preachings, and his father-in-law his comedies." It
is to be hoped, however, that the spirit of the chaplain's tirades
against sins was not, like his son-in-law's, worse than the sins
themselves.

If Marston's comic vein is thus, to use one of Dekkar's phrases, that of
"a thorny-toothed rascal," it may be supposed that his tragic is a still
fiercer libel on humanity. His tragedies, indeed, though not without a
gloomy power, are extravagant and horrible in conception and conduct.
Even when he copies, he makes the thing his own by caricaturing it. Thus
the plot of "Antonio's Revenge" is plainly taken from "Hamlet," but it
is "Hamlet" passed through Marston's intellect and imagination, and so
debased as to look original. Still, the intellect in Marston's tragedies
strikes the reader as forcible in itself, and as capable of achieving
excellence, if it could only be divorced from the bad disposition and
deformed conscience which direct its exercise. He has fancy, and he
frequently stutters into imagination; but the imp that controls his
heart corrupts his taste and taints his sense of beauty, and the result
is that he has a malicious satisfaction in deliberately choosing words
whose uncouthness finds no extenuation in their expressiveness, and in
forging elaborate metaphors which disgust rather than delight. His
description of a storm at sea is among the least unfavorable specimens
of this perversion of his poetical powers:--

"The sea grew mad:

* * * *

Strait swarthy darkness _popt out_ Phoebus' eye,
And blurred the jocund face of bright-cheek'd day;
Whilst cruddled fogs masked even darkness' brow;
Heaven bade's good night, and the rocks groaned
At the intestine uproar of the main."

It must be allowed that both his tragedies and comedies are full of
strong and striking thoughts, which show a searching inquisition into
the worst parts of human nature. Occasionally he expresses a general
truth with great felicity, as when he says,

"Pygmy cares
Can shelter under patience' shield; but giant griefs
Will burst all covert."

His imagination is sometimes stimulated into unusual power in expressing
the fiercer and darker passions; as, for example, in this image:--

"O, my soul's enthroned
In the triumphant chariot of revenge!"

And in this:--

"Ghastly amazement! with upstarted hair,
Shall hurry on before, and ushe