came that ignominious end.

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Marlowe's work reflects his life as a mirror reflects a face: all his life was swayed by passion ; all his dramas take passion for their theme. Play-writers before him made types of the Virtues ; he makes types of the Lusts. Each drama exhibits some overmastering passion, as it grows, and develops, and destroys. The lust for empire and limitless rule; the lust for lucre, for all knowledge and all beauty-these form the groundwork, the mainspring of each play.

"Tamburlaine" shows us the quenchless thirst for reign. As a tragedy, it has been so often ridiculed and censured for its bombast and rant, that it were idle to re-echo here the derision or the blame. It certainly exhibits an abundance of that brutalité, férocité, fougue, for which French critics condemn the Elizabethan drama. But then it was a beginning, a trial of strength; the poet was feeling for his way, using all his tremendous powers for the first time. We may consider the scheme of the play to be inartistic, absurd; we may scoff at that spectacle of caged and harnessed kings, at the grim effects gained by blood and battered brains; yet all b

the extravagance, all the ferocity, can never dull for us the splendour of the poetry that shines out through it all. What Englishman before Marlowe could write such burning passages as those which I have taken from "Tamburlaine" wherewith to enrich this little book? Nay, who now, in this tame and temperate age, could make such a vehement poem for us, or draw such a dread picture of the lust for empire as this of "Tamburlaine," the mediæval Napoleon? Yet nobody wants such a picture. The world is older and wiser; we are all strictly moral now. We do not care for embodiments of the lusts. We prefer our own modern dramas, with Parisian petticoats and dialogue-plays from which the "three" all-important "unities" of adultery, arsenic, and tea-cups are never missing. Well, Marlowe had his systems, his effects; we have ours. But then he had also his glorious poetry, his rich, fearless imagination. And our modern dramas have neither.

"Tamburlaine" is valuable to us now as a lurid, intoxicating poem, full of glare and horror, yet rich with many a lovely and melodious line. Marlowe