not know that I am at present in a position
to maintain this opinion by argument; but I can, at all events, show on
what exceedingly slight grounds the contrary opinion has been founded.

I have already called attention to the fact, that the impression of
Marlowe's being an earlier writer than Shakspeare, was founded solely
upon the circumstance that his plays were printed at an earlier date.
That nothing could be more fallacious than this conclusion, the fact
that many of Shakspeare's earliest plays were not printed at all until
after his death is sufficient to evince. The motive for withholding
Shakspeare's plays from the press is as easily understood as that for
publishing Marlowe's. Thus stood the question when Mr. Collier
approached the subject. Meanwhile it should be borne in mind, that not a
syllable of evidence has been advanced to show that Shakspeare could not
have written the _First part of the Contention_ and the _True Tragedy_,
if not the later forms of _Henry VI._, _Hamlet_ and _Pericles_ in their
earliest forms, if not _Timon of Athens_, which I think is also an early
play revised, _Love's Labour's Lost_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_,
&c., all of which I should place at least seven years distance from
plays which I think were acted about 1594 or 1595. I now proceed to give
the kernel of Mr. Collier's argument, omitting nothing that is really
important to the question:--

"'Give me the man' (says Nash) 'whose extemporal vein, in any
humour, will excel our greatest _art masters_' deliberate
thoughts.'

"Green, in 1588, says he had been 'had in derision' by 'two
gentlemen poets' because I could not make my verses get on the
stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the
faburden of Bow-bell, daring God out of heaven with that atheist
tamburlane, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the sun.
Farther on he laughs at the 'prophetical spirits' of those 'who
set the end of scholarism in an _English blank-verse_.'

"Marlowe took his degree of _Master of Arts_ in the very year
when Nash was unable to do so, &c.

"I thus arrive at the conclusion, that Christopher Marlowe was
our first poet who used blank-verse in dramatic compositions
performed in public theatres."--_Hist. of Dramatic Poetry_, vol.
iii. pp. 110, 111, 112.

This is literally all; and, I ask, can any "conclusion" be much more
inconclusive? Yet Mr. Collier has be