My soul, incensed with a sudden fire!

What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise,
Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame!

Fair Eva, plac'd in perfect happiness,

Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens,
Struck with the accents of Arch-angels' tunes,
Wrought not more pleasure to her husband's thoughts,
Than this fair woman's words and notes to mine.
May that sweet plain that bears her pleasant weight,
Be still enamel'd with discolour'd flowers;
That precious fount bear sand of purest gold;
And for the pebble, let the silver streams
That pierce earth's bowels to maintain the source,
Play upon rubies, sapphires, chrysolites;
The brim let be imbrac'd with golden curls
Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make
For joy to feed the fount with their recourse;
Let all the grass that beautifies her bower
Bear manna every morn instead of dew;
Or let the dew be sweeter far than that

That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,
Or balm which trickled from old Aaron's beard.
·Enter Cusay.

See Cusay, see the flower of Israel,

The fairest daughter that obeys the king
In all the land the Lord subdued to me.
Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well,

Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar,
Sweeter than flames of fine perfumed myrrh;
And comelier than the silver clouds that dance
On Zephyr's wings before the king of Heaven.
Cusay. Is it not Bethsabe the Hethite's wife
Urias, now at Rabath siege with Joab?

David. Go now and bring her quickly to the King;
Tell her, her graces hath found grace with him.
Cusay. I will my Lord.

[Exit.

David. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's bower

In water mix'd with purest almond flower,
And bathe her beauty in the milk of kids;
Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires,

Verdure

Verdure to earth, and to that verdure flowers,
To flowers sweet odours, and to odours wings,
That carries pleasures to the hearts of Kings.

*** *

* * * * * *

Now comes my Lover tripping like the Roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair.
To joy her love-I'll build a Kingly bower,
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,
That, for their homage to her sovereign joys,
Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests,
In oblique turnings wind the nimble waves
About the circles of her curious walks,
And with their murmur summon easeful sleep
To lay his golden sceptre on her brows."

7 There is more of the same stuff, but I suppose the reader has a surfeit; especially as this Canticle of David's has uever been suspected to contain any pious sense couched underneath it, whatever his Son's may.-The Kingly bower" seated in hearing of a hundred streams" is the best of it.

LUSTS DOMINION, OR THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN.

A TRAGEDY BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

The Queen Mother of Spain loves an insolent Moor.3
QUEEN. ELEAZAR, the Moor.

Queen. Chime out your softest strains of harmony,
And on delicious Music's silken wings

Send ravishing delight to my Love's ears;

That he may be enamour'd of your tunes.

Eleaz. Away, away.

Queen. No, no, says aye; and twice away, says stay.

* Such another as Aaron in Titus Andronicus.

Come

Come, come, I'll have a kiss; but if you'll strive,
For one denial you shall forfeit five.
Eleaz. Be gone, be gone.

Queen. What means my Love?

Burst all those wires; burn all those instruments;
For they displease my Moor. Art thou now pleas'd?
Or wert thou now disturb'd? I'll wage all Spain
To one sweet kiss, this is some new device
To make me fond and long. Oh, you men
Have tricks to make poor women die for you.
Eleaz. What, die for me?

away.

Queen. Away, what way? I prithee, speak more kindly. Why dost thou frown?

Eleaz. At thee.

Queen. At me?

at whom?

O why at me? for each contracted frown,
A crooked wrinkle interlines my brow:
Spend but one hour in frowns, and I shall look
Like to a Beldam of one hundred years.
I prithee, speak to me, and chide me not.
I prithee, chide, if I have done amiss;
But let my punishment be this, and this.
I prithee, smile on me, if but a while;
Then frown on me, I'll die: I prithee, smile.
Smile on me; and these two wanton boys,
These pretty lads that do attend on me,
Shall call thee Jove, shall wait upon thy cup
And fill thee nectar: their enticing eyes
Shall serve as chrystal, wherein thou may'st see
To dress thyself; if thou wilt smile on me.
Smile on me; and with coronets of pearl
And bells of gold, circling their pretty arms,
In a round ivory fount these two shall swim,
And dive to make thee sport:

Bestow one smile, one little little smile,
And in a net of twisted silk and gold

In my all-naked arms thyself shalt lie.9

9 Kit Marlowe, as old Isaac Walton assures us, made that smooth song which begins" Come live with me and be my love." The same romantic invitations "in folly ripe in reason rotten" are given

by

by the queen in the play, and the lover in the ditty. He talks of "beds of roses, buckles of gold :"

Thy silver dishes for thy meat,
As precious as the Gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be

Prepar'd each day for thee and me.

The lines in the Extract have a luscious smoothness in them, and they were the most temperate which I could pick out of this Play. The rest is in king Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and su perlatives; "huffing braggart puft" lines such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol "but coldly imitates." -Blood is made as light of in some of these old Dramas as Money in a modern Sentimental Comedy; and as this is given away till it reminds us that it is nothing but counters, so that is spilt till it affects us no more than its representative the paint of the property-man in the theatre.

* Take a specimen from a speech of the Moor's.-
Now Tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pue-fellow, to thee I'll sing
Upon an harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords;
When thou in crimson jollity shall bathe
Thy limbs, as black as mine, in springs of blood
Still gushing from the conduit head of Spain.
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,
My bloody labours, tortures, stratagems,
The volume of all wounds that wound from me;
Mine is the Stage, thine is the Tragedy,

TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT; OR THE SCYTHIAN SHEPHERD. IN TWO PARTS. BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.-PART THE FIRST.

Of stature tall, and straitly fashioned;
Like his desire, lift10 upwards, and divine.
So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders, as might mainly bear
Old Atlas' burthen. Twixt his manly pitch

A pearl more worth than all the world is placed:
Wherein by curious soverainty of art

Are fix'd his piercing instruments of sight;
Whose fiery circles bear encompassed

A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres:
That guides his steps and actions to the throne
Where Honour sits invested royally.

Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion
Thirsting with soverainty and love of arms.
His lofty brows in folds do figure death;
And in their smoothness amity and life.
About them hangs a knot of amber hair,
Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was;
On which the breath of heaven delights to play,
Making it dance with wanton majesty.
His armes long, his fingers snowy-white,
Betokening valour and excess of strength;
In every part proportion'd like the man
Should make the world subdue to Tamburlaine.

His Custom in War.

The first day when he pitcheth down his tents,
White is their hue; and on his silver crest

10 Lifted.

A snowy