a similar spirit, viz. to bring odium on a whole race, he composed The Jew of Malta. In this production there is, undoubtedly, genius; but there is no probability, no connection of incidents, no truth of character. At this period, indeed, character was not understood: the public mind was not instructed sufficiently to relish, or even to perceive, the critical niceties that separate the individual from the species: invention was every thing; the incidents had only to be numerous and striking, and the vulgar taste was gratified. Such is The Jew of Malta, the murderous Barabbas. Torender him perfectly odious, he is represented as always plotting or perpetrating the most heinous crimes. He is too great a monster for our sympathies; neither earth nor hell ever produced his like; and if such a character were possible, he would not, assuredly, boast of his villanies in such terms as these :

"As for myself I walk abroad a nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls :
Sometimes I go about and poison wells,
And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves,
I am content to lose some of my crowns;
That I may, walking in my gallery,
See 'em go pinion'd along by my door.
Being young I studied physick, and began
To practise first upon the Italian ;
There I enriched the priests with burials,
And always kept the sexton's arms in use
With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells :
And after that was I an engineer,

And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany,
Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth,
Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems.
Then after that was I an usurer,
And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,
And tricks belonging unto brokery,
I fill'd the jails with bankrupts in a year,
And with young orphans planted hospitals,
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hung himself for grief,
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll,
How I with interest tormented him.
But mark how I am blest for plaguing them."

+ Three vols. small 8vo. London. Pickering, 1836.

dramas, we will not fatigue the reader by useless speculation.

Marlowe was an elegiac as well as a tragic poet. But in this department he was a translator rather than an original writer. He has rendered with some felicity the first book of Lucan, and, unfortunately for his moral fame, many of Ovid's Amours. He is so literal, that his book was burned in 1599, by the public hangman, at the command of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London.*

It is impossible to dismiss the works of Marlowe, without feeling some regret for his premature fate. Had he lived the ordinary term of men's career, he would doubtless have done much to elevate the English stage. But even with this disadvantage, the stage is more indebted to him than to any other writer, Shakespear only excepted. Nor must it be concealed that the bard of Avon, by having such a model before him,-one unknown to former ages, - was enabled to surpass all his predecessors. Popular as is the opinion that he created the English stage, none can be less just: he merely reformed it. This, if our limits would allow us, we could easily illustrate by passages from contemporary dramatists; but the instances which we have already adduced, must suffice. He who would institute a minute comparison, may easily do so, since the materials are abundant, and not very difficult of access.

11. Thomas Kyd. † - Of this author little more is known, than that he died in 1595. But his name will not pass into oblivion. He is the author of two plays which created some sensation in their day, and which, even at this, will bear a perusal. The First Part of Jeronimo is much inferior to the second, which is known

* How could Mr. Dyce, -a clergyman of the established church, insert these translations in his edition of Marlowe's works?

+ For this brief notice of Kyd and his writings we are indebted to Hawkins's Origin of the English Drama; to the third volume of Dodsley's Old Plays, edit. 1825; to Gifford's Ben Jonson, vol. i.; to the Biographia chied volume of Malone's Shakespear, by Boswell;

by the name of The Spanish Tragedy; yet it has some vigorous lines, and is not without character. By the latter performance must the merit of Kyd be judged. We must not, however, forget to observe that, after the author's death, some additions of greater value than the rest were made by no less a pen than Ben Jonson's. These have been carefully marked by the last editor of the play *; and every reader is thereby enabled to make the comparison.

The fable of this tragedy is not founded on history; it is entirely a creation, - though not, probably, a crea tion by Kyd, - and for this reason has defects, from which it would have been free, had it been derived from human experience. It has some mythological personages; it has ghosts; and it has a personification peculiar to our old morals, Revenge. The incidents, too, are very unnatural, and have no proper connection. Yet with all these defects, and no inconsiderable quantity of extravagance, there is much vigour, much even of originality, in the piece. We concur, to the fullest extent, in the praise bestowed on Kyd by a living writer.t "Kyd was a poet of very considerable mind, and deserves, in some respects, to be ranked above more notorious contemporaries. His thoughts are often both new and natural; and if, in his plays, he dealt largely in blood and death, he only partook of the habit of the times, in which good sense and discretion were often outraged for the purpose of gratifying the crowd. In taste he is inferior to Peele, but in force and character he is his superior; and if Kyd's blank verse be not so smooth, it has decidedly more spirit, vigour, and variety. As a writer of blank verse, I am inclined, among the predecessors of Shakespear, to give Kyd the next place to Marlowe."

Some resemblance between this play and the" Hamlet" of Shakespear has been discovered. In both, a ghost appears to urge revenge on the procrastinating relative; in both, there is a play within a play. In one respect, both are equally unnatural: surely earthly passions slumber in the tomb. In these respects, a comparison between the two writers will indeed establish the amazing superiority of the bard of Avon; but it will also show that he was not so much of a creator as is generally supposed; that though he could create when he chose, he was frequently satisfied with improving the conceptions of his predecessors.

12. George Peele*, - (1552-1598), -the reader will remember, as one of the poets to whom Greene addressed a portion of his impressive farewell letter: “And thou, no less deserving than the other two, (Marlowe and Lodge;) in some things rarer; in nothing inferior; driven (as myself) to extreme shifts, a little have I to say to thee," &c. Of his life we know little. He was entered on the books of Broadgates College (now Pembroke), Oxford, about the year 1560; but he had no degree until 1577. About 1580, he is supposed to have repaired to the metropolis, for the purpose of shining as a literary adventurer. Of his penury (the result, no doubt, of his dissipated habits), we may infer enough from the letter of Greene; of his vices, we need only observe that he fell a sacrifice to them. Indeed, from the character of his associates-Marlowe, Greene, Nash, and others-we could not expect much rectitude of conduct. If a tract, entitled The meri conceited Jests of George Peele, has, as we believe it has, any foundation in truth, he was unprincipled as well as vicious. Rejecting three fourths of the jests, - a strange term for acts of the grossest swindling, - as originally referring to some other persons, and applied to him merely from his superior celebrity, enough remain to have hanged him ten times over, had he lived in our days. Take one as a sample, and yet it is by no means the worst that might be selected :