The description of Tamburlaine's person has a rude Titanic grandeur, which still tells on the ear and brain as in the lines,

"Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned;

Like his desire, lift upwards and divine,

So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders, as might mainly bear
Old Atlas' burthen."

In the whole description, his predominating desire to accumulate round his characters the images of strength and majesty, and dwarf all other men in comparison, is finely exemplified. Tamburlaine is

"Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion"; his eyes are "piercing instruments of sight,"

"Whose fiery circles bear encompassed

A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres."

The breath of heaven "delights" to play with his curls of "amber hair"; his bent brows "figure death," their smoothness "amity and life"; his "kindled wrath can only be quenched in blood"; and he is "in every part proportioned like a man," who has the right divine to subdue the world. We are astonished that Carlyle has not yet puffed Tamburlaine as made after Marlowe's image. The Scythian shepherd deserves a proud place among his heroes.

Most of Marlowe's powerful scenes are well known. His best plays are The Rich Jew of Malta; Edward the Second, the reluctant pangs of whose abdicating royalty," says Lamb, "furnished hints which Shakspeare scarce improved in Richard the Second "; and The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, which is his greatest and most characteristic performance, sadly disfigured, however, by bathos and buffoonery, and inspired in part by the very imp of mischief. Barabbas, the Jew, has been mentioned as sug gesting Shylock. The character, however, has little resemblance to Shakspeare's Jew. It is Marlowe all over. In the celebrated scene where Barabbas gloats over his vast wealth, his imagination glows like his own "fiery opals." The deathscene in Edward the Second, according to Lamb, "moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern," with

which he is acquainted. We think this praise altogether too extravagant, but we place it before our readers for judgment. "Berkley Castle. The King is left alone with Lightborn, a murderer.

"Edw. Who's there? what light is that? wherefore com'st thou ? Light. To comfort you, and bring you joyful news.

66

"Edw. Small comfort finds poor Edward in thy looks.

Villain, I know thou com'st to murder me.

66

Light. To murder you, my most gracious lord?

Far is it from my heart to do you harm.

The queen sent me to see how you were used,
For she relents at this your misery;

And what eyes can refrain from shedding tears,
To see a king in this most piteous state?

"Edw. 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 a sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.

66

Light. O villains!

"Edw. And there, 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.
O would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered 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.

66

Light. O speak no more, my lord! this breaks my heart. Lie on this bed, and rest yourself awhile.

"Edw. These looks of thine can harbour naught but death! see my tragedy written in thy brows.

Yet stay awhile, forbear thy bloody hand,
And let me see the stroke before it comes,

That even then, when I shall lose my life,

My mind may be more steadfast on my God.

66

Light. What means your highness to mistrust me thus ?

* His keepers.

"Edw. What mean'st thou to dissemble with me thus?

66

Light. These hands were never stained with innocent blood, Nor shall they be tainted with a king's.

"Edw. Forgive my thought, for having such a thought.

One jewel have I left, receive thou this.

Still fear I, and I know not what 's the cause,
But every joint shakes as I give it thee.

O, if thou harbour'st murder in thy heart,

Let the gift change thy mind, and save thy soul!
Know that I am a king; O, at that name

I feel a hell of grief! Where is my crown?

Gone, gone! and do I still remain alive?

66

Light. You're overwatch'd, my lord; lie down and rest. "Edw. But that grief keeps me waking, I should sleep; For not these ten days have these eyelids closed.

Now as I speak they fall, and yet with fear

Open again. O wherefore sitt'st thou here?

66

Light. If you mistrust me, I'll be gone, my lord. "Edw. No, no, for if thou mean'st to murder me, Thou wilt return again; and therefore stay.

"Light. He sleeps.

"Edw. O let me not die! yet stay, O stay awhile! Light. How now, my lord?

66

"Edw. Something still buzzeth in mine ears,

And tells me if I sleep I never wake;

66

This fear is that which makes me tremble thus.
And therefore tell me, wherefore art thou come?
Light. To rid thee of thy life; Matrevis, come.
"Edw. I am too weak and feeble to resist :
Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul."

Lamb, Vol. I., pp. 25-27.

We take leave of Marlowe with an extract from the last scene in Faustus. The verse has the sinewy vigor and sonorous chime which generally distinguish his style. It is, however, intensified by the agony one might feel on viewing his own name traced in flaming characters on the black rolls of the damned.

"FAUSTUS alone.

"Faust. O Faustus,

The clock strikes eleven.

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.

Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day or let this hour be but.
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
O, I will leap to heaven! Who pulls me down?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament:
One drop of blood will save me; O, my Christ,
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him. O spare me, Lucifer!
Where is it now? 't is gone!

And see, a threat'ning arm, and angry brow!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.
No? then I will headlong run into the earth:
Gape, earth. O no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence have allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon laboring cloud;
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
But let my soul mount, and ascend to heaven.
The watch strikes.

O half the hour is past! 't will all be past anon.
O if my soul must suffer for my sin,

Impose some end to my incessant pain!
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:
No end is limited to damned souls.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?

O Pythagoras, Metempsychosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engender'd me:
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven.
The clock strikes twelve.

It strikes, it strikes; now, body, turn to air,

Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
O soul, be chang'd into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean; ne'er be found.
Thunder, and enter the Devils.
O mercy, heaven, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile:
Ugly hell, gape not come not, Lucifer:
I'll burn my books: O Mephistophilis!"

Lamb, Vol. 1., pp. 36-38.

It is supposed that Marlowe wrote the principal portion of the old plays which Shakspeare altered into the Second and Third Parts of Henry the Sixth. Malone, on comparing the latter with their originals, found that 1,771 lines had been taken without alteration, 2,373 altered, and only 1,899 had been added. Greene, in his Groat'sworth of Wit, published in 1592, addressing, it is conjectured, Marlowe, exclaims, "Yes, trust them not [the players], for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with a tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as any of you, and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a country."

Next to Shakspeare, there is no dramatist of the period whose name is so familiar to English ears as that of Ben Jonson, though he is probably less read than either Massinger or Fletcher. The associations connected with his name have contributed to keeping it alive, for he is, in most points of his character, the very embodiment of England, a veritable, indubitable John Bull. The base of his character is sound, strong, weighty sense, with that infusion of insular prejudice which keeps every true Englishman from being a cosmopolite, either in literature, arts, government, or manners. He has also that ingrained coarseness, which, in the Anglo-Saxon mind, often coexists with the sturdiest morality, and, though it disconnects virtue from delicacy, prevents vice from allying itself with refinement. In reading Jonson we continually fall upon expressions which "no young lady ought to read"; still there is nothing which tends to corrupt the morals as well as to vulgarize the speech. Virtue and vice, honesty and baseness, indulge in no coquetry in his representations. We are acquainted with no dramatist whose characters, bad and good, are better adapted to excite