come—­but I am fain to think better of the Fates—­when by comparison of detached words and collation of dismembered phrases the memory of Mr. Tennyson would be weighted and degraded by the ascription of whole volumes of pilfered and diluted verse now current—­if not yet submerged—­under the name or the pseudonym of the present {237} Viceroy—­or Vice-empress is it?—­of India.  But the obvious truth is this:  the voice of Shakespeare’s adolescence had as usual an echo in it of other men’s notes:  I can remember the name of but one poet whose voice from the beginning had none; who started with a style of his own, though he may have chosen to annex—­“annex the wise it call”; convey is obsolete—­to annex whole phrases or whole verses at need, for the use or the ease of an idle minute; and this name of course is Marlowe’s.  So starting, Shakespeare had yet (like all other and lesser poets born) some perceptible notes in his yet half boyish voice that were not borrowed; and these were at once caught up and re-echoed by such fellow-pupils with Shakespeare of the young Master of them all—­such humbler and feebler disciples, or simpler sheep (shall we call them?) of the great “dead shepherd”—­as the now indistinguishable author of King Edward III.

In the first scene of the first act the impotent imitation of Marlowe is pitifully patent.  Possibly there may also be an imitation of the still imitative style of Shakespeare, and the style may be more accurately definable as a copy of a copy—­a study after the manner of Marlowe, not at second hand, but at third.  In any case, being obviously too flat and feeble to show a touch of either godlike hand, this scene may be set aside at once to make way for the second.

The second scene is more animated, but low in style till we come to the outbreak of rhyme.  In other words, the energetic or active part is at best passable—­fluent and decent commonplace:  but where the style turns undramatic and runs into mere elegiacs, a likeness becomes perceptible to the first elegiac style of Shakespeare.  Witness these lines spoken by the King in contemplation of the Countess of Salisbury’s beauty, while yet struggling against the nascent motions of a base love:—­

   Now in the sun alone it doth not lie
   With light to take light from a mortal eye: 
   For here two day-stars that mine eyes would see
   More than the sun steal mine own light from me. 
   Contemplative desire! desire to be
   In contemplation that may master thee!

Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile:  if Shakespeare ever saw or heard these pretty lines, he should have felt the unconscious rebuke implied in such close and facile imitation of his own early elegiacs.  As a serious mimicry of his first manner, a critical parody summing up in little space the sweet faults of his poetic nonage, with its barren overgrowth of unprofitable flowers,—­bright point, soft metaphor, and sweet elaborate antithesis—­this