She is grown more fairer far since I came hither; Her voice more silver every word than other, Her wit more fluent.  What a strange discourse Unfolded she of David and his Scots! Even thus, quoth she, he spake—­and then spake broad, With epithets and accents of the Scot; But somewhat better than the Scot could speak:  And thus, quoth she—­and answered then herself; For who could speak like her? but she herself Breathes from the wall an angel’s note from heaven Of sweet defiance to her barbarous foes.  When she would talk of peace, methinks her tongue Commanded war to prison; {246} when of war, It wakened Caesar from his Roman grave To hear war beautified by her discourse.  Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue; Beauty a slander, but in her fair face; There is no summer but in her cheerful looks, Nor frosty winter but in her disdain.  I cannot blame the Scots that did besiege her, For she is all the treasure of our land; But call them cowards that they ran away, Having so rich and fair a cause to stay.

But if for a moment we may fancy that here and there we have caught such an echo of Marlowe as may have fallen from the lips of Shakespeare in his salad days, in his period of poetic pupilage, we have but a very little way to go forward before we come upon indisputable proof that the pupil was one of feebler hand and fainter voice than Shakespeare.  Let us take the passage on poetry, beginning—­

   Now, Lodowick, invocate {247} some golden Muse
   To bring thee hither an enchanted pen;

and so forth.  No scholar in English poetry but will recognise at once the flat and futile imitation of Marlowe; not of his great general style alone, but of one special and transcendant passage which can never be too often quoted.

   If all the pens that ever poets held
   Had fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts,
   And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
   Their minds, and muses on admired themes;
   If all the heavenly quintessence they still
   From their immortal flowers of poesy,
   Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
   The highest reaches of a human wit;
   If these had made one poem’s period,
   And all combined in beauty’s worthiness,
   Yet should there hover in their restless heads
   One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,
   Which into words no virtue can digest. {248}

Infinite as is the distance between the long roll of these mighty lines and the thin tinkle of their feeble imitator’s, yet we cannot choose but catch the ineffectual note of a would-be echo in the speech of the King to his parasite—­

   For so much moving hath a poet’s pen, etc., etc.

It is really not worth while to transcribe the poor meagre versicles at length:  but a glance at the text will show how much fitter was their author to continue the tradition of Peele than to emulate the innovations of Marlowe.  In the speeches that follow there is much pretty verbiage after the general manner of Elizabethan sonnetteers, touched here and there with something of a higher tone; but the whole scene drags, flags, halts onward at such a languid rate, that to pick out all the prettiest lines by way of sample would give a favourable impression but too likely to be reversed on further and fuller acquaintance.