and harmonious nomenclatures, which have been thought peculiar to Milton. So from the east unto the farthest west Shall Tamburlaine extend his puissant arm. And hover in the Straits for Christian wreck, Have fetch'd about the Indian continent, And thence unto the Straits of Jubaltàr. Milton never surpassed the elevation of that close. Who also but Marlowe is likely to have written the fine passage extracted into this volume, under the title of " Beauty beyond Expression," in which the thought argues as much expression, as the style a confident dignity? Tamburlaine was most likely a joint-stock piece, got up from the manager's chest by Marlowe, Nash, and perhaps half-a-dozen others; for there are two consecutive plays on the subject, and the theatres of our own time are not unacquainted with this species of manufacture. But I am forgetting the plan of my book. Marlowe, like Spenser, is to be looked upon as a poet who had no native precursors. As Spenser is to be criticised with an eye to his poetic ancestors, who had nothing like the Faerie Queene, so is Marlowe with reference to the authors of Gorboduc. He got nothing from them; he prepared the way for the versification, the dignity, and the pathos of his successors, who have nothing finer of the kind to show than the death of Edward the Second-not Shakspeare himself:—and his imagination, like Spenser's, haunted those purely poetic regions of ancient fabling and modern rapture, of beautiful forms and passionate expressions, which they were the first to render the common property of inspiration, and whence their language drew " empyreal air." Marlowe and Spenser are the first of our poets who perceived the beauty of words; not as apart from their significance, nor upon occasion only, as Chaucer did (more marvellous in that than themselves, or than the originals from whom he drew), but as a habit of the poetic mood, and as receiving and reflecting beauty through the feeling of the ideas. THE JEW OF MALTA'S IDEA OF WEALTH. So that of thus much that return was made, As for those Samnites, and the men of Uz, Here have I purs'd their paltry silverlings. Fie; what a trouble 't is to count this trash! Well fare the Arabians, who so richly pay The things they traffic for with wedge of gold, Tell that which may maintain him all his life. Would make a miracle of thus much coin; But he whose steel-barr'd coffers are cramm'd full, And seld-seen costly stones of so great price, May serve, in peril of calamity, To ransom great kings from captivity: This is the ware wherein consists my wealth; And thus, methinks, should men of judgment frame Infinite riches in a little room. But now how stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill ?* Ha! to the east? yes; see how stand the vanes? "My halcyon's bill."-The halcyon is the figure on the vane. East and by south. Why then, I hope my ships I sent for Egypt and the bordering isles Loaden with spice and silks, now under sail, "Samnites" and "men of Uz," and "Spanish oils !"-- That is to say, countrymen and contemporaries of old Rome, of Arabian Job, and the modern Spanish merchants! Marlowe, though he was a scholar, cared no more for geography and consistent history than Shakspeare. He took the world as he found it. at the theatre, where it was a mixture of golden age innocence, tragical enormity, and a knowledge superior to all petty and transitory facts. 2" Mine argosies from Alexandria," &c.-Note the wonderful sweetness of these four lines, particularly the last. The variety of the vowels, the delicate alliteration, and the lapse of the two concluding verses, are equal, as a study, to anything in Spenser. A VISION OF HELEN. She passes between two Cupids, having been summoned from the next world by desire of Faustus. Faust. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.- I will be Paris; and for love of thee, Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, And none but thou shalt be my paramour! 3 Brighter art thou," &c.-Much cannot be said of the five lines here ensuing; but their retention was necessary to the entire feeling or classical association of the speech, if not to a certain lingering modulation. |