unrighteousness, his glow of imagination, unhallowed save by its own energies." Whether his muse cleave the upper air, or draggle in the dirt, it ever gives unity of impression. In Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen, the rapid movement of the man's mind is very characteristic, rattling recklessly on through scenes of murder, cruelty, and lust, now striking off "burning atoms" of thought, and now merely infusing fire into fustian, his faculties at times stretched on the rack, writhing in fearful contortions, and smiting the ear with the wild screams of a tortured brain,—but still marching furiously forward, daring everything, and playing out .the game of tragedy freely and fearlessly. In this play he somewhat reminds us of the actor who blacked himself all over when he performed Othello, and called that 'going thoroughly into the part." Marlowe scatters lust and crime about in such careless profusion, that they cease to excite horror. His Muse must too often have appeared to him in some such form as the hideous phantom in Clarence's dream,

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"A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood."

But amidst all his spasmodic and braggart lines in the vein of King Cambyses, his mind continually gives evidence of possessing pathos, sweetness, and true power. Imaginations of the greatest beauty and majesty will sometimes rush up, like rockets, from the level extravagance of his most ranting plays, "streaking the darkness radiantly;" as in that celebrated passage in Tamburlaine, which Shakspeare condescended to ridicule through the lips of Ancient Pistol :

"Enter Tamburlaine, drawn in his chariot by Trebizon and Soria, with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them.

"Tamb. Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia!
What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day,
And have so proud a chariot at your heels,
And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine?
But from Asphaltis, where I conquered you,
To Byron here, where thus I honor you?
The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven,
And blow the morning from their nostrils,
Making their fiery gate above the glades,
Are not so honored in their governor

As you, ye slaves, in mighty Tamburlaine."

From the same play, which has passed into a synonyme of bombast and "midsummer madness," but which contains lines that Beaumont and Milton have not hesitated to appropriate, Leigh Hunt extracts the following exquisite passage:

"If all the pens that ever poet held

Had fed the feeling of their master's thoughts,
And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
And minds, and muses, on admired themes;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit;
If these had made one poem's period,

And all combined in beauty's worthiness;

Yet should there hover in their restless heads

One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the best,
Which into words no virtue can digest."

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 limb, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear
Oid Atlas' burthen."

In the whole description, Marlowe's predominating desire to accumulate round his characters images of strength and majesty, and to 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 in

spired in part by the very imp of mischief. Barabbas, the Jew, has been mentioned as suggesting 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 death-scene 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, affecting as the scene undoubtedly is.

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 e might feel on viewing his own name traced in flam ag characters on the black rolls of the damned.

"FAUSTUS alone.-The clock strikes eleven.

"Faust. O Faustus,

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned 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 damned.
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 threatening 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 harbor 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 changed
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engendered me:
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived 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 changed 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 a while.
Ugly hell, gape not, come not, Lucifer:
I'll burn my books: O Mephistophilis ! "