ar, genuine of their kind:--

Facies non omnibus una,
Nec diversa tamen:

and yet so close is the generic likeness between flower and flower of the
same lyrical garden that the first half of the quotation seems but half
applicable here. In Bird's, Morley's, Dowland's collections of music
with the words appended--in such jewelled volumes as _England's Helicon_
and _Davison's Poetical Rhapsody_--their name is Legion, their numbers
are numberless. You cannot call them imitators, this man of that, or all
of any; they were all of one school, but it was a school without a master
or a head. And even so it was with the earliest sect or gathering of
dramatic writers in England. Marlowe alone stood apart and above them
all--the young Shakespeare among the rest; but among these we cannot
count, we cannot guess, how many were wellnigh as competent as he to
continue the fluent rhyme, to prolong the facile echo, of Greene and
Peele, their first and most famous leaders.

No more docile or capable pupil could have been desired by any master in
any art than the author of _David and Bethsabe_ has found in the writer
of this second act. He has indeed surpassed his model, if not in grace
and sweetness, yet in taste or tact of expression, in continuity and
equality of style. Vigour is not the principal note of his manner, but
compared with the soft effusive ebullience of his master's we may fairly
call it vigorous and condensed. But all this merit or demerit is matter
of mere language only. The poet--a very pretty poet in his way, and
doubtless capable of gracious work enough in the idyllic or elegiac line
of business--shows about as much capacity to grasp and handle the fine
intimacies of character and the large issues of circumstance to any
tragic or dramatic purpose, as might be expected from an idyllic or
elegiac poet who should suddenly assume the buskin of tragedy. Let us
suppose that Moschus, for example, on the strength of having written a
sweeter elegy than ever before was chanted over the untimely grave of a
friend and fellow-singer, had said within himself, "Go to, I will be
Sophocles"; can we imagine that the tragic result would have been other
than tragical indeed for the credit of his gentle name, and comical
indeed for all who might have envied the mild and modest excellence which
fashion or hypocrisy might for years have induced them to besprinkle with
the froth and slaver of their promiscuous and poin