ome upon a verse not unworthy of
Marlowe himself--a verse in spirit as in cadence recalling the deep
oceanic reverberations of his "mighty line," profound and just and simple
and single as a note of the music of the sea. But it would be hard if a
devout and studious disciple were never to catch one passing tone of his
master's habitual accent.--It may be worth while to observe that we find
here the same modulation of verse--common enough since then, but new to
the patient auditors of _Gorboduc_ and _Locrine_--which we find in the
finest passage of Marlowe's imperfect play of _Dido_, completed by Nash
after the young Master's untimely death.

Why star'st thou in my face? If thou wilt stay,
Leap in my arms: mine arms are open wide:
If not--turn from me, and I'll turn from thee;
For though thou hast the power to say farewell,
I have not power to stay thee.

But we may look long in vain for the like of this passage, taken from the
crudest and feeblest work of Marlowe, in the wide and wordy expanse of
_King Edward III_.

{247} A pre-Shakespearean word of single occurrence in a single play of
Shakespeare's, and proper to the academic school of playwrights.

{248} _The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great_, Act v. Sc. ii.

{252} It may be worth a remark that the word _power_ is constantly used
as a dissyllable; another note of archaic debility or insufficiency in
metre.

{255} Yet another essentially non-Shakespearean word, though doubtless
once used by Shakespeare; this time a most ungraceful Gallicism.

{256} It may obviate any chance of mistake if I observe that here as
elsewhere, when I mention the name that is above every name in English
literature, I refer to the old Shakespeare, and not to "the new
Shakspere"; a _novus homo_ with whom I have no acquaintance, and with
whom (if we may judge of a great--or a little--unknown after the
appearance and the bearing of those who select him as a social sponsor
for themselves and their literary catechumens) I can most sincerely
assert that I desire to have none.

{261} Surely, for _sweet'st_ we should read _swift'st_.

{262a} This word occurs but once in Shakespeare's plays--

And speaking it, he wistly looked on me;

(_King Richard II_. Act v. Sc. 4.)

and in such a case, as in the previous instances of the words _invocate_
and _endamagement_, a mere [Greek text] can carry no weight of evidence
with it worth any student's consideration.