is lunatic, and mad folks keep no money, he would
sink if he were there." The description of an usurer is memorable by
its reference to the first great poet of England, among whose followers
Rowley is far from the least worthy of honor. "His visage (or vizard),
like the artificial Jew of Malta's nose," brings before the reader in
vivid realism the likeness of Alleyn or Burbage as he represented in
grotesque and tragic disguise the magnificent figure of Marlowe's
creative invention or discovery by dint of genius. (I do not remember
the curious verb "to rand" except in this little book: "he randed out
these sentences": I presume it to be the first form of "rant.") The
account of St. Paul's in 1609 is very curious and scandalous: "the very
Temple itself (in bare humility) stood without his cap, and so had stood
many years, many good folks had spoke for him because he could not speak
for himself, and somewhat had been gathered in his behalf, but not half
enough to supply his necessity."

When we pass from "the Temple" to Westminster Hall we come upon a sample
of humor which would be famous if it were the gift of a less
ungratefully forgotten hand.

"Here were two brothers at buffets with angels in their fists about the
thatch that blew off his house into the other's garden and so spoiled a
Hartichoke."

It should not have been left to a later hand--it should surely have
been the privilege of Lamb's or Hazlitt's, and perhaps rather Hazlitt's
than even Lamb's--to unearth and to transcribe the quaint and spirited
description of Thames watermen "howling, hollowing, and calling for
passengers, as if all the hags in hell had been imprisoned, and begging
at the gate, fiends and furies that (God be thanked) could vex the soul
but not torment it, yet indeed their most power was over the body, for
here an audacious mouthing-randing-impudent-scullery-wastecoat-and-bodied
rascal would have hail'd a penny from us for his scullerships."

Could Rabelais himself have described them better, or with vigor of
humorous expression more heartily and enjoyably characteristic of his
own all but incomparable genius?

The good old times, as remote in Shakespeare's day as in our own, were
never more delightfully described than by Rowley in this noble and
simple phrase: "Then was England's whole year but a St. George's day."

Webster wished that what he wrote might be read by the light of
Shakespeare: an admirer of Rowley might hope and must wi