ritical verdicts are never lightly to be set aside. He is
singularly shrewd and unprejudiced in his judgements, and has a
remarkable faculty of hitting the right nail on the head. But Chapman,
in whom the barbarian and the pedant were so strongly commingled, was a
type that fell outside the wide range of Dryden's appreciation. The
Restoration writer fails, in the first place, to recognize that _Bussy
D'Ambois_ is pitched advisedly from first to last in a high key.
Throughout the drama men and women are playing for great stakes. No one
is ever at rest. Action and passion are both at fever heat. We move in
an atmosphere of duels and state intrigues by day, of assignations and
murders by night. Even the subordinate personages in the drama, the
stewards and waiting-women, partake of the restless spirit of their
superiors. They are constantly arguing, quarrelling, gossiping--their
tongues and wits are always on the move. Thus Chapman aimed throughout
at energy of expression at all costs. To this he sacrificed beauty of
phrase and rhythm, even lucidity. He pushed it often to exaggerated
extremes of coarseness and riotous fancy. He laid on "glaring colours"
till eye and brain are fatigued. To this opening phrase of Dryden no
exception can be taken. But can his further charges stand? Is it true to
say of _Bussy D'Ambois_ that it is characterised by "dwarfish thought
dressed up in gigantic words," that it is "a hideous mingle of false
poetry and true nonsense"? The accusation of "nonsense" recoils upon its
maker. Involved, obscure, inflated as Chapman's phrasing not
infrequently is, it is not mere rhodomontade, sound, and fury,
signifying nothing. There are some passages (as the Notes testify) where
the thread of his meaning seems to disappear amidst his fertile imagery,
but even here one feels not that sense is lacking, but that one has
failed to find the clue to the zigzag movements of Chapman's brain. Nor
is it fair to speak of Chapman as dressing up dwarfish thoughts in
stilted phrases. There is not the slightest tendency in the play to spin
out words to hide a poverty of ideas; in fact many of the difficulties
spring from excessive condensation. Where Chapman is really assailable
is in a singular incontinence of imagery. Every idea that occurs to him
brings with it a plethora of illustrations, in the way of simile,
metaphor, or other figure of speech; he seems impotent to check the
exuberant riot of his fancy till it has exha