equalled, but certainly have never been surpassed, in any language. Lodge, like Nash, was more distinguished in other walks of literature than in the drama. His satirical poetry is of no mean rank; and several copies of verses interspersed among his different prose tracts are picturesque and graceful. In his tragedy, entitled,45 The Wounds of Civil War, I cannot see the merit which some critics have discovered; its more praiseworthy passages appear to me rather rhetorical than poetical. Marlowe 46 possessed a genius of a far higher order, an intellect far more vigorous than any of these playwrights. In delineating character, he reaches a degree of truth, to which they make but slight approaches, and in scenes of Faustus and Edward the Second, he attains to real grandeur and pathos. He too often mistakes the horrible for the sublime, and indulges in flights of splendid bombast; but perhaps such faults are to be attributed more to his desire of pleasing an audience accustomed to exaggeration both of incident and style, than to his want of

45 This play, and part of A Looking Glass for London, written in conjunction with Greene, are the only remaining plays of Lodge.

46 There are extant seven plays by Marlowe, (one of them partly by Nash,) which will be found [in Dyce's edition of his works, 3 vols. 1850.] Marlowe, Peele, Greene, and Kyd, were probably the authors of some of the early anonymous dramas which have come down to us.

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taste. He was the first great improver of blank verse, to which he gave a happy variety of pause. The lines in which Drayton describes him have been often quoted:

"Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things

That your first poets had: his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."

To the list of dramatic poets, preceding Shakespeare, may be added the names of Chettle, Munday, and Wilson, who also continued to write, when his reputation as an author was established. Plays are still extant by the two first, containing scenes of considerable merit; but from what remains of Wilson's productions, we cannot entertain a very favourable opinion of his talents.

It was usual in those days for dramatists to alter, and make additions to, the plays of preceding writers; and that Shakespeare commenced his career as an author by adapting the works of others to the stage, and not by any original composition, there is every reason to believe. Even at a later period, as most readers are aware, he occasionally availed himself,-in Lear and King John, for instance-of the labours of his predecessors, awaking, by his magic touch, their dead and cold creations to breathing and passionate beauty. Among the numerous dramas, manuscript as well

as printed, of which time has spared no copies, were probably several rifacimenti by his master hand. Two of his earliest performances in this way yet remain,-The Second and Third Parts of Henry the Sixth, which he formed on the still surviving plays, entitled, The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, and The true Tragedy of Richard Duke of York.

Before the end of 1592, Shakespeare had certainly been employed on such alterations. In September of that year, after a course of profligacy and debauchery, Greene expired in poverty and neglect, having devoted his last days to the writing of a pamphlet, which was published immediately on his decease by Chettle, and entitled, A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance. At the conclusion of the tract Greene exhorts his fellow-dramatists, Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele,47 to abandon the vain occupation of catering for the stage, and to amend their dissolute and ungodly lives; and in this interesting Address, the following remarkable passage occurs; "there is an vpstart Crow beautified with our Feathers, that with his tygres heart, wrapt in a Players hyde supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a Blanke

47 Though not mentioned by name, they are undoubtedly the persons alluded to. See the whole of this Address in my Life of Greene (p. lxxix. et seq.) prefixed to his Dramatic Works and Poems, 2 vols. 1831.

verse as the best of you; and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceyt, the onely Shakescene in a Countrey." (ed. 1617.) Here is a manifest allusion to Shakespeare; and it would seem, by the expression, "our feathers," that he had remodelled certain pieces, in the composition of which Greene and those whom he addresses had been concerned-very probably the two old dramas (already mentioned) on which our great poet formed The Second and Third Parts of Henry the Sixth, the words, "his tyger's heart wrapt in a player's hide," being a parody on the following line,

"O tyger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide,"

found both in The true Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, Sig. K 3, ed. n. d., and in the Third Part of Henry the Sixth, act i. sc. 4.

That this Address of the dying man gave offence both to Marlowe, whom it charged with atheism, and to Shakespeare, at whom it so sarcastically pointed, we learn from Chettle's preface to his Kind Hart's Dream,48 which was also published

48 Though Chettle does not give the names of the poets who had taken offence, there can be no doubt that he refers to Marlowe and Shakespeare. "In consequence, as it is probable, of this expression of resentment on the part of Shakespeare, a pamphlet from the pen of Chettle, called Kind Hart's Dream, issued from the press," &c. Symmons's Life of Shakespeare, p. 18. The Doctor never could have seen the pamphlet in question: it contains no allusion to Shakespeare, except in the Preface.

in 1592. He there informs us, that he neither is, nor desires to be, acquainted with Marlowe, and that in his capacity of editor, he had struck out from the Address in the Groatsworth of Wit several offensive passages concerning him. Of Shakespeare he speaks thus: "The other, whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I haue moderated the heate of living writers, and might haue vsde my owne discretion, (especially in such a case,) the author beeing dead, that I did not, I am as sory, as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because my selfe haue seene his demeanour no lesse ciuill than he exelent in the qualitie* he professes: Besides, diuers of worship haue reported his vprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approoues his art." I need scarcely observe, that this quotation bears a striking testimony to our author's moral worth.

It is most probable, that before 1592,49 Shakespeare had made few attempts as an original dramatist. Pericles,50-which, though the greater

* [That is acting.]

49 In the Preface mentioned above, Chettle terms Greene "the only comedian of a vulgar writer in this country;" an expression which, in Mr. Collier's opinion, decidedly proves that Shakespeare had acquired no reputation as an original dramatic poet in 1592. Hist. of English Dram. Poet. ii. 436.

50 Some critics, among whom, I believe, was the late Mr.