before his death, Marlowe, when speaking of the poem to his friends, had mentioned Chapman as the person whom he should choose to complete it, if he himself should not live to bring it to a close. I need hardly remind the reader that, in Marlowe's case, "his late desires" cannot be referred to wishes expressed during the lingering illness of a death-bed. As to the conclusion of the passage, "and to light surrender," &c., I must confess that I am far from understanding it clearly.-Most probably there is no authority (at least, no good authority) for Warton's statement that Chapman had formed a friendship with Marlowe ;* and the lines just cited would certainly lead us to suppose that their acquaintance with each other, if any, had been very slight.

Chapman offends, to a still greater degree than Marlowe, by loading the narrative with excrescences, which render it deficient in unity and due subordination of parts; and he has all Marlowe's proneness to conceits and apothegms. He disappoints us by unexpected inequalities and strange improprieties; he loves frigid personifications; his meaning is not always transparent, his versification not always happy. But he has great depth of thought; he rises not unfrequently to the real poetic enthusiasm; his pictures have a truly graphic force of delineation; his touches of fancy are often bright and delicate; his pathos is sometimes profound. Chapman has not received justice from Warton, who mentions only slightly and disparagingly his continuation of Hero and Leander. It is, on the whole, a less perfect performance than Marlowe's (much shorter) portion of the tale: but if the superiority of the one poet over the other is to be decided by individual passages, there will be no small difficulty in determining to whom the palm is due.

The Second and Fourth Books of Virgil's Eneid by Lord Surrey, some of Ovid's Epistles by Turberville, and Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's paraphrase and alteration of

* Warton states that Chapman, having gone to London in his youth, 'soon commenced a friendship with Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Daniel." Hist. of Engl. Poet. iii. 447, ed. 4to. According to Wood (cited by Warton, ibid. p. 448), Chapman was a man "religious and temperate, qualities rarely meeting in a poet;" and as Marlowe unhappily appears not to have possessed those "qualities," it is unlikely that any intimacy should have existed between him and Chapman.

"At length George Chapruan, the translator of Homer, completed, but with a striking inequality, Marlowe's unfinished version." Hist. of Engl. Poet. iii. 434, ed. 4to. (which, indeed, is nearly what Phillips had said in the Theat. Poet. (Modern Poets), p. 25, ed. 1675).-To this opinion we may oppose that of Chapman's contemporary, Chettle, who speaks of him as

"Coryn, full of worth and wit,

That finisht dead Museus' gracious song
With grace as great and words and verse as fit."

England's Mourning Garment, n. d. Sig. D 2.

T

At a much later period Chapman published a version of Musæus, -The Divine Poem of Musœus. First of all Bookes. Translated according to the originall, By Geo: Chapman, 1616, 12mo. It is dedicated to Inigo Jones. In an address "To the Commune Reader" Chapman mentions "that partly excellent poem of Maister Marloe's." (Here, in the former edition of the present work, I cited some lines from "this rare translation" but the whole of it may now (1858) be read, among the other translations by Chapman, excellently edited by my friend the Rev. R. Hooper.)

the Phonissa of Euripides under the title of Iocasta, were all, or nearly all,* the specimens of blank-verse translation from the ancient poets which our language afforded, till Marlowe's First Book of Lucan, having been entered in the Stationers' Books 28th Sept. 1593, was published in 1600.

As the versification wants that variety of pause which Marlowe latterly was accustomed to observe, I should have unhesitatingly referred this attempt to an early period of his life, did not such a defect seem sufficiently accounted for by the necessity which he had imposed upon himself of "translating line for line." Nor is it unlikely, that having once had in view a complete version of the Pharsalia, he may have been deterred from proceeding farther than the First Book by finding that he had adopted a plan which greatly increased the difficulty of his undertaking. Though a pleasing memorial of his devotion to classical literature, this fragment can add very little to his fame, even if we should allow that it reflects the lofty and declamatory style of Lucan more faithfully than any subsequent translation.

The beautiful song, "Come live with me," &c, was originally printed, but wanting the fourth and sixth stanzas, in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, a collection of poems which the title-page affirms to be wholly by Shakespeare; and it was for the first time published complete, and subscribed with the real author's name, "C. Marlowe,"+ in England's Helicon, 1600.

Few songs have been more popular than this: we find both a Reply to and an Imitation of it in England's Helicon; snatches of it are sung by Sir Hugh Evans

* Of course, Grimoald's blank-verse translations from the Alexandreis of Gaultier are not to be taken into account.-In Steevens's list of Ancient Translations from Classic Authors (Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, i. 380), there occurs Virgil's Eclogues and Georgicks, translated into blank verse by W. Webbe, Lond. 1589. Qy. was there ever any such book? Webbe, indeed, gives translations of the First and Second Eclogues in his Discourse of English Poetrie (p. 71, sqq. ed. Haslewood), but they are in English hexameters; and ibid. (p. 54) he says that he once turned the Georgics "to that same English verse which other such workes were in, though it were rudely,” &c, and that his version had fallen into the hands of a person, who, he was told, either had published or intended to publish it.— Peele translated one of the Iphigenias of Euripides into English verse (qy. if blank-verse?); but in all probability it was never printed. I learn this fact from some Latin lines (in MS.) by Dr. Gager,—In Iphigeniam Georgii Peeli Anglicanis versibus redditam. The “Effiginia a Tragedye showen on the Innocentes daie at nighte by the Children of Powles," 1571, which is mentioned in Cunningham's Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court, &c, p. 13, is very unlikely to have been Peele's translation; for at that date Peele, there is good reason to believe, was under twenty years of age. + Marlowe himself quotes (with a slight variation) a line of it in The Jew of Malta: see note †, p. 170.

The first stanza of the Reply had previously appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim. Sir E. Brydges has insented both these pieces as Raleigh's in his ed. of that extraordinary man's Poems. I think it very doubtful if he wrote even the former of them; but I cannot discuss the question of their authorship here: on that subject see Percy's Rel. of A. E. P. 1. 237, ed. 1812, Ritson's Bibl. Poet. pp. 254, 307, and Sir E. Brydges's Introd. to England's Helicon, p. xiii.-Oldys in a MS. note, under the article "Marlowe," in his copy of Langbaine's Acc. of Engl. Dram. Poets, says; "Sr W. Ralegh was an encourager of his [Marlowe's] Muse; and he wrote an answer to a Pastoral Sonnet of Sr Walters printed by Isaac Walton in his Book of Fishing." For the first of these statements I know no authority; as to the second,-"Sr Walters" is obviously a slip of the pen for "Marlowe's."

in The Merry Wives of Windsor ;* and Donne + and Herrick ‡ have each (unsuccessfully) attempted to rival it. In 1653, when it was comparatively little known, Isaac Walton, by inserting it in The Complete Angler, gave it fresh celebrity.-Making no appeal to the heart, nor having any force of sentiment, it cannot be regarded as a love-song of the highest class; but it is among the very best of those sweet and fanciful strains with which genius has enriched the fabled Arcadia.

As the editor of England's Parnassus, 1600, appears never to have resorted to manuscript sources, we may conclude that the descriptive stanzas by Marlowe in that anthology, "I walk'd along a stream," &c, were extracted from some printed piece, of which not a single copy now remains. Most probably it was a composition of no great length: but the stanzas in question present so fine a picture of objects seen through a poetic medium, that, in exchange for the rest, every reader of taste would willingly part with a dozen of those long and tedious productions which are precious in the estimation of antiquaries alone.

A comedy called The Maiden's Holiday was entered in the Stationers' Books, 8th April 1654, as the joint-work of Marlowe and Day; but it did not reach the press ; and at last it met its fate from that arch-destroyer of manuscript dramas, John Warburton's cook. In matters of authorship the Stationers' Books are not always to be trusted; and that Marlowe and Day should have written in conjunction is rendered highly improbable by the fact, that we find no notice of Day as a dramatist earlier than 1599. Still, there is a possibility that Marlowe may have so far mistaken his own powers as to attempt a comedy, that he may have left it unfinished at his death, and that Day may have completed it: there is a possibility too that we possess a fragment of The Maiden's Holiday in that pastoral "Dialogue" attributed to "Kitt Marlowe," which was recently discovered among the Alleyn Papers, and which, mean as it is, I have not chosen to exclude from the present edition.

Written by Christofer but that it could not

Lusts Dominion; or, The Lascivious Queen. A Tragedie. Marloe, Gent., was issued from the shop of Kirkman in 1657; have been the work of Marlowe has been distinctly shown by Mr. Collier; § who also

* Act iii. sc. I.-In Malone's Shakespeare (by Boswell), viii. 104, may be seen the old music to which it was sung, given from a MS. by Sir J. Hawkins.-N. Breton mentions this song in A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters, 1603; "At the least you shall heare the old song that you were wont to like well of, sung by the blacke browes with the cherrie-cheeke, vnder the side of the pide cow, Come live with me and be my loue." p. 59, ed. 1637.-Again, in his Choice, Chance, and Change, &c, 1606; "Why, how now, doe you take me for a woman, that you come vpon me with a ballad of Come live with me and be my loue?" p. 3.-In Deloney's Strange Histories, &c., 1607, is a ballad called The Imprisonment of Queene Elinor, &c, "to the tune of Come liue with me and be my love." + See Donne's Poems, p. 190, ed. 1633. In later eds. it is entitled The Bait. See To Phillis to love and live with him, Herrick's Hesperides, p. 223, ed. 1648.

"This play, Lust's Dominion, though hitherto supposed to have been written by Marlow, is unquestionably not his. Some confusion is occasioned in the plot by the insertion of characters unknown to history; but the King Philip who figures in the first act is Philip II. of Spain, who did not die (vide Watson's Philip II, vol. iii. p. 332) until 1598. Marlow was killed by Archer in 1593.

conjectures with great probability, that, as a Spanish Moor is its hero, it is no other than The Spaneshe Mores Tragedie, which was written by Dekker, Haughton, and Day, and is mentioned in Henslowe's Diary under "the 13 of febrearye 1599 [1600].” *

A drama entitled Alarum for London, or The Siedge of Antwerpe. With the ventrous actes and valorous deeds of the lame Soldier. As it hath been playde by the right Honorable the Lord Charberlaine [sic] his Seruants, did not pass the press till 1602. A copy of it, now belonging to Mr. Collier, has the following lines written by some early possessor on its title-page:

"Our famous Marloe had in this a hand,

As from his fellowes I doe vnderstand.

The printed copie doth his Muse much wrong;
But natheles manie lines ar good and strong:
Of Paris' Massaker + such was the fate;
A perfitt coppie came to hand to late."

The report of Marlowe's "fellowes" may be true: but certainly throughout the Alarum for London no traces of his genius are discoverable.

If this be not sufficient, or if it should be supposed for a moment that Philip I. might be intended, there is still further and conclusive evidence to shew that Marlow could not be the author of Lust's Dominion. A tract was printed in London in 1599 (vide Lord Somers' Collection, ii. 505), called A briefe and true Declaration of the Sicknesse, last words, and Death of the King of Spain, Philip Second, from which various passages in the play were clearly borrowed. We will compare a few quotations from both relating to the death of the King.

'Dry your wet eyes, for sorrow wanteth force

T'inspire a breathing soul in a dead corse.' Lust's Dom.

'My friends and subjects, your sorrowes are of no force to recover my health.' Tract.

'when I am embalm'd,

Apparel me in a rich royal robe . . . .

Then place my bones within that brazen shrine.' Lust's Dom.

· Commanding that this my bodie . . . . be embalm'd; then apparelled with a royal robe, and so placed within this brazen shrine.' Tract.

'Have care to Isabel :

Her virtue was King Philip's looking-glass.' Lust's Dom.

Ir I pray you, have a great care and regard to your sister, because she was my looking-glasse.' Tract." Note in Dodsley's Old Plays, ii. 311, ed. 1825.-To a correspondent in Notes and Queries, vol. vii. 253, the above "argument for the rejection of Lust's Dominion does not appear by any means conclusive:" and he writes "about it and about it" with the bold ignorance which distinguishes too many of the contributors to that useful periodical. Among other things, he sayɛ; "The earliest extant edition of the play bears Marlowe's name at full length on the title-page. It is true that the date of that edition is 1650, sixty-six years after his death [a mistake; the edition is dated 1657]: still the publisher must have had some reasonable ground for attributing the work to him." Now, the writer would hardly have ventured such a remark, had he been acquainted with Kirkman's character as a publisher, had he been aware, for instance, that Kirkman printed, in 1661, a drama called The Thracian Wonder, and put on the title-page the names of John Webster and William Rowley, though it is certo certius that not a word of so wretched a piece could have proceeded from Webster's pen.

* P. 165, ed. Shake. Soc.

+ See ante, pp. xxiv, xxv.

It is now necessary to consider a remarkable passage of Greene's Address to Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, which has been already cited from The Groatsworth of Wit. "There is," he says, and that he is speaking of Shakespeare no one can hesitate to believe, "an vpstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you," &c. Hence it is evident that before September 1592 Shakespeare had re-modelled certain pieces written, either separately or conjointly, by Greene, Marlowe, Lodge, or Peele. It would seem, too, that, while accusing our great dramatist of having adorned himself with borrowed plumes, Greene more particularly alludes to the two oli "histories" entitled The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, on which Shakespeare is known to have founded The Second and Third Parts of Henry the Sixth; for the words, "his Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde,” are parodied from a line in The True Tragedie,

I

"Oh, tygers hart wrapt in a womans hide."

Sig. B 2, ed. 1595.

say that Greene seems to allude to both these elder dramas, because hardly a shadow of doubt can be entertained that they were written by the same poet or poets.

To The First Part of the Contention and to The True Tragedie Greene may have contributed his share; so also may Lodge, and so may Peele have done : but in both pieces there are scenes characterised by a vigour of conception and expression, to which, as their undisputed works demonstratively prove, neither Greene, nor Lodge, nor Peele could possibly have risen. Surely, therefore, we have full warrant for supposing that Marlowe + was very largely concerned in the composition of The First Part

* See ante, P. xxviii.

+ Malone, who had at first conjectured either that Greene and Peele were the joint-authors of these two pieces, or that Greene wrote the one and Peele the other, was afterwards "inclined to believe that Marlowe was the author of one, if not of both." Shakespeare, by Boswell, ii. 313.— Concerning the authorship of The First Part of the Contention, Mr. Collier, Shakespeare, v. 107, merely says, "By whom it was written we have no information;" but in the Hist. of the English Stage, prefixed to his Shakespeare, p. xlix, he states that "there is much reason to suppose Greene had been concerned" in it as well as in the other play. On The True Tragedie he has the following observations. "Although there is no ground whatever for giving it to Marlowe, there is some reason for supposing that it came from the pen of Robert Greene .. Although Greene talks of 'an upstart crow beautified with our feathers,' he seems to have referred principally to his own works, and to the manner in which Shakespeare had availed himself of them. This opinion is somewhat confirmed by two lines in a tract called 'Greene's Funerals' by R. B., 1594, where the writer is adverting to the obligations of other authors to Greene ;

'Nay, more, the men that so eclips'd his fame,

Purloin'd his plumes-can they deny the same?'

Here R. B. nearly adopts Greene's words,

beautified with our feathers,' and applies to him individually what Greene, perhaps to avoid the charge of egotism and vanity, had stated more generally. Another fact tends to the same conclusion: it is a striking coincidence between a passage