That never-erring arbitrator, tell us

When we know all ourselves; and let us follow

The becking of our chance!"

CHAPMAN.

"Sin is a coward, madam, and insults

But on our weakness, in his truest valour;
And so our ignorance tames us, that we let
His shadows fright us." Bussy D'Ambois.

"O the good God of Gods,
How blind is pride! what eagles we are still
In matters that belong to other men !
What beetles in our own!"

All Fools. "O! the strange difference 'twixt us and the stars!

They work with inclinations strong and fatal,
And nothing know: and we know all their
working,

And nought can do or nothing can prevent."
Byron's Tragedy.

It would be easy to multiply examples of this kind; and it would not be necessary for our purpose to select passages that are very closely parallel. We only desire to show that Chapman is a reflective poet; and that in this respect the tone of thought that may be found in the first and last acts of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is not incompatible with his habits of composition.

We have already selected an invocation by Chapman, with the intent of showing that his style in this detached and complete form of poetry approaches much more closely to the invocations in 'The Two Noble Kins

men' than the style of Jonson. Chapman appears to us to delight in this species of oratorical verse, requiring great condensation and majesty of expression, and demanding the nicest adjustment of a calm and stately rhythm. He derived, perhaps, this love of invocation, as well as the power of introducing such passages successfully in his dramas, from his familiarity with Homer; and thus for the same reason his plays have more of the stately form of the epic dialogue than the passionate rapidity of the true drama. We will select one invocation from Chapman's translation of the Iliad,' that of

:

"O Jove, that Ida doth protect, and hast the titles won,

Most glorious, most invincible; and thou allseeing sun;

All-hearing, all-recomforting; floods, earth, and powers beneath!

That all the perjuries of men chastise even after death;

Be witnesses, and see performed, the hearty Vows we make."

These invocations in his 'Homer' have the necessary condensation of the original. In his own inventions in the same kind he is naturally more diffuse; but his diffuseness is not the diffuseness of Fletcher. Take one example:

"Now all ye peaceful regents of the night, Silently-gliding exhalations,

Languishing winds, and murmuring fall of

waters,

Sadness of heart, and ominous secureness, Enchantments, dead sleeps, all the friends of rest,

That ever wrought upon the life of man, Extend your utmost strengths; and this charm'd hour

Fix like the centre; make the violent wheels Of Time and Fortune stand; and great existence,

The maker's treasury, now not seem to be."

The time is past when it may be necessary to prove that Chapman was a real poet. There are passages in his plays which show that he was capable not only of giving interest to forced situations and extravagant characters by his all-informing energy, of pouring out the sweetest spirit of beauty in the most unexpected places. Take the following four lines as an example :

but

"Here's nought but whispering with us: like a calm

Before a tempest, when the silent air

Lays her soft ear close to the earth to hearken For that she fears steals on to ravish her."

as these are in excellences within the range of such a writer as Chapman, especially when his exuberant genius was under the necessary restraint of co-operation with another writer.

THE first known edition of this play was published in 1662, under the following title: -The Birth of Merlin: or, the Childe hath found his Father: as it hath been several times Acted with great Applause. Written by William Shakespear and William Rowley.' | Of this very doubtful external evidence two of the modern German critics have applied themselves to prove the correctness. Horn has written a criticism of fourteen pages upon 'The Birth of Merlin,' which he decides to be chiefly Shakspere's, possessing a high degree of poetical merit with much deep-thoughted characterization. Tieck has no doubt of the extent of the assistance that Shakspere gave in producing this play :"This piece is a new proof of the extraordinary riches of the period, in which such a work was unnoticed among the mass of intellectual and characteristic dramas. The modern English, whose weak side is poetical criticism, have left it almost to accident what shall be again revived; and we seldom see, since Dodsley, who proceeded somewhat more carefully, any reason why one piece is selected and others rejected.” He adds, "None of Rowley's other works are equal to this. What part has Shakspere in it ?—has he taken a part ?—what induced him to do so?—can only be imperfectly answered, and by supposition. Why should not Shakspere for once have written for another theatre than his own? Why should he not, when the custom was so common, have written in companionship with another though less powerful poet?" Ulrici takes a different,

The

and, we think, a much juster view. play, he holds, must have been produced late in Shakspere's life. If he had written in it at all, he would have put out his matured strength. All the essentials,—plan, composition, and character, - belong to Rowley. Peculiarities of style and remarkable turns of thought are not sufficient to furnish evidence of authorship, for they are common to other contemporary poets. It is not very easy to trace the exact progress of William Rowley. He was an actor in the company of which Shakspere was a proprietor. We find his name in a document of 1616, and again in 1625. The same bookseller that published 'The Birth of Merlin' associated his name with other writers of eminence besides Shakspere. He is spoken of by Langbaine as an author that flourished in the reign of King Charles I.;" but there is no doubt that he may be considered as a successful writer in the middle period of James I. It is impossible to think that he could have been associated with Shakspere in writing a play until after Shakspere had quitted the stage; and we must therefore bear in mind that Rowley's supposed associate was at that period the author of 'Othello' and 'Lear,' of 'Twelfth Night' and 'As You Like It.'

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A few years after the accession of James I. the fondness of the court for theatrical entertainments, and the sumptuousness of the masks that were got up for its special delight, appear to have produced a natural influence upon the public stage in rendering

some of the pieces performed more dependent upon scenery and dresses and processions than in the later years of Elizabeth. The 'Birth of Merlin' belongs to the class of show-plays; and the elaboration of that portion which is addressed merely to the eye has imparted a character to those scenes in which the imagination is addressed through the dialogue. There is an essential want of refinement as well as of intellectual power, partly arising from this false principle of art, which addresses itself mainly to the senses. We have a succession of incidents without any unity of action. The human interest and the supernatural are jumbled together, so as to render each equally unreal. Extravagance is taken for force, and what is merely hideous is offered to us as sublime. The story, of course, belongs to the fabulous history of Britain. Its movements are so complicated that we should despair of tracing it through its scenes of war and love, of devilry and witchcraft. The Britons are invaded by the Saxons, but the British army is miraculously preserved by the power of Anselm, a hermit. The Saxons sue for peace to Aurelius, the King of Britain, but the monarch suddenly falls in love with Artesia, the daughter of the Saxon general, and marries her, against the wishes of all his court. Uter Pendragon, the brother of Aurelius, has been unaccountably missing, and he, it seems, had fallen in love with the same lady during his rambles. Upon the return of Prince Uter to his brother's court, the queen endeavours to obtain from him a declaration of unlawful attachment. Her object is to sow disunion amongst the Britons, to promote the ascendancy of the Saxons. She is successful, and the weak Aurelius joins his invaders. During the progress of these events we have love-episodes with the daughters of Donobert, a British nobleman. The character of Modestia, one of the daughters, who is resolved to dedicate herself to a religious life, is drawn with considerable skill, and she expresses herself with a quiet strength which contrasts advantageously with the turmoil around her:"Noble and virtuous! could I dream of marriage,

I should affect thee, Edwin. Oh my soul, Here's something tells me that the best of creatures,

These models of the world, weak man and woman,

Should have their souls, their making, life, and being,

To some more excellent use: if what the sense Calls pleasure were our ends, we might justly blame

Great Nature's wisdom, who rear'd a building
Of so much art and beauty, to entertain
A guest so far incertain, so imperfect:
If only speech distinguish us from beasts,
Who know no inequality of birth and place,
But still to fly from goodness; oh! how base
Were life at such a rate! No, no! that
Power

That gave to man his being, speech, and

wisdom,

Gave it for thankfulness. To Him alone That made me thus, may I thence truly know,

I'll pay to Him, not man, the love I owe."

The supernatural part of this play is altogether overdone, exhibiting far less skill in the management than a modern fairy spectacle for the Easter holidays. Before Merlin appears we have a Saxon magician produced who can raise the dead, and he makes Hector and Achilles come into the Saxon court very much after the fashion of the apparition of Marshal Saxe in the great gallery at Dresden (see Wraxall's 'Memoirs'). The stage-direction for this extraordinary exhibition is as follows:

"Enter PROXIMUS, bringing in HECTOR, attired and armed after the Trojan manner, with target, sword, and battle-axe; a trumpet before him, and a Spirit in flame-colours with a torch: at the other door, ACHILLES, with his spear and falchion, a trumpet, and a Spirit in black before him: trumpets sound alarm, and they manage their weapons to begin the fight, and after some charges the Hermit steps between them, at which, seeming amazed, the Spirits tremble."

That the poet who produced the cauldron of the weird sisters should be supposed to have a hand in this child's play is little less than miraculous itself. But we soon cease to take an interest in mere Britons and

Saxons, for a clown and his sister arrive at court, seeking a father for a child which the lady is about to present to the world. After some mummery which is meant for comedy, we have the following stage-direction :"Enter the Devil in man's habit richly attired, his feet and his head horrid ;" and the young lady from the country immediately recognises the treacherous father. After another episode with Modestia and Edwin, thunder and lightning announce something terrible; the birth of Merlin has taken place, and his father the Devil properly introduces him reading a book and foretelling his own future celebrity. We have now prophecy upon prophecy and fight upon fight, blazing stars, dragons, and Merlin expounding all amidst the din. We learn that Artesia has poisoned her husband, and that Uter has become King Pendragon. The Saxons are defeated by the new king, by whom Artesia, as a murderess, is buried alive. In the mean time the Devil has again been making some proposals to Merlin's mother, which end greatly to his discomfiture, for his powerful son shuts him up in a rock. Merlin then, addressing his mother, proposes to her to retire to a solitude he has prepared for her, "to weep away the flesh you have offended with;" "and when you die," he proceeds,

99.66

"I will erect a monument

Upon the verdant plains of Salisbury,—
No king shall have so high a sepulchre,—
With pendulous stones, that I will hang by

art,

Where neither lime nor mortar shall be usedA dark enigma to the memory,

For none shall have the power to number them;

THE rank as a writer which Shakspere took in his own time is determined by a few decided notices of him. These notices are as ample and as frequent as can be looked for in an age which had no critical records, and when writers, therefore, almost went out of their way to refer to their literary contemporaries, except for the purposes of set compliment. We believe that, as early as 1591, Spenser called attention to Shakspere, as

"the man whom Nature self had made To mock herself, and truth to imitate;" describing him also as

"that same gentle spirit, from whose pen Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow."

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We know that the envy of Greene, in 1592, pointed at him as an absolute Johannes factotum, in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country;" and we receive this bitterness of the unfortunate dramatist against his more successful rival as a tribute to his power and his popularity. We consider that the apology of Chettle, who had edited the posthumous work of Greene containing this effusion of spite, was an acknowledgment of the established opinion of Shakspere's excellence as an author:"Divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art." This was printed in 1592, and yet the man who had won this reluctant testimony to his art, by "his facetious grace in writing," is held by modern authorities to have then been only a botcher of other men's works, as if "facetious grace" were an expression that did not most happily mark the quality by which Shakspere was then most eminently distinguished above all his contemporaries,

his comic power,-his ability above all others to produce

"Fine counterfesance, and unhurtful sport,

Delight, and laughter, deck'd in seemly sort."

But passages such as these, which it is almost impossible to apply to any other man than Shakspere, are still only indirect evidence of the opinion which was formed of him when he was yet a very young writer. But a few years later we encounter the most direct testimony to his pre-eminence. He it was that, in 1598, was assigned his rank, not by any vague and doubtful compliment, not with any ignorance of what had been achieved by other men ancient and modern, but by the learned discrimination of a scholar; and that rank was with Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Eschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Phocylides, and Aristophanes amongst the Greeks; Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Silius Italicus, Lucan, Lucretius, Ausonius, and Claudian amongst the Latins; and Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Marlowe, and Chapman amongst the English. According to the same authority, it was "in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakspere" that “the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives." This praise was applied to his 'Venus and Adonis,' and other poems. But, for his dramas, he is raised above every native contemporary and predecessor: "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins; so Shakspere among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage." These are extracts with which many of our readers must be familiar. They are from The Wits' Commonwealth' of Francis Meres, "Master of Arts of both Universities;" a book largely circulated, and mentioned with applause by contemporary writers. The author delivers not these sentences as his own peculiar opinion; he speaks unhesitatingly, as of a fact ad