from an idyllic or elegiac poet who should suddenly assume the buskin of tragedy.  Let us suppose that Moschus, for example, on the strength of having written a sweeter elegy than ever before was chanted over the untimely grave of a friend and fellow-singer, had said within himself, “Go to, I will be Sophocles”; can we imagine that the tragic result would have been other than tragical indeed for the credit of his gentle name, and comical indeed for all who might have envied the mild and modest excellence which fashion or hypocrisy might for years have induced them to besprinkle with the froth and slaver of their promiscuous and pointless adulation?

As the play is not more generally known than it deserves to be,—­or perhaps we may say it is somewhat less known, though its claim to general notice is faint indeed compared with that of many a poem of its age familiar only to special students in our own—­I will transcribe a few passages to show how far the writer could reach at his best; leaving for others to indicate how far short of that not inaccessible point he is too generally content to fall and to remain.

The opening speech is spoken by one Lodowick, a parasite of the King’s; who would appear, like Francois Villon under the roof of his Fat Madge, to have succeeded in reconciling the professional duties—­may I not say, the generally discordant and discrepant offices?—­of a poet and a pimp.

   I might perceive his eye in her eye lost,
   His ear to drink her sweet tongue’s utterance;
   And changing passion, like inconstant clouds,
   That, rackt upon the carriage of the winds,
   Increase, and die, in his disturbed cheeks. 
   Lo, when she blushed, even then did he look pale;
   As if her cheeks by some enchanted power
   Attracted had the cherry blood from his:  {245a}
   Anon, with reverent fear when she grew pale,
   His cheeks put on their scarlet ornaments;
   But no more like her oriental red
   Than brick to coral, or live things to dead. {245b}
   Why did he then thus counterfeit her looks? 
   If she did blush, ’twas tender modest shame,
   Being in the sacred presence of a king;
   If he did blush, ’twas red immodest shame
   To vail his eyes amiss, being a king;
   If she looked pale, ’twas silly woman’s fear
   To bear herself in presence of a king;
   If he looked pale, it was with guilty fear
   To dote amiss, being a mighty king.

This is better than the insufferable style of Locrine, which is in great part made up of such rhymeless couplets, each tagged with an empty verbal antithesis; but taken as a sample of dramatic writing, it is but just better than what is utterly intolerable.  Dogberry has defined it exactly; it is most tolerable—­and not to be endured.

The following speech of King Edward is in that better style of which the author’s two chief models were not at their best incapable for awhile under the influence and guidance (we may suppose) of their friend Marlowe.