Hero and Leander (Marlowe)/Preface
PREFACE.
Mr. Hazlitt observes, in treating of the Elizabethan period of literature, which he likens to the "rich strond" of Spenser, that "it only wants exploring to fill the inquiring mind with wonder and delight, and to convince us that we have been wrong in lavishing all our praise on new-born gauds, though they are made and moulded of things past[1]; and in giving to dust that is a little gilded, more laud than gilt o'er dusted:"—that it "will be found amply to repay the labour of the search, and it will be hard if in most cases curiosity does not end in admiration, and modesty teach us wisdom." Here very likely some of the profane will shake their heads and exclaim, "We have had specimens in plenty of the ore, and the mine does not pay the trouble of working!" and indeed there does seem some reason for the above complaint, when one refers to the dryness of many articles in the British Bibliographer, the Restituta, and the Archaica, and several of the reprints entire, which have issued from the Lee Priory private press of Sir Egerton Brydges. For this it is not very difficult to account.—The writer of these remarks is no way deficient in respect for the talents of the author of "Mary de Clifford" and "The Ruminator;" and, in his opinion, the vulgar jaded stomach of the age, which has no appetite but the false one induced by drams and cayenne, is miserably shown by its neglect of the last mentioned elegant series of papers[2]. He has sympathized, even unto tears, in those heart-breathed melancholy effusions, poured out with such moving ingenuousness, during the "Sylvan Wanderer's" forest walks amid the dank heaps of matted leaves[3]—and he has mourned over the fast crumbling decay of an ancient and noble house. But private feeling, however painful may be the struggle, (and in this case it is most painful,) must give way to impartial criticism.
Sir Egerton was originally intended for a man of genius—but many melancholy circumstances, which every lover of the Muse bewails with drooping head and heart, have crooked the promising branch, and turned the nourishing sap to a corroding poison, eating the heart of the tree. This it is that has caused that craving for unwholesome food which his editorial labours so frequently display. A darkness comes over his spirit, and the blue sky appears black even to his corporeal eye. His patrician feelings unconsciously cling to him in all things. The multitude are following the chase through a beautiful country after a more glittering leader: he cannot mingle unnoticed in the herd, and therefore plunges moodily among thorny brakes and black rocks—he throws himself beneath "knotty, knarry, barren trees," blasted by the "thwarting thunder blue;" and gropes around him for rank weeds which "the dire looking planet smites,"—His lips wreathe into a grievous smile when he lights on a sow-thistle, he tastes it, and fancies its bitter juice richer far than the oozings of the wine-vats.—No misgiving obtrudes itself on him that his palate is out of order! no! he carries home his bundle of dry plants and withered leaves, and sends it to his man cook, Mr. Warwick[4], who dresses the worthless trash with rich sauce. It is served to table in a superb dish, and recommended as an exquisite dainty to the wondering guests, In fact (dropping the silly metaphor) the reprints of those authors superintended by Sir E. Brydges have been, on the whole, such as to fully justify the imposing dogma of Dr. Johnson, "that they were sought after because they were scarce, and would not have become scarce had they been much esteemed[5]."—But there were other neglected writers in that era besides Nicholas Breton, Robert Greene, and Thomas Watson, who surely merited Sir Egerton's best offices with the public on their behalf.— Why did he not follow up his beautiful edition of Drayton's "Nymphidia," with some elegant selections from the lyrical parts of Jonson and Fletcher, or from the polished sonnets of Drummond of Hawthornden, recommended by one of his wonted tasteful mild introductions; wherein, as in the preface to Raleigh's Poems, he might have shown us "that the poetry of that day was not an old fashioned uncouth monster, mounted on a lumbering Pegasus, dragon-winged, and leaden-hoofed; but that it as often wore a sylphlike form, with Attic vest, with faëry feet, and the butterfly's gilded wings?"—This would have unfolded more talent and love of the divine art than printing in splendid quarto, with charming vignettes, such a trifle (pretty, but still a trifle) as Mr. Quillinan's juvenile poem of Dunluce Castle. But unhappily for the cause, of which he was a zealous, though injudicious champion, his likings took an oblique direction— orient pearls lay neglected, while worthless beads were gathered up, strung, and clasped with gold: and imitating Hamlet's sentiment, ("The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty—use them after your own honour and dignity") Watson, Braithwaite, Constable, and Breton, were tricked out in splendid attire, befitting Jonson, or Chapman, or Marlowe, or Sidney, which so far from concealing their native meanness, set it forth in tenfold insignificance.
The rage for blindly reprinting works, merely because they were rare, is quenched; but it has had its use in creating a general spirit of investigation of the fine old writers of England, and Italy, which is gaining ground daily: and the effect of such search is visible in every department of literature[6]. "The Retrospective Review," as far as it has appeared, is a considerable improvement on former publications of a similar nature; but in its poetic department, it professes only to administer small doses by way of provocatives, while the object of the "Select Poets" is to supply true adorers with copious draughts, unadulterated, from the well-head of the Sacred Waters.—There are many would-be admirers who will perhaps expect the editor to draw also of every green ditch and muddy pond in the Delphian country, and their ostrich-stomachs may be balked in not finding any crude, tough, juiceless substances, whereon they may try their marvellous powers of digestion—but this selection is planned with a ruthless regard to intrinsic value, and the editor's opinion that age, when not dignified by worth, is most unreverend and despised, must be a death blow to their hopes. But somewhat too much of this. The author of the first part of the present poem demands attention.
The life of this blazing, though transitory meteor, is shrouded in great obscurity. The place and date of his birth, and the circumstances of his parents are alike unknown; Oldys says that he was born about the former part of the reign of Edward the Sixth, but this can hardly be correct; and the conjecture of Mr. Ellis, who places his birth about 1562, carries with it an air of greater probability. He was of Benet College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B. A. in 1583, and of M. A. 1587; and on leaving the university he became, like his great cotemporary Shakspeare, at once an actor and writer for the stage. So vague and uncertain are all the notices we have of Marlow, that a late ingenious writer in the Monthly Review[7] has endeavoured to show that Marlow and Shakspeare may have been one and the same person! This paradox is sustained by some very specious arguments, but there is quite sufficient cotemporary evidence of Marlow's existence to overthrow it altogether. Thus Robert Greene in his Groatsworth of Wit addresses him, "thou famous gracer of tragedians." Francis Meres praises him together with Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare, Daniel, &c. for having "mightily enriched, and gorgeously invested with rare ornaments, and resplendent habiliments, the English tongue." Carew couples his name with that of Shakspeare in the following passage of his "Excellencies of the English tongue:" "Would you read Catullus, take Shakspeare's and Marlow's fragments:" and Nashe, in his "Lenten Stuff," speaking of Hero and Leander, says, "of whom divine Musæus sung, and a diviner muse than he, Kit Marlow." George Peele, in his "Honour of the Garter," thus mentions him:
"Unhappy in thy end,
Marlow, the Muses' darling for thy verse,
Fit to write passions for the souls below."
Henry Petowe published what he calls a second part of the Hero and Leander, in 1598, and in the following passages exceeds all his eulogists in panegyric, though his verses are homely.
"Marlow admir'd, whose honey-flowing vein
No English writer can as yet attain.
Whose name, in Fame's immortal treasury,
Truth shall record to endless memory.
Marlow, late mortal, now framed all divine,
What soul more happy, than this soul of thine?
Live still in Heaven thy soul, thy fame on earth."—
And again,
"What mortal soul with Marlow might contend,
That could, 'gainst reason, force him stoop or bend?
Whose silver charming tongue mov'd such delight,
That men would shun their sleep, in still dark night,
To meditate upon his golden lines,
His rare conceits, and sweet according rhymes,
But Marlow—still admired Marlow's gone,
To live with Beauty in Elizium,
Immortal Beauty! who desires to hear
His sacred poesies, sweet in every ear:
Marlow must frame, to Orpheus' melody,
Hymns all divine to make Heaven harmony;
'There ever live the prince of poetry,
Live with the living in eternity."
The reader must be familiar with Ben Jonson's mention of "Marlow's mighty line," in his poem to the memory of Shakspeare: and with Drayton's verses, which Warton well observes, are 'the highest testimony," because "Drayton from his own feelings was well qualified to decide on the merits of a poet."
"Next Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That your first poets had: his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear:
For that fine madness still he did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."
Decker, in one of his tracts[8], has placed Marlow in the Elisian Grove of Baies, "with Greene and Peele, under the shadow of a large vine." In that curious old comedy, "The Returne from Pernassus," is the following passage:
"Marlow was happy in his buskin'd Muse,
Alas! unhappy in his life and end:
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,
Wit lent from Heaven, but vices sent from Hell."
It should seem that Marlow on his first launching into life pursued the same thoughtless career of dissipation, which it is to be feared was too prevalent with the men of wit and genius at that period; his associates were Nashe, and Greene, and Peele, dangerous companions—from the fascination of their society and the freedom of their lives; and all of them at mortal enmity with the Puritanical Precisians. Free-thinking on religious topics was then, as it has been deemed since, a mark of the man of spirit and of the world,—a fashionable vice. It may be remarked, that more heterodoxical books were then printed in England than in any other part of Europe; the works of Giordano Bruno, and Servetus, with others of the same stamp, first issued into light from the London press, under the countenance of men of eminence for their rank and talent in the court of Elizabeth.
It is possible, though the evidence is equivocal, that Marlow may have been led by the influence of evil example, in thoughtlessness and gaiety of spirits "to sport with sacred subjects; more perhaps from the preposterous ambition of courting the casual applause of profligate and unprincipled companions, than from any systematic disbelief of religion," he may have ventured upon
but it should be remarked that his accusers were the Puritans, the inveterate enemies of stage-players and poets; and that Marlow seems to have aimed a blow at them in his Edward the Second, where young Spencer addressing the scholar Baldock ridicules the hypocritical pedant, who says a long grace at the table's end, wears a little band, buttons like pins heads, and is
This would never be forgiven or forgotten, his ridicule of their sacred persons would render him more obnoxious than absolute Atheism. Accordingly the fanatic Thomas Beard, in his "Theatre of God's Judgments[9]," gladly availed himself of the unfortunate catastrophe of Marlow's untimely death, to show that it was an immediate judgment of Heaven. He represents him as "giving too large a swing to his own wit, and suffering his lust to have the full reins, so that he fell to that outrage and extremity, as Jodelle a French tragical poet did, (being an epicure and an atheist) that he denied God and his son Christ, and not only in word blasphemed the Trinity, but also (as it was credibly reported) wrote divers discourses against it, affirming our Saviour to be a deceiver, and Moses to be a conjuror: the Holy Bible also to contain only vain and idle stories, and all religion but a device of policy." (I quote from good old Anthony Wood, not having immediate access to Beard's Theatre,) he continues: "But see the end of this person, which was noted by all, especially the Precisians. For so it fell out, that he (Marlow) being deeply in love with a certain woman, had for his rival a bawdy serving-man, one rather fit to be a pimp, than an ingenious Amoretto, as Marlow conceived himself to be. Whereupon Marlow, taking it to be an high affront, rush'd in upon, to stab him with his dagger: but the serving man being very quick so avoided the stroke, that with all catching hold of Marlow's wrist, he stab'd his own dagger into his own head, in such sort, that notwithstanding all the means of surgery that could be wrought, he shortly after died of his wound, before the year 1593."
This account of Beard's is the foundation of all that has been laid to the charge of Marlow, it was in part copied and referred to by Meres in his Wit's Treasury; it was followed by Wood, and by all succeeding writers. William Vaughan, another puritan, published a little common place book, called the Golden Grove, about the year 1600, in which, among other instances of God's judgment upon atheists, &c. he relates with some variation of circumstances the same catastrophe[10]; and in the same work will be found a chapter entitled, "Whether Stage-players ought to be suffered in a Commonwealth!!" which is to the full as liberal in its conclusions.
A late writer[11] has supposed that Thomas Beard also points at Marlow in another work translated by him, and published in 1594, under the title of "The French Academic," in which is also to be found the following bitter philippic against players: "It is a shameful thing to suffer amongst us, or to lose our time, that ought to be so precious unto us, in beholding and in hearing players, actors of interludes and comedies, who are as pernicious a plague in a commonwealth as can be imagined. For nothing marreth more the behaviour, simplicity, and natural goodness of any people than this, because they soon receive into their souls a lively impression of that dissoluteness and villany which they see and hear, when it is joined with words, accents, gestures, motions, and actions, wherewith players and jugglers know how to enrich by all kind of artificial sleights, the filthiest and most dishonest matters, which commonly they make choice of. And to speak freely, in few words we may truly say, that the theatre of players is a school of all unchasteness, uncleanness, whoredom, craft, subtilty, and wickedness,"
Is it to be wondered at, that one who was both player and play-writer, and who had ventured "to dally with interdicted subjects," should be obnoxious to the censure of such writers as this, or have his memory traduced, and his tragic exit accounted a special visitation of the wrath of God?
True it is that among the papers of Lord Keeper Puckering, in the Harleian collection[12] at the British Museum, a paper exists which may be considered evidence of his heretical, and as it styles them, "damnable" opinions. The writer, one Richard Bome, who appears to have taken a note of his conversation for the purpose of giving information against him, at the conclusion of his diabolical catalogue, says, "These things, with many other, shall by good and honest men be proved to be his opinions and common speeches, and that this Marloe persuadeth men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of bugbears and hobgoblins, and utterly scorning both God and his ministers, as I Richard Bome will justify, both by my oath, and the testimony of many honest men, and almost all men with whom he had conversed any time will testify the same. And, as I think, all men in Christianty ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped." Probably Marlow was aware of the character of those whom he thus irritated by his unlicensed speech, and did it out of bravado and wantonness, or to excite admiration of his spirit and courage in worrying a puritanical informer to desperation. Be this as it may, I do not mean to defend the act, but only to show what may probably have given rise to it. Of one part of the charge against Marlow, that of having written books against the Trinity, he must stand acquitted, and the reader will no doubt have seen how cautiously his accusers qualify their assertion by the convenient phrase, "as it is reported[13]."
It is difficult to conceive that a mind so gifted as Marlow's could have descended from its "towering fancies," from "playing in the plighted clouds," to the groveling and soul-degrading tenets which are ascribed to him in this infamous paper; though I am willing to admit that his course of life may not have been altogether free from the stains of libertinism, the more to be lamented, as it led to that fatal event by which
What might not have been expected from him if he had lived to follow the career of that heaven-gifted bard, whose earliest productions, it has been remarked, strongly resemble those of Marlow? It is evident that Shakspeare was familiar with his writings, and even the present poem interests us the more from being cited in "As You Like It."
It is no slight honour to Marlow that one of his compositions has been thought even to be worthy of Shakspeare, to whom was long attributed that beautiful Pastoral Song
some snatches of which are also uttered by Sir Hugh Evans during his "cholars and tremplings of mind" while awaiting Caius at the trysting place, Frogmore: (see Merry Wives, act i sc. 1). The popularity of this exquisite little poem is obvious from the number of imitations to which it gave rise.
In a criticism, which is thought to bear strong traces of the hand of Milton, Marlow is styled "a kind of second Shakspeare, not only because like him he rose from an actor to be a maker of plays, though inferior both in fame and merit; but also because in his begun poem of Hero and Leander, he seems to have a resemblance that clean and unsophisticated wit, which is natural to that incomparable poet[14]."
Marlow, though fully appreciated in his own day, suffered considerably during the reign of French taste, when the rules were the only standard of excellence, and when Dr. Johnson wrote and printed with applause in his edition of Shakspeare, a series of cold, antithetical critiques, whose contemptuous brevity seems to intimate that, in his own conceit, the great moralist was a god to punish the fancied lapses of the sweet Swan, not a mortal to adore. The attention to black letter (as it was termed) which was then beginning to prevail, called the name, if not the works, of Marlow into notice; and Malone properly observed, "that he was the most famous and admired poet of that age, previous to the appearance of Shakspeare." In 1808 his plays came under the judgment of Charles Lamb, in his pithy, and deeply-weighed characters of the Elizabethan Dramatists:— "Faustus" and "Lust's Dominion" were reprinted, with prefatory sketches, in 1814.—Analyses of "Edward II." and the "Jew of Malta," were inserted in Blackwood's interesting magazine; and, still later, his "mighty line" has drawn high praise from the glittering pen of Mr. Hazlitt.—Mr. Lamb is rather hard on the fame of Marlow, and indeed shows less attention to his merits, than to those of any other author included in his specimens.—Barrabbas serves merely as a peg on which to fasten, under the cloak of moral observation, an illiberal sneer at a noted wealthy Jewish family; and "Tamburlaine" is said to be "in a very different style from the tragedy of Edward II." Did not this discrepancy suggest to Mr. Lamb some doubts as to the identity of the author? The genuineness of the Scythian Shepherd has often been suspected; Phillips attributes it to Thomas Newton—and till this point is settled, surely so ardent an admirer of the very reverend ancients might have spared poor Kit's manes the mortification of "the lunes of Tamburlaine." "Lust's Dominion" is dismissed in four lines, which savour rather of the Rambler's dogmatism than the Reflector's ingenuous, good humoured quaintness. "Rape, murder, and superlatives," are indeed there, yet many, many redeeming passages may be found, containing descriptions full of a certain amorous splendour without gaudiness, and scathing threats thundered from furnace hearts without rant. Many of Eleazar's very ravings are written with prodigious gusto and relish; and it may be said of Marlow, as it has been said of Kean the actor, that "he has a devil."—"There is a good deal of the same intense passion as in Faustus, the same recklessness of purpose, and the same smouldering fire within." In support of these remarks, it is hoped, the reader will not object to a few quotations; in which he can hardly fail to observe the variety and melody of Marlow's versification, with one or two exceptions, where the text is probably corrupt. The queen endeavouring to sooth Eleazar with her sugared blandishments, says,
"Smile upon me! and these two wanton boys,
These pretty lads that do attend on me,
Shall call thee Jove, shall wait upon thy cup
And fill thee nectar: their enticing eyes
Shall serve as crystal, wherein thou may’st see
To dress thyself, if thou wilt smile on me.—
Smile on me, and with coronets of pearl,
And bells of gold, circling their pretty arms
In a round ivory fount these two shall swim,
And dive to make thee sport: bestow one smile,
And in a net of twisted silk and gold
In my all-naked arms thyself shall lie.”
The old king expiring, and blind with the mists of death, desires an attendant to call his daughter, who is lying drowned in tears at the bed's foot.
"King Philip. Come hither, Isabella! reach a hand,—
Yet now it shall not need; instead of thine
Death, shoving thee back, clasps his hands in mine,
And bids me come away———."
His younger son, Prince Philip, upbraids his mother and the courtiers with her lusts.—
"Call not me your son!
My father, while he liv'd, tir'd his strong arms
In bearing Christian armour 'gainst the Turks,
And spent his brains in warlike stratagems,
To bring confusion on damn'd infidels:
Whilst you, that snorted here at home, betrayed
His name to everlasting infamy;—
Whilst you at home suffered bis bed-chamber
To be a brothelry,—whilst you at home,
Suffer'd his queen to be a concubine,
And wanton red-cheek'd boys to be her bawds;
Whilst she, reeking in that letcher's arms
Eleazar. Me!
Phil. Villain, 'tis thee! thou hell-begotten fiend!
At thee I stare!———"
Act the third opens with the following address to Night.
"Queen. Fair eldest child of Love! thou spotless Night,
Empress of Silence, and the queen of Sleep,
Who with thy black cheeks' pure complexion,
Mak'st lovers' eyes enamoured of thy beauty!—
Thou'rt like my Moor!———
Eleazar, raging for the death of his wife Maria, fancies king Fernando to be the murderer.
"Eleaz. Now, by the proud complexion of my cheeks,
Ta'en from the kisses of the amorous Sun,
Were he ten thousand kings that slew my love,
Thus should my hand, plum'd with Revenge's wings,
Requite mine own dishonour and her death.
The king being slain, the Moorish prince thus solicits the crown of Castile.—
"Eleaz. Mendoza sweats to wear Spain's diadem,—
Philip hath sworn confusion to this realm,—
They both are up in arms; war's flames do shine
Like lightning in the air.—Wherefore, my lords!
Look well on Eleazar!—Value me,
Not by my sun-burnt cheeks, nor by my birth,
But by my loss of blood,
Which I have sacrific'd in Spain's defence.
Then look on Philip and the Cardinal!—
Look on those gaping curs[15], whose wide throats
Stand stretch'd wide open like the gates of death
To swallow you, your country, children, wives.
Philip cries, 'Fire and blood!' the Cardinal
Cries likewise 'Fire and blood!—I'll quench those flames.—
******Rod. Lay by these ambages! What seeks the Moor?
Eleaz. A kingdom! Castile's crown!———"
The reader will be reminded of Coriolanus' sovereign contempt of "the tag," in perusing Eleazar's proud vaunt of the divinity of a hero.
"Eleaz. to Queen. Are these your fears? Thus blow them into air.
I rush'd amongst the thickest of their crowds,
And with a countenance majestical,
Like the imperious Sun, dispers'd their clouds.—
I have perfum'd the rankness of their breath,
And by the magic of true eloquence
Transform'd this many-headed Cerberus,
This pied camelion,—this beast multitude,
Whose power consists in number, pride in threats
Yet melt like snow when majesty shines forth."
In a very spirited style is likewise the whole of the first scene[16], Act V.
Faustus is well censured by Hazlitt, who esteems it, on the whole, as Marlow's greatest work. "Faustus himself is a rude sketch, but it is a gigantic one. As the outline of the character is grand and daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The thoughts are vast and irregular, and the style halts and staggers under them with uneasy steps." Milton may have had in his eye the following passages:—
"Faustus to the Daemon. Where are you damn'd?
Mephistophiles. In Hell.—
Faust. How comes it then that thou art out of Hell?
Mephis. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.—
Think'st thou that I who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,
Am not tormented by a thousand Hells
In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss?—
******Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
In one set place,—but where we are is Hell—
And where Hell is, there must we ever be.
And, to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be Hell that are not Heaven."
These are noble lines—Lord Byron's obligations to them in his "Manfred" have been noted.—The last hour of Faustus' life is spent in such mental torture, as "thicks the" reader's "blood with cold."—"It is indeed an agony and fearful colluctation."
"(The clock strikes eleven.)
(Faustus solus.) Oh! Faustus!
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 Faustas may repent and save his soul.—
O lentè, lentè, currite noctis equi!—
The stars move still—time runs—the clock will strike—
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.—
Oh! I'll leap up to Heaven!—Who pulls me down?
(Distractly) See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop of blood will save me.—Oh! my Christ—
Yet will I call on him—Oh! spare me, Lucifer!
Where is it now?—'tis gone! and see—
A threat'ning arm, an angry brow!—
Mountains and hills! come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of Heaven!—No?—
Then will I headlong run into the earth:
Gape, earth!—O no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud.
(The clock chimes the half hour.)
Oh! 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 last be sav'd!
No end is limited to damned souls.
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
******Curs'd be the parents that engendered me—
No, Faustus! curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven.
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.)Enter Dæmons.
Adders and serpents! let me breathe awhile!—
Oh! Mephistophiles[17]!—"
(Rolling thunder.)[They all disappear.
The foregoing horrible picture demands such a relief as will gently lead the shaken mind to a calmer region, and hush it into a meek-eyed sadness. This relief may be derived from the works of Marlow himself, who seems, after all, to have had a considerable leaning to voluptuous reposing fancies, and to have dallied with love, like an accomplished amorist.—The beautiful tradition of the "broad Hellespont" is of undoubted antiquity, though unfortunately no fragment has reached us of the parent stock. Virgil alludes to it in a manner sufficient to show its notoriety in his day.
"Quid juvenis, magnum cui versat in ossibus ignem
Durus amor?—Nempe abruptis turbata procellis
Nocte natat cæcâ serus freta: quem super ingens
Porta tonat cœli, et scopulis illisa reclamant
Æquora: nec miseri possunt revocare parentes,
Nec moritura super crudeli funere virgo."
The two Heroides of Naso are familiar to every school-boy; in Lucan, l. 9, 954, Cæsar beholds the
"Amore notatum[18]
Æquor, et Heroas lacrymoso littore turres;"
and lastly, in the fifth century, Musæus the grammarian, the contemporary of Nonnus and Coluthus, produced his brilliant poem.
It will not, perhaps, be displeasing to the poetical reader, to be able to compare at his breakfast table, without the trouble of reference to other volumes, the different methods of handling the same story. For this purpose selections are given from Mr. Elton's[19] elegant version of Musæus, so arranged as to form a continuous narrative. Mr. Elton says truly of the Erotopœgnion, "that it is a beautiful and impassioned production, combining in its love-details the warmth and luxuriance of Ovid, with the delicate and graceful nature of Apollonius; and in the peril and tumult of the catastrophe, rising to the gloomy grandeur of Homeric description.
The torch that witness'd stealthy loves, and him
Who dared, with ocean-wandering nuptials, swim
The midnight surge; embraces veil'd in shade,
That ne'er the morn's immortal eyes survey'd;
Abydos; Sestos; where sweet Hero lay,
A bride, unconscious of the blush of day;
Oh goddess tell!—
The graceful virgin, of a noble strain,
As priestess minister'd in Venus' fane:
But mix'd not with the blithe-assembling fair,
Nor midst the youthful dancers skimm'd in air:
She shunn'd the curious glance of female eyes,
And women's beauty-kindled jealousies.
Now the throng'd festival of Venus came,
By Sestians held to fair Adonis' fame:
From farthest isles, encircled by the main,
Flock'd to the gaudy day a countless train
From Cyprus' wave-wash'd rocks, and green Hæmonia's plain.
No woman in Cythera's cities staid,
Nor one on hills of Libanus delay'd,
Where dancers twine midst cedar-fragrant glades;
Fair Phrygians haste, and near Abydos' maids.
No maid-enamour'd youths are then away,
Who still the rumour'd festival obey.
They bring no incense to the immortal shrine,
But seek the maids who there assembled shine.
Now Hero walk'd the fane with virgin grace;
A shining beauty lightening from her face,
As white the moon emerges to the view
With her clear visage of transparent hue,—
Such Hero's cheek; but on those cheeks of snow,
Were two vermilion circles seen to glow:
And he, that look'd on Hero's limbs, had said,
That meads of roses there their colours spread.
Soft blush'd her tinted limbs; her ancles glow'd
With roses, as the robe's white drapery flow'd
Light-wafted with her step; soft graces skim
Round all her form, and float from every limb:
Three Graces live in legendary lies:
A thousand spring from Hero's laughing eyes.
As o'er the temple's marble floor she moved,
Men's eyes, hearts, souls, with all her motions roved.
Thou too, Leander! martyr of desire,
Didst view the noble maid with glance of fire;
But loth, in secret, passion's stings to prove,
And yield the mind a prey to wasting love;
Loth, while with flamy-breathing dart subdued,
To drag a life of sighing solitude
Without the beauteous maid. The torch of flame
Fierce on the heart from mingling eyebeams came:
His heart quick trembled,
******Shameless from love, some few soft steps he took,
Confronting stood, and fix'd the virgin's look;
Turning his sidelong eyes, with luring wile,
By silent hints the damsel to beguile.
She, when his art she mark'd, in conscious grace
Smil'd to herself, and oft she veil'd her face;
Yet, stealthily, with secret beck, the maid
Twinkling her eyelids, every sign repaid:
With rapture flush'd, the gazing youth believed
His signal answer'd, and his suit received;
And long'd for hidden hours. In western bay
Now glimmering sank the light-contracted day:
Full opposite on evening's shadowy verge,
Bright Hesper's star appear'd above the surge.
When, as he saw the blackness-gathering shade,
Embolden'd, touch'd he close the lonely maid:
Her rose-tipp'd fingers in soft silence press'd,
And drew a sigh long-breathing from his breast.
She silently, while veil'd in gloom they stand,
Draws as in anger back her roseate hand;
But when Leander felt the maid he loved
With sudden starts and wavering gestures moved,
He boldly twitch'd her robe of various hue,
And towards the sanctuary compulsive drew.
With tardy feet, as loth, the virgin went,
And female words were ready to resent:
"What madness moves thee, stranger? wretch! forbear
To drag a virgin, nor my vesture tear:
Begone, and dread my wealthy parents' ire;
For Venus' priestess ill beseems desire;
And hard the passage to a virgin's bed:"
So threaten'd she; what virgins say she said.
No female threats could make his ears afraid:
He knew the signs of a consenting maid.
Her fragrant rose-complexion'd neck he press'd
With clinging lips, love thrilling in his breast:
Then whisper'd: "Oh! thou wonder of this earth!—
Pity my love, and listen to my prayer.—
Priestess of Venus, Venus' rites employ:—
Me Venus' self, commissions now to thee.
Hast thou of that Arcadian virgin read?
How Atalanta shunn'd Milanion's bed,
A maiden vow'd? Bat angry Venus tore
Her heart with love, for him she scorn'd before.
Then be persuaded, sweet! and fear to prove
Th' indignant anger of the queen of love."—
******His words sow'd love: her thoughts bewilder'd stray'd.
Speechless the virgin stood, with downcast eye,
And veil'd her cheek that glow'd with modesty.
With tip-toe step she lightly paced the ground,
And bashful clipp'd her folded mantle round.
Signs of soft yielding:
Already does her thrilling bosom prove
The bitter-sweet, voluptuous stings of love.
******She views Leander with entranced gaze:
Then on the ground she bends her fringed eyes;
His look dilates in frenzied ecstasies:
Still on her smooth-complexion'd neck, that turns
With sweeping bend, his glance insatiate burns:
Till Hero thus with softest accent said,
Whence were these ways of soft delusion known?
Who to my country led thee o'er the main?
Ah me!—but all thou say'st is said in vain:
How should an unknown wanderer share my love?
******But tell-conceal them not-thy country and thy name.
Mine is not hid from thee; on rumour flown,
The name of Hero is not quite unknown.
A lofty tower my mansion; where around
Roars the deep ocean with eternal sound;
The spiry walls of Sestos rise behind;
There, by my parents' stern device confin'd,
I, with a single damsel, lonely dwell,
Where rolls the neighbouring sea with billowy swell
On the steep shore: no friends my hours engage,
No youthful playmates of congenial age:
In waking daylight, or in nightly sleep,
My ears are fill'd with winds, and voices of the deep."
———She veil'd again her rosy cheek.
******Sighing from his inmost soul Leander spake
Words of close wiles: "Oh, virgin! for thy sake
Will I the wild waves cross,
For in a city near thy own I dwell:
Abydos fronts thy Sestian citadel.
But let a torch, from that high tower display'd,
Shine opposite athwart the midnight shade:
The light discern'd shall guide me straight before
To the sweet haven of thy country's shore;
Myself the ship of love, I'll hail from far
The torch of Hero, my directing star;
******But, dear one! watch, lest blasts should quench the fire,
My gleaming guide of life, and darkling I expire.
Know, that Leander is the name I bear;
The spouse of Hero with the flower-wreath'd hair.—"
Thus fix'd their night-long wedlock's wakeful hour,
They part reluctant: Hero sought her tower;
The youth pass'd darkling forth; but lest he stray,
Noted whence high should blaze the signal ray.
He swimming through th'unfathomable main,
In populous Abydos rose again.
******Night came, and cowl'd in sable mantle, ran
And shook deep slumber o'er the eyes of man,
All but Leander's: he long tarrying stood
Where the shores echoed to the roaring flood;
And looked, impatient, till the angel sign
Of his bright wedlock should, discover'd, shine.
******But when with wary eyes th' expectant maid
The rayless gloom of gathering night survey'd,
She show'd the torch on high; Leander gazed:
As the torch kindled, so his passion blazed:
Hastening he rush'd; but, lingering on the shore,
The maddening waves with hoarse reechoing roar
Burst on his ear: he shudder'd as they roll'd,
Then, in high courage, thus his heart consoled:
"Dreadful is love: ungentle is the sea;
Mere waters these; a burning fire is he;
Burn high my heart: the flowing surges brave;
Love calls thee on; then wherefore heed the wave?
******His beauteous limbs disrobing, while he said,
He roll'd his folded vestments round his head;
Sprang from the shore at one adventurous leap,
And cast his body midst the rolling deep.
Straight towards the gleaming torch he clave the sea;
The ship, the rower, and the helmsman he.
The damsel
Screen'd with her robe the flame: till now, nigh spent,
Leander climb'd the harbouring shore's ascent.
She on the threshold met, and silent round
Her panting spouse her arms embracing wound.
Foam drizzling from his locks, within the tower
She led him to her secret virgin bower,
Deck'd for a bride: with smoothing hand she skims
The clinging brine-drops from his trickling limbs;
With rosy-fragrant oils his body laves,
And drowns in sweets the briny-breathing waves:
On high-heap'd couch, then, breathless as he lies,
Entwines around him, and enamour'd cries:
"My husband! great thy sufferings; the salt brine
Of bitter odour has enough been thine,
And roarings of the sea: take now thy rest,
And dry thy recking toils upon my breast."
Swift at the word he loosed her virgin zone.
******Night o'er the scene adorning darkness shed;
Nor e'er the morning in the well-known bed
Beheld the spouse Leander: he again
To opposite Abydos cross'd the main;
With oaring arms the severing billows drove,
And, still with bliss unsated, breathed of love.
So they their strong impelling love conceal'd.
But long they lived not, soon their bliss was o'er,
And marriage-rite, that roam'd from shore to shore.
For when the winter, with its icy sweep,
In roaring storm upturn'd the whirlpool deep,
Strong blew the chilling hurricanes around,
Lash'd the broad sea, and heaved the gulfs profound.
The sailor dreads the winter ocean's roar,
And runs his bulging bark upon the creeking shore:
But thee, Leander! strong of heart! the main,
With all its horrors, would deter in vain.
'Twas night; when wintry blasts thick-gathering roar,
In darted whirlwind rushing on the shore:
Leander, hopeful of his wonted bride,
Was borne aloft upon the sounding tide.
Wave roll'd on wave: in heaps the waters stood;
Sea clash'd with air; and howling o'er the flood
From every point the warring winds were driven,
And the loud deeps dash'd roaring to the heaven,
Leander struggled with the whirlpool main,
And oft to sea-sprung Venus cried in vain,
And him, the godhead of the watery reign.
None succouring hasten'd to the lover's call,
Nor love could conquer fate, though conquering all.
'Gainst his opposing breast, in rushing heaps,
Burst with swift shock th' accumulated deeps:
Stiff hung his nerveless feet: his hands, long spread
Restless amidst the waves, dropp'd numb'd and dead:
Sudden th' involuntary waters rush'd,
And down his gasping throat the brine-floods gush'd;
The bitter wind now quench'd the light above,
And so extinguish'd fled Leander's life and love.—
But while he linger'd still, the watchful maid,
With terrors wavering, on the tower delay'd.
The morning came—no husband met her view:
O'er the wide seas her wandering sight she threw;
If haply, since the torch was quench'd in shade,
Her bridegroom o'er the waters, devious, stray'd.
When, at the turret's foot, her glance descried
His rock-torn corse cast upward by the tide!
She rent the broider'd robe her breast around,
And headlong from the tower she fell with rushing sound!—
Thus on her lifeless husband Hero died,
Nor death's last anguish could their loves divide[20]:—
There is great beauty and power in the above, yet, to my fancy, Mr. Leigh Hunt, in his "original poem," has felt parts with as great relish,—he has identified himself more deeply with the lovers. It is really surprising how much freshness and originality is poured around this hackneyed tale; and this he has accomplished by mentally rejecting in his rough draught, the full-blown flower of Musæus, and brooding over, and developing anew the primitive seed.—In so doing some of the antique air necessarily faded, but this loss is more than compensated to the genuine admirers of the spirit in which our old dramas are written, by the additional force with which all the circumstances are brought home to our modern sympathies. Musæus is more classical—Hunt more romantic.—The present writer neither admires the political doctrines of Mr. Hunt, or the occasional flippancy which disfigure his best works, both prose and verse:—but it is impossible for a candid critic not to perceive the simplicity and truth of his "Hero and Leander.". Not that it is free from one or two lines and phrases, which afflict the sensitive mind like a vulgar flourish introduced into Arne's "Water parted from the Sea," or "This Cold Flinty Heart" in Cymon, but they are so immediately redeemed, that they are, as it were, perforce, forgiven and forgotten. I cannot resist a few specimens; the more especially as bringing out any unjustly neglected poem, jumps with the original intention of this Series; and I may truly say with old Izaac Walton, that these smooth verses please me better than many of the strong lines now in fashion. This little Erotic romance is so short that, if the eyes were not dazzled by thick-bubbling tears, the whole might be perused in ten minutes; however the reader needs not be alarmed, for my intention is only by glimpses of its beauties to provoke him to the purchase of the book[21].—Hunt with his characteristic love of "leafy luxuries," has insisted rather on the heart-gladdening site of "Venus' Church" than on its architectural decorations—his description is summery, yet "mild as the mist of the hill in the day of the sun."
"The hour of worship's over; and the flute
And choral voices of the girls are mute;—
******All, all is still about the odorous grove
That wraps the temple of the Queen of Love,
All but the sparrows twittering from the eaves,
And inward voice of doves among the leaves,
And the cool, hiding noise of brooks in bowers,
And bees, that dart in bosoms of the flowers;
And now and then, a breath-increasing breeze
That comes amid a world of tumbling trees,
And makes them pant and shift against the light
About the marble roof, solid and sunny bright.—
Only some stragglers loiter round the place
To catch a glimpse of Hero's heavenly face,—
******
At last she comes,
******Bringing a golden torch;—and so with pace
A little slackened, and still rosier face,
Passes their looks; and turning by a bower,
Hastens to hide her in her lonely tower.
The tower o'erlooks the sea; and there she sits
Grave with glad thoughts, and watching it by fits;
For o'er that sea, and by that torch's light,
Her love Leander is to come at night,—
******So she sat fix'd, thinking, and thinking on,
And wish'd, and yet did not, the time were gone;—
And started then, and blushed, and then was fain
To try some work, and then sat down again;
And lost to the green trees with their sweet singers,
Tapp'd on the casement's ledge with idle fingers."
The ensuing evening piece seems written in the glowing "South Countrie," "the land of the beautiful blossoms:"—The last two lines remind one of Chaucer—
"Hesper meanwhile, the star with amorous eye
Shot his fine sparkle from the deep blue sky.
A depth of night succeeded, dark but clear,
Such as presents the hollow starry sphere,
Like a high gulf to Heaven: and all above
Seems waking to a fervid fire of love.
A nightingale in transport, seem'd to fling
His warble out, and then sit listening:
And ever and anon, amid the flush
Of the thick leaves, there ran a breezy gush;
And then, from dewy myrtles lately bloomed,
An odour small, in at the window, fumed."
The passing of the waters is more picturesquely touched than any thing of the kind I ever met with—"It is of the water, watery."—The Abydanian's voyages were prosperous during the summer season, when
"———The night was almost clear as day,
Wanting no torch; and then with easy play
He dipp'd along beneath the silver moon,
Placidly hearkening to the water's tune."
But the pleasant days of autumn now were over,
"And the crane
Began to clang against the coming rain,
And peevish winds ran cutting o'er the sea,
Which at its best look'd dark and slatily.—
******But still he came, and still she bless'd his sight;
And so, from day to day, he came and went,
Till time had almost made her confident.
One evening, as she sat, twining sweet bay
And myrtle garlands for a holiday,—
******She thought with such a full and quiet sweetness
Of all Leander's love,
All that he was, and said, and look'd, and dared,
His form, his step, his noble head full-haired,
******That the sharp pleasure mov'd her like a grief,
And tears came dropping with their meek relief.—
Meanwhile the sun had sunk; the hilly mark
Across the straits mix'd with the mightier dark,
And night came on. All noises by degrees
Were hụsh'd,—the fisher's call, the birds, the trees,
All—but the washing of the eternal seas.
Hero look'd out, and trembling augured ill,
The darkness held its breath so very still.
But yet she hop'd he might arrive before
The storm began, or not be far from shore;
******she said a tearful pray'r,
And mounted to the tower, and shook the torch's flare.
But he, Leander, almost half across,
Threw his blithe locks behind him with a toss,
And hail'd the light victoriously, secure
Of clasping his kind love,
When suddenly, a blast, as if in wrath,
Sheer from the hills, came headlong on his path."
The story now necessarily follows Musæus, but there are some sweet touches of nature. Though these extracts have proved of greater length than was intended, I trust the reader will forgive them, and join with me in commending the total absence of all frigid, unmeaning epithets, and mere ambitious verbal delineation. "There is none of that adulterated phraseology," as the philosophic Wordsworth says, "none of that unusual language vulgarly called 'poetic diction,' which thrusts out of sight the plain humanities of nature," but the story runs on to its fulfilment, with the same unity of feeling as if it had been thrown off at a sitting. I cannot tell how tempered may be the heart of the reader, but for mine own part, I confess, that even now while perusing this tale of true love for the twentieth time, my throat swells, and my eyes gush out with tears.—Perhaps, however, there is something in the congenial season,—the gray and watery sky above, the dank grass below, and flagging Auster blowing heavily against the trees, shattering the tawney leaves,—but I forget myself. The remarks that are purposed on the principal poem, must not be delayed farther; and, first, for Marlow's share.
There is in all the Elizabethan writers a wonderful exuberance and display of mental riches: they give full measure, heaped, and running over.—"They mingle every thing," says that choice critic Lamb, "run line into line, embarrass sentences and metaphors. The judgment is perfectly overwhelmed with the confluence of images," &c. These general remarks apply to the particular case before us. Taken as a whole, Marlow's "Hero and Leander contains much to blame, but, considered by sections, more out of all proportion to praise. The quickness of his fancy would not allow him to treat the story simply:—he was obliged to branch forth into splendid superfluities.—The human part of his plot is good, but he could not let well alone.—Thus he has scarcely finished Leander's passionately eloquent wooing, and the rich-haired Hero's unconscious assent, given with such sweet naiveté, when he launches out into an episode, brightly coloured, and ingeniously compacted it is true; but which from its needlessness to the human interest of the poem, becomes neither more or less than an overgrown conceit. This mode of judging bears still harder on that long description in the Second Sestyad, of Leander's swimming; where it seems extremely difficult for Marlow to decide whether Neptune shall be a real God, or a mere personification of the waves. An author should be consistent with himself,—it will never do to make use of Mercury, or Cupid, or Neptune now as mythological personages, and then as abstractions—but enough already of vituperation. The versification is extremely musical, and preserves a mean between the monotony of Pope, and the tiresome frequency of Chalkhill's overlappings:—many of the lines might be securely dove-tailed into Dryden's narrative poems. Neither is the language unsuited by its harshness to the melody of the verses, being remarkably free from quaintnesses, which in Marlow consist not in phrases, but in ideas.—Our author employs not many direct similes, though expository comparisons often:— he sprinkles, rather liberally, moral sentences, glosses on the text, parenthetical apothegms.—A considerable store of classical learning is revealed in many passages;—the idea of Apollo's harp sounding forth "musick to the ocean," is a well-known antique piece of mystification; see Book II. where, likewise Leander's ineptness in love, seems suggested by that of Daphnis in Longus's exquisite Pastoral Romance.—Deep knowledge of the human heart is displayed in Hero's longing shamefacedness, which wears the semblance of hypocrisy, and yet is not.—Leander
"—knock'd and call'd, at which celestial noise,
The longing heart of Hero much more joys,
Than nymphs and shepherds, when the timbrel rings,
Or crooked dolphin when the sailor sings:—
She staid not for her robes, but straight arose,
And, drunk with gladness, to the door she goes,—
Where seeing a naked man she screech'd for fear[22],
******
And ran into the dark herself to hide;
(Rich jewels in the dark are soonest spied)
Unto her was he led, or rather, drawn
By those white limbs which sparkled through the lawn," &c.
How much more truly is this in the genuine nature of woman, and therefore how much more lovely to a healthy mind than either those outrageous personifications of ill-timed chastity, so common in romances ten or twelve years ago, or that unrestrained prostitution of the person which seems considered so venial by Percy B. Shelley and Co.—The two lines
"Then standing at the door she turn'd about
As loth to see Leander going out:"
contain a pretty illustration of the extreme of love:—some of our diluting modern writers would have spun out this light touch to a fine length.—What a brilliant fancy shines out in the following verses:
"The men of wealthy Sestos, every year,
For his sake, whom their goddess held so dear,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis, kept a solemn feast;
Thither resorted many a wand'red guest
To meet their loves:—such as had none at all,
Came lovers home from that great festival.
For every street, like to a firmament,
Glister'd with breathing stars,
******But far above the loveliest Hero shin'd,
And stole away th' enchanted gazer's mind:
******Nor that night-wandering, pale, and watery star,
(When yawning dragons draw her whirling car,
From Latmos' mount, up to the gloomy sky,
Where crown'd with blazing light and majesty
She proudly sits), more over-rules the flood,
Than she the hearts of those that near her stood."
But this preface swells apace, and the conclusion seems to retire before me as I advance like an ignis fatuus. Chapman's portion still hangs on my hands, but I shall dispatch him in a few words, both on account of what has been heretofore said of him in the preface to his Hymns of Homer, and for the sake of the reader, who has been all-too-long amused with vain speeches in the cold portico of our theatre. It appears almost idle to point out where the supplement commences, as the style of our noble English Homer quickly betrays itself[23].—His crowds of bold and violent figures, which jostle one another in their turbulent birth,—his swelling fancies,—and his dry, square, axioms, giving the lie, as it were, to his enthusiasm.—The usual metaphor of thoughts "flowing from the brain" can never be used in writing of Chapman's inventive process. His images and conceptions spout forth as from the crater of a volcano, hurling in the blast, at once, bright fire and dusky smoke,—live coals and dry ashes. The English language has not a more unequal poet:—one instant finds him familiar, low,—bolting inelegant conceits, and gross hyperboles; the next, soaring aloft in bardic majesty, full of true passion and vigorous feelings. In his most pathetic scenes he suddenly strikes us into ice, with a philosophical or metaphysical oracle, an apopthegmatical couplet; and he takes leave of flesh and blood, to consort with shadowy personifications and embodied abstractions. Of a piece too with his phraseology, is his versification, which is now equable, sonorous, and full; now, harsh, angular, inappropriately jaw-breaking, quaintly twisted, strangely distorted. But with all this he is a noble spirit:—"passion, the all-in-all in poetry, (to repeat an admirable criticism) is everywhere present.—He makes his readers glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be moved by words, or in spite of them, be disgusted, and overcome their disgust." Take for example the last scene of this cutting tragedy, which is indeed struck out with a towering energy.—I do not envy the feelings of that critic who can go over it unmoved, nor of "the little judge" who stops to cavil at an odd word, or extraneous syllable.—Something healing is spread over the final paragraph, which reconciles and imperceptibly harmonizes the mind. It is truly stated by Mr. Lamb, that the genius of Chapman is epic, rather than purely dramatic. Of this, one confirmation is in Hero's sophisticating self-consolations in the Third Sestyad, which though founded in nature, considered in the abstract, are wanting in characteristic and dramatic propriety.—There are several rich pictures in old George's continuation, among which allow me to point out the following. Hero is robing for private sacrifice—
"Then put she on all her religious weeds,
A crown of icicles, that sun nor fire
Could ever melt, and figur'd chaste desire.
A golden star shin'd in her naked breast
In honour of the queen-light of the east.
In her right hand she held a silver wand,
On whose bright top Peristera did stand
Who was a nymph but now, transform'd, a dove,—
******Her plenteous hair in curled billows swims
On her bright shoulder: her harmonious limbs
Sustain'd no more but a most subtile veil,
That hung on them, as it durst not assail
Their different concord; for the weakest air
Could raise it, swelling, from her beauties fair;
Nor did it cover, but adumbrate only
Her most heart-piercing parts, that a blest eye
Might see, as it did shadow, fearfully
All that all-love-deserving Paradise:
It was as blue as the most freezing skies,
Near the sea's hue from thence her goddess came:
On it a scarf she wore of wondrous frame;
In midst whereof she wrought a virgin's face,
From whose each cheek a fiery blush did chase
Two crimson flames, that did two ways extend,
Spreading the ample scarf to either end,
Which figured the division of her mind,—
******This serv'd her white neck for a purple sphere,
And cast itself at full breadth down her back."
This is more in costume, and more classical than the rival description at the commencement of the poem, where Marlow has arrayed his "Nun of Venus" in the stiff, rustling silks, and glistering brocades worn by the plump-shouldered yellow-haired Venetian dames of Tizian, or Paris Bordone. "Enough, however, has been already said, and it may appear to some more than was altogether seemly; but there are times when it is difficult for love to restrain every expression of its admiration[24]."
I must now take leave of my honoured wards, of whom I confess that my commendations are sincerer than my censures, which last were made the rather to forestall the nibblings of others, than to enforce objections of my own.—I would fain intreat still once again for a sober and candid examination of my favourites, and I cannot do this better than by calling to the "gentle reader's" memory the valuable sentiment of Horace, as expanded by the vigorous Dryden—"True judgment in poetry, like that in painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and when the beauties are more than the faults, concludes for the poet against the little judge."
This Preface has waited above a month, in expectation that the real Editor of the "Select Poets" would have made some apology to his accustomed readers for appointing a journeyman to that work, which would have been most becomingly performed by himself. But the same more important avocations, which, in the first instance, caused the substitution, have since operated to prevent the explanation; and the writer of the preceding desultory remarks, and of a few trifling notes on the text, is thus left to request for himself the poetical collector's indulgence towards the inevitable errors of an unpractised hand.
For the possessors of this volume, however, the above mentioned delay was lucky: as it has been the means of furnishing them with the following curious minim of information, which occurred the other day in a shrewd little periodical work, entitled, "The British Stage." The article is on Marlowe[25], who is well defended by the ingenious writer from the charge of atheism; and, in its turn, the puzzling question of the poet's death and the name of his opponent come under his consideration. After quoting Vaughan's tale, he says, "The mention of Deptford, in the above passage, led me to imagine, that some record of Marlowe's burial might be still met with there; though, I confess, that my expectations were not very sanguine. The search, however, was attended with success; for, in the Register of Burials at the Church of St. Nicholas, Deptford, occurs the following—"1st June, 1593.—Christopher Marlowe, slain by Francis Archer."—See No. for Jan. 1821, p. 22.
Much other interesting matter is contained in the same paper; and at p. 28, a supposed unique comedy is described, hight "Roister Doister!" The Editor likewise promises a reprint of a MS. masque, from the pen of the thrusting and foining Marston.
HERO AND
LEANDER:
Begunne by Christopher Marloe
and finished by George Chapman.
Ut nectar, Ingenium.
At London
Imprinted for John Flasket, and are to be sold
in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the
Blacke Beare.
1606.
- ↑ This is extremely applicable to the genteel and somewhat cloying poems published under the assumed name of Cornwall.—This author, whose forte lies in tasteful selection, and who is original in imitation, would do well to read and mark page 26 of Mr. Hazlitt's Elizabethan Lectures.
- ↑ The fickleness of our reading public is well censured in the following sentence from "Eastward Hoe:"—"They are borne on headlong in desire, from one novelty to another: and where these ranging appetites reign there is ever more passion than reason; no stay, and so no happiness."
- ↑ Sir E. B. has wisely (whatever the worldly and ignorant may say) unloaded his full heart on paper—
"The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." - ↑ The Lee Priory printer.
- ↑ In justice to Sir Egerton Brydges, it should be observed, that we are indebted to his zeal, and that of his unwearied coadjutor Mr. Haslewood, for much curious and interesting information relating to our early writers; of which Dr. Drake has known how to avail himself, without the labour of wading through the mass of rubbish, under which it has sometimes lain hid. The reviver of Wither's "Shepherd's Hunting," and "Fair Virtue," (so ably panegyrized by Mr. Lamb) and of the learned Stanley's "Poems," and "Translations from Moschus, Anacreon, &c." deserves the poetical student's warmest thanks; and I have much pleasure in acknowledging that I owe my more intimate acquaintance with the following beautiful poem to Sir Egerton's almost entire reprint of it in several numbers of the "Restituta."
- ↑ Yet even at this time there are men of indurated, unpoetical minds, to whom the simple, majestic, weighty style of our noble translation of the Bible is "uncouth, vulgar," and who clamour for an entire new version!!
- ↑ See vol. Ixxxix. p. 361, &c. and vol. xciii. p. 61, &c.
- ↑ A Knight's Conjuring, 1607, 4to. sig. L.
- ↑ Printed about 1598.
- ↑ "Christopher Marlow, by profession a play-maker, who, as it is reported, about fourteen years ago wrote a book against the Trinity: but see the effects of God's justice; it so happen'd, that at Deptford, a little village about three miles distant from London, as he meant to stab with his poniard one named Ingram, that had invited him thither to a feast, and was then playing at tables; he quickly perceiving it, so avoided the thrust, that withall drawing out his dagger for his defence, he stab'd this Marlow into the eye, in such sort, that his brain coming out at the dagger's point, he shortly after died. Thus did God, the true executioner of divine justice, work the end of impious atheists."
- ↑ See "The Poetical Decameron, by I. P. Collier. Edinburgh, 1820, vol. ii. p. 128.—An advertisement states that these volumes contain "A popular view of that brilliant era of English Poetry, during which Shakspeare, Spenser, Ben Jonson, &c. flourished." It also sets forth that they include the concentrated essence of the Censura, Restituta, &c. "together with much new information, and many valuable notices not hitherto generally known!"—and finally, that "the work resembles in its plan the elegant dialogues of Bishop Hurd!!"
In its plan then be it, certainly not in its spirit; a more undiscriminative, prolix piece of verbosity about antiquarian trifles, quisquiliæ, scarcely could have graced or disgraced the heaviest of those periodicals from which it is compiled. How Mr. Dibdin must chuckle when he glances his eye from the Templar's Decameron to his own brisk publications! However he must not plume himself too much on his fancied superiority. If he has erected an eighth mundane wonder in producing on the supposed arid, jejune subject of Bibliography, two works replete with life, vivacity, and curious anecdote; (the honestly-filled "Bibliomania," and the beautifully-decorated "Decameron") a less Alcidëan task was not achieved by his rival in turning, with magic pen, "the fruitage fair" of poetry into "bitter ashes, which our offended jaws with spattering noise reject." - ↑ No. 6853. This paper will be found printed at large in the splenetic Ritson's "Observations upon Warton's History of Poetry," 4to. 1782, p. 40.—It is a singular circumstance that Ritson, of all men, should have sought to substantiate the charges against Marlow! The very bitterness and excess of depravity in this document render the veracity of the writer suspicious.
- ↑ There is good ground for suspecting that Marlow was highly offended at Greene's noted address to him in that wretched creature's "Groats-worth of Wit;" which, says a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, "would hardly have been the case had he been the open and avowed atheist there represented."
- ↑ Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum. By Sir E. Brydges. Lond. 1800, p. 113.
- ↑ Monsters would be better both for sense and rhythm.
- ↑ Most ludicrously divided into three by the editor of "Old English Plays," 6 vols. 8vo. 1814.
- ↑ In these extracts I have ventured on one or two trifling emendations, which were much needed. A tolerably correct edition of the plays of Marlow, Thomas Heywood, Chapman, Decker, &c. &c. would be a real blessing. It is not possible to exceed the blunders committed or disregarded in the "Old English Plays," on which work an acute critique appeared in the Monthly Review, N. S. vol. lxxv. p. 225.
- ↑ So Burmann-Oudendorp has natatum, which perhaps is best.
- ↑ The amiable author of that beautiful monody "The Brothers," and the excellent translator of Hesiod, and specimens of the Classic Poets, 3 vols. 8vo. 1814. Where all is good, it is difficult to make any preference, yet with due diffidence I may venture to point out for admiration his translated extracts from Onomacritus, Pindar, Nonnus, and Apollonius. The visit of Hermes to Calypso (Odyss. 5. v. 43.) and part of the hymn to Apollo, beginning Λητω δ' εννή μάρτε και εννέα νύκλας, &c. are both rendered with equal fidelity and poetry; and Horace's ode, "Quis multâ gracilis," is sweetly touched.
- ↑ Elton's Specimens of the Classic Poets, vol. iii. p. 331.
- ↑ "Hero and Leander, and Bacchus and Ariadne," two original poems, by Leigh Hunt, 12mo. 1819. The lay of the Panther, at the end, (taken from Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana) is worth the total cost. The essence of youth flames and dances in its elastic lines.—The old legend of Ariadne, too, is very originally embodied,—the opening is "wet with roarie may-dews,"—it is drowned in the cool gray air of dawn.
"The moist and quiet morn was scarcely breaking,
When Ariadne in her bower was waking;
Her eyelids still were closing, and she heard
But indistinctly yet a little bird,
That in the leaves o'erhead, waiting the sun,
Seemed answering another distant one.She waked, but stirred not, only just to please
Her pillow-nestling cheek; while the full seas,
The birds, the leaves, the lulling love o'ernight,
The happy thought of the returning light,
conspired to keep
Her senses lingering in the feel of sleep." - ↑ These lines would be highly gratifying to the derisive qualities of a French critic: but here, in England, their reign is over; and thanks to the Germans, with the Schlegels at their head, a truer philosophical method of judging, is beginning to obtain among us.
- ↑ The following allusion to Chapman's share in the present translation, occurs in "England's Mourning Garment," &c. [1606.]
"Neither doth Coryn, full of worth and wit,
That finisht dead Musæus' gracious song,
With grace as great, and words and verse as fit,
Chide meager death for doing vertue wrong." - ↑ See preface to Mr. ———'s singular, enthusiastic translation of "Sintram and his Companions," by Baron la Motte Fonqué, a sublime, deeply pondered effusion of genius, in the strict sense of the term.
- ↑ The critic says of the "Hero and Leander," that "It is scarcely hazarding too much to assert, that a more exquisite specimen of poetical ideas, clothed in elegant and harmonious language, does not exist. His Lucan and Ovid have little less merit;—"