s wildest flights has never summoned up images of pity
and terror more imposing, more moving, than those excited by _The Jew of
Malta_. The riot of passion and of delight in the beauty of colour and form
which characterises his version of _Hero and Leander_ has never been
approached by any writer. But Marlowe, with the fullest command of the
_apeiron_, had not, and, as far as I can judge, never would have had, any
power of introducing into it the law of the _peras_. It is usual to say
that had he lived, and had his lot been happily cast, we should have had
two Shakesperes. This is not wise. In the first place, Marlowe was totally
destitute of humour--the characteristic which, united with his tragic and
imaginative powers, makes Shakespere as, in a less degree, it makes Homer,
and even, though the humour is grim and intermittent, Dante. In other
words, he was absolutely destitute of the first requisite of
self-criticism. In the natural course of things, as the sap of his youthful
imagination ceased to mount, and as his craving for immensity hardened
itself, he would probably have degenerated from bombast shot through with
genius to bombast pure and simple, from _Faustus_ to _Lust's Dominion_, and
from _Lust's Dominion_ to _Jeronimo_ or _The Distracted Emperor_. Apart
from the magnificent passages which he can show, and which are simply
intoxicating to any lover of poetry, his great title to fame is the
discovery of the secret of that "mighty line" which a seldom-erring critic
of his own day, not too generously given, vouchsafed to him. Up to his time
the blank verse line always, and the semi-couplet in heroics, or member of
the more complicated stanza usually, were either stiff or nerveless.
Compared with his own work and with the work of his contemporaries and
followers who learnt from him, they are like a dried preparation, like
something waiting for the infusion of blood, for the inflation of living
breath. Marlowe came, and the old wooden versification, the old lay-figure
structure of poetic rhythm, was cast once for all into the lumber-room,
where only poetasters of the lowest rank went to seek it. It is impossible
to call Marlowe a great dramatist, and the attempts that have been made to
make him out to be such remind one of the attempts that have been made to
call Moliere a great poet. Marlowe was one of the greatest poets of the
world whose work was cast by accident and caprice into an imperfect mould
of drama; Moli