All-hearing, all-recomforting; floods, earth, and powers beneath!
That all the perjuries of men chastise even after death;

Be witnesses, and see perform'd, the hearty vows we make."

These invocations in his Homer' have the necessary condensation of the original. In his own inventions in the same kind he is naturally more diffuse; but his diffuseness is not the diffuseness of Fletcher. Take one example:

"Now all ye peaceful regents of the night,

Silently-gliding exhalations,

Languishing winds, and murmuring falls of waters,
Sadness of heart, and ominous secureness,

Enchantments, dead sleeps, all the friends of rest,
That ever wrought upon the life of man,

Extend your utmost strengths; and this charm'd hour
Fix like the centre; make the violent wheels

Of Time and Fortune stand; and great existence,
The maker's treasury, now not seem to be."

that Chapman

The time is past when it may be necessary to prove was a real poet. There are passages in his plays which show that he was capable not only of giving interest to forced situations and extravagant characters by his all-informing energy, but of pouring out the sweetest spirit of beauty in the most unexpected places. Take the following four lines as an example:

“ Here 's nought but whispering with us: like a calm

Before a tempest, when the silent air

Lays her soft ear close to the earth to hearken

For that she fears steals on to ravish her."

Was ever personification more exquisitely beautiful? The writer of these lines, with his wondrous facility, was equal to anything that did not demand the very highest qualities for the drama; and those qualities we do not think are manifest in the first and last acts of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,' rich as these are in excellences within the range of such a writer as Chapman, especially when his exuberant genius was under the necessary restraint of co-operation with another writer.

The classical nature of that portion of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' that we think might have been assigned to Chapman, might have been treated by a writer not very deeply imbued with the spirit of Greek poetry without the use of any peculiar phrases or epithets which a poet derives from a particular course of reading, as we constantly find in Milton. We will select a very few parallel

examples of such from The Two Noble Kinsmen,' and from Chapman's plays and the translation of the 'Iliad :'—

Two NOBLE KINSMEN.

The scythe-tusk'd boar.
Blubber'd queens.
Clear-spirited cousin.

The heavenly limiter.

Shaker of o'er-rank states.

Sacred silver mistress.

Oh, you heavenly charmers.

CHAPMAN.

Thy music-footed horse.
His blubber'd cheeks.

Cold-spirited peers.

The heavenly lightener.

Thou mighty shaker of the earth.
Golden-throned

queen.
The eternal dwellers.

It would be tedious as well as unnecessary to pursue these details farther. Whoever was the writer of those passages in 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' which, on some grounds, have with great probability been attributed to Shakspere, it is clear to us that there were two hands concerned in the production of the play, as dissimilar in their styles as Chapman, as a translator of Homer, is dissimilar to Pope. There is some analogy, however remote it may appear, between the poetical characters of Fletcher and Pope, as compared with writers of greater energy and simplicity; and the differences in kind of this poetical quality may serve as an illustration of the imperfect argument which we thus conclude ::

CHAPMAN.

"They sat delightfully, And spent all night in open field; fires round

about them shin'd;

As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,

And stars shine clear; to whose sweet beams high prospects, and the brows

Of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows;

And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight,

When the unmeasur'd firmament bursts to disclose her light,

And all the signs in heaven are seen that glad the shepherd's heart;

So many fires disclos'd their beams, made by the Trojan part,

Before the face of Ilion; and her bright turrets show'd:

A thousand courts of guard kept fires: and every guard allow'd

Fifty stout men, by whom their horse eat oats and hard white corn,

And all did wilfully expect the silverthroned morn."

POPE.

"The troops exulting sat in order round,
And beaming fires illumin'd all the ground;
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred
light.

When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole;
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect
rise,

A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light;
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their
rays:

The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the
spires;

A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shed a shady lustre o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umber'd arms, by fits, thick flashes

send;

Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of

corn;

And ardent warriors wait the rising morn."

We have only one word to add. Chapman died in the very year that the first edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen' was published, with the name of Shakspere in the title-page. If the title-page were a bookseller's invention, the name of Shakspere would be of higher price than that of Chapman.

INDEXES

TO THE

PLAYS AND POEMS OF SHAKSPERE.

VOL. XII.

21