rain of abstractions, unimpassioned deities, passionate
mortals--Claius, and Medorus, and Amintas, and Amaryllis. My leading
design was to illustrate what may be called the moral sense of our
ancestors. To show in what manner they felt when they placed
themselves by the power of imagination in trying circumstances, in
the conflicts of duty and passion, or the strife of contending
duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how their griefs
were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated: how much of
Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far in
his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all mankind. I was
also desirous to bring together some of the most admired scenes of
Fletcher and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only
dramatic poets of that age entitled to be considered after
Shakspeare, and, by exhibiting them in the same volume with the more
impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Webster, Ford,
and others, to show what we had slighted, while beyond all proportion
we had been crying up one or two favorite names. From the desultory
criticisms which accompanied that publication, I have selected a few
which I thought would best stand by themselves, as requiring least
immediate reference to the play or passage by which they were
suggested.

* * * * *

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

_Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen_.--This tragedy is in King
Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart
puft lines," such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full
of, and Pistol but coldly imitates.

_Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian Shepherd_.--The lunes of
Tamburlaine are perfect midsummer madness. Nebuchadnezzar's are mere
modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this
Scythian Shepherd. He comes in drawn by conquered kings, and
reproaches these _pampered jades of Asia_ that they can _draw but
twenty miles a day_. Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I
never believed that it was anything more than a pleasant burlesque of
mine Ancient's. But I can assure my readers that it is soberly set
down in a play, which their ancestors took to be serious.

_Edward the Second_.--In a very different style from mighty
Tamburlaine is the Tragedy of Edward the Second. The reluctant pangs
of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints, which Shakspeare
scarcely improved in his Richard the S