Greene or Peele and their fellows than of Chapman or any later poet; I cannot but think that a student more deeply read than I in the poems interspersed among the romances of Greene and Lodge might be able to trace both the two last passages of the five here fathered on Chapman to the hand of one or the other. They have the fluency or fluidity rather of the blank verse written by the smaller scholastic poets whom we may see grouped about the feet of Marlowe; the same facile profusion and effusion of classic imagery, the same equable elegance and graceful tenuity of style, crossed here and there by lines of really high and tender beauty. It may be thought that in that case they would have been as speedily and as surely tracked by Mr. Collier as were the verses transferred from Warner to Chapman ; but the most learned and acute among scholars cannot always remember the right place for all things on which his eye must have lit in the course of a lifelong study; and I find in Mr. Collier's list two passages, one given at p. 22 of England's Parnassus under the heading Bliss,' the other at p. 108 under the heading Gifts,' marked as of unknown origin, of which the first occurs in the fifth sestiad of Chapman's Hero and Leander, the second in his Shadow of Night. These in the list that follows are assigned to their proper places. The number of the page referred to on the left is that in England's Parnassus; the number on the right refers to the page in which the same passage appears in this first edition of Chapman's collected poems. List of Passages extracted from Chapman's Poems in England's Parnassus; or, the Choicest Flowers of our Modern Poets. 1600.. PAGE 6 77 29 33 (In the next line E. P. reads: To be a beetle else were no defame.') * E. P. has three misprints in this extract; 'gaining' for 'gracing,' 'conflict' for 'constant,' 'time content' for true content;' but in a later extract at p. 38 it gives the right reading, and cites the two first lines of the stanza following, which with the third and fourth are here omitted. It attempts however to correct two seeming errors in the fifth and sixth: reading 'is' for 'in' and 'thrones' for 'thorns; but in the first instance the text will be found right if the punctuation be corrected by striking out the period at the end of the line preceding; and thorns' may be taken to mean the harsh doctrines of the stoics subsequently referred to. In the ninth line of this unlucky stanza E. P. misprints 'grave' for 'graven.' + So E. P. for 'beauty's fair;' and in v. 5 reads 'fault' for 'fate,' and in v. 8 'god self-love' for ' good self-love.' 38. All wealth and wisdom rests in true content* 40. Action is fiery valour's sovereign good 47. Round-headed Custom th' apoplexy ist 56. In things without us no delight is sure 67. Fierce lightning from her eyes. 68. Begin where lightness will, in shame it ends 108. Good gifts are often given to men past good 110. Kind Amalthea was transformed by Jove 120. Good deeds in case that they be evil placed‡ 141. Many use temples to set godly faces 161. The noblest born dame should industrious be 164. Inchastity is ever prostitute 170. They double life that dead things' grief sustain 172. Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams 174. Love is a wanton famine, rich in food. 178. Love laws and judges hath in fee 180. Love paints his longings in sweet virgins' eyes. 8828 90 29 85 74 76 80 80 13 5 ? ? 86 15 77 74 35 49 87 77 34 5 6 82 86 * In this extract E. P. corrects' Bend in our circle' to 'Bound;' a reading which seems to me preferable. This is the reading in E. P. of the line 'But custom, that the apoplexy is'; the two following lines are transcribed exactly as they stand in the third sestiad of Hero and Leander. This extract runs thus in E. P.; 'Good deeds, in case that they be evil placed, The third line occurs in the third sestiad of Hero and Leander (p. 76). So E. P. for 'And.' So E. P. for 'rites.' These two words are interpolated by the editor of E. P. So E. P. for 'elegance.' We know not how to vow till love unblind us 297. Use makes things nothing huge, and huge things nothing (Blind Beggar of Alexandria, vol. 1. p. 2.) 305. Best loves are lost for wit, when men blame fortune 308. Words well placed move things were never thought 312. Their virtues mount like billows to the skies. Women were made for this intent, to put us into pain. (Warner's Albion's England.) Women never 66 314. 324. The gentle humorous night Impliest her middle course, and the sharp east. 355- (With two lines prefixed at bottom of preceding page— * In the third line of this extract E. P. reads 'Love's proper lesson' instead of 'special.' So E. P. The right reading of this beautiful couplet is Ah, nothing doth the world with mischief fill, But want of feeling one another's ill.-Hero and Leander, 5th sestiad. (E. P. prints 'will' for ill.") 31 31 33 33 32 This word alone would suffice to vindicate the authenticity of the fragment. It recurs perpetually in the poems of Chapman, who always uses it in the same peculiar and licentious manner. § In the third line of this stanza England's Parnassus reads 'her night' for the night', in the eighth 'choisefull' for 'charmful;' in the ninth 'varnishing' for 'vanishing.' So E. P. for 'and.' So E. P. for 'and.' There are thus in this anthology no less than eighty-one extracts ascribed to Chapman, besides two of which one is known and the other suspected to be the work of his hand; these are wrongly assigned to Spenser. At the time of this publication Chapman was in his forty-second year; he had published but two plays and three volumes of verse, the third being his continuation of Marlowe's Hero and Leander. Of the eighty-three passages numbered above, thirty-two are taken from this poem, twenty-five from Ovid's Banquet of Sense, ten from The Shadow of Night, eight from The Contention of Phillis and Flora, a quaint and sometimes a graceful version into the Elizabethan dialect of a Latin or more probably a quasiLatin poem ascribed by Ritson to one of the most famous among mediæval masters; one is taken from the first scene of his first play, one is spurious, and six (including the passage wrongly referred in a former list to Ovid's Banquet of Sense), whether spurious or genuine, have yet to be traced to their true source. In his critical memoir of Marlowe (Works, vol. i. p. lvii. ed. 1850), Mr. Dyce observes that 'the editor of England's Parnassus appears never to have resorted to manuscript sources;' and if, as is of course most probable, the supposition of that great scholar and careful critic be well founded, we must conclude that these passages, as well as the more precious and exquisite fragment of a greater poet which called forth this remark from his editor, were extracted by Allot from some printed book or books long lost to human sight. One small but noticeable extract of two lines and a half descriptive of midnight is evidently I think from a lost play. The taste of the worthy person who compiled this first English anthology was remarkable apparently for its equal relish of good verse and bad; but we may be grateful that it was by no means confined to the more popular and dominant authors of his age, such as Spenser and Sidney; since his faculty of miscellaneous admiration has been the means of preserving many curious fragments of fine or quaint verse, and occasionally a jewel of such price as the fragment of Marlowe which alike for tone of verse and tune of thought so vividly recalls Shelley's poem, The Question, written in the same metre and spirit, that one is tempted to dream that some particles of the 'predestined plot of dust and soul' which had once gone to make up the elder must have been used again in the composition of the younger poet, who in fiery freedom of thought and speech was like no other of our greatest men but Marlowe, and in that as in his choice of tragic motive was so singularly like this one ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. |