Verdure to earth, and to that verdure flowers,
To flowers sweet odours, and to odours wings,
That carries pleasures to the hearts of Kings.

Now comes my Lover tripping like the Roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair.
To joy her love I'll build a Kingly bower,
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,
That, for their homage to her sovereign joys,
Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests,
In oblique turnings wind the nimble waves
About the circles of her curious walks,
And with their murmur summon easeful sleep
To lay his golden sceptre on her brows."

7 There is more of the same stuff, but I suppose the reader has a surfeit; especially as this Canticle of David's has never been suspected to contain any pious sense couched underneath it, whatever his Son's may.-The Kingly bower" seated in hearing of a hundred streams" is the best of it.

LUSTS DOMINION, OR THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN.

A TRAGEDY BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

The Queen Mother of Spain loves an insolent Moor.
QUEEN. ELEAZAR, the Moor.

Queen. Chime out your softest strains of harmony,
And on delicious Music's silken wings

Send ravishing delight to my Love's ears;

That he may be enamour'd of your tunes.

Eleaz. Away, away.

Queen. No, no, says aye; and twice away, says stay.

Such another as Aaron in Titus Andronicus.

Come

Come, come, I'll have a kiss; but if you'll strive,
For one denial you shall forfeit five.
Eleuz. Be gone, be gone.
Queen. What means my Love?
Burst all those wires; burn all
For they displease my Moor.
Or wert thou now disturb'd?
To one sweet kiss, this is some new device
To make me fond and long. Oh, you men
Have tricks to make poor women die for you.
Eleaz. What, die for me?

those instruments;
Art thou now pleas'd?
I'll wage all Spain

away.

Queen. Away, what way? I prithee, speak more kindly. Why dost thou frown?

Eleaz. At thee.

Queen. At me?

at whom?

O why at me? for each contracted frown,
A crooked wrinkle interlines my brow:

Spend but one hour in frowns, and I shall look
Like to a Beldam of one hundred years.

;

I prithee, speak to me, and chide me not.
I prithee, chide, if I have done amiss
But let my punishment be this, and this.
I prithee, smile on me, if but a while;
Then frown on me, I'll die: I prithee, smile.
Smile on me; and these two wanton boys,
These pretty lads that do attend on me,
Shall call thee Jove, shall wait upon thy cup
And fill thee nectar: their enticing eyes
Shall serve as chrystal, wherein thou may'st see
To dress thyself; if thou wilt smile on me.
Smile on me; and with coronets of pearl
And bells of gold, circling their pretty arms,
In a round ivory fount these two shall swim,
And dive to make thee sport:

Bestow one smile, one little little smile,
And in a net of twisted silk and gold

In

my all-naked arms thyself shalt lie.

9 Kit Marlowe, as old Isaac Walton assures us, made that smooth. song which begins" Come live with me and be my love." The same romantic invitations" in foliy ripe in reason rotten" are given

by

by the queen in the play, and the lover in the ditty. He talks of "beds of roses, buckles of gold:"

Thy silver dishes for thy meat,
As precious as the Gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be

Prepar'd each day for thee and me.

The lines in the Extract have a luscious smoothness in them, and they were the most temperate which I could pick out of this Play. The rest is in king Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and su perlatives; "huffing braggart puft" lines such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol " but coldly imitates." -Blood is made as light of in some of these old Dramas as Money in a modern Sentimental Comedy; and as this is given away till it reminds us that it is nothing but counters, so that is spilt till it affects us no more than its representative the paint of the property-man in the theatre.

** Take a specimen from a speech of the Moor's.
Now Tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pue-fellow, to thee I'll sing
Upon an harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords;
When thou in crimson jollity shall bathe
Thy limbs, as black as mine, in springs of blood
Still gushing from the conduit head of Spain.
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,
My bloody labours, tortures, stratagems,
The volume of all wounds that wound from me;
Mine is the Stage, thine is the Tragedy.

TAMBURLAINS

TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT; OR THE SCYTHIAN SHEPHERD. IN TWO PARTS. BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.-PART THE FIRST.

Tamburlaine's Person described.

Of stature tall, and straitly fashioned;
Like his desire, lift10 upwards, and divine.
So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders, as might mainly bear
Old Atlas' burthen. Twixt his manly pitch
A pearl more worth than all the world is placed:
Wherein by curious soverainty of art
Are fix'd his piercing instruments of sight;
Whose fiery circles bear encompassed

A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres:
That guides his steps and actions to the throne
Where Honour sits invested royally.

Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion
Thirsting with soverainty and love of arms.
His lofty brows in folds do figure death;
And in their smoothness amity and life.
About them hangs a knot of amber hair,
Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was;
On which the breath of heaven delights to play,
Making it dance with wanton majesty.
His armes long, his fingers snowy-white,
Betokening valour and excess of strength;
In every part proportion'd like the man

Should make the world subdue to Tamburlaine.

His Custom in War.

The first day when he pitcheth down his tents;
White is their hue; and on his silver crest

10 Lifted.

A snowy

A snowy feather spangled white he bears;
To signify the mildness of his mind,
That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood:
But when Aurora mounts the second time,
As red as scarlet is his furniture;

Then must his kindled wrath be quench'd with blood,
Not sparing any that can manage arms:

But if these threats move not submission,
Black are his colours, black pavilion,

His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumes,
And jetty feathers, menace death and hell ;
Without respect of sex, degree or age,

He raseth all his foes with fire and sword.

11 I had the same difficulty (or rather much more) in culling a few sane lines from this as from the preceding Play. The lunes of Tamburlaine are perfect "midsummer madness." Nebuchadnazar's are mere modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this Scythian Shepherd. He comes in (in the Second Part) drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these pampered jades of Ásia that they can draw but twenty miles a day. Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I never believed that it was any thing more than a pleasant burlesque of Mine Ancient's. But I assure my readers that it is soberly set down in a Play which their Ancestors took to be serious. I have subjoined the genuine speech for their amusement. Enter Tamburlaine, drawn in his chariot by Trebizon and Soria, with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them.

Tamb. Holla ye pamper'd jades of Asia:
What can ye draw but twenty miles a day,
And have so proud a chariot at your heels,
And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine?
But from Asphaltis, where I conquered you,
To Byron here, where thus I honour you?
The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven,
And blow the morning from their nostrils,
Making their fiery gate above the clouds,
Are not so honour'd in their governor
As you ye slaves in mighty Tamburlaine.

The headstrong jades of Thrace Alcides tamed,
That King Egeus fed with human flesh,

And made so wanton that they knew their strengths,
Were not subdued with valour more divine,

Than