he
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_convey_ is obsolete--to annex whole phrases or whole verses at need, for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 lit