iot in the first scene of the fifth act of the
first part of "Antonio and Mellida." "You know, the stone called
_lapis_, the nearer it comes to the fire, the hotter it is; and the bird
which the geometricians call _avis_, the farther it is from the earth,
the nearer it is to the heaven; and love, the nigher it is to the flame,
the more remote (there's a word, remote!)--the more remote it is from
the frost." Shakespeare and Scott have condescended to caricature the
style or the manner of the inventor of euphuism: I cannot think their
burlesque of his elaborate and sententious triviality so happy, so
humorous, or so exact as this. But it is not on his capacity as a
satirist or humorist, it is on his occasionally triumphant success as a
serious or tragic poet, that the fame of Marston rests assuredly
established. His intermittent power to rid himself for a while of his
besetting faults, and to acquire or assume for a moment the very
excellences most incompatible with these, is as extraordinary for the
completeness as for the transience of its successful effects. The brief
fourth act of "Antonio and Mellida" is the most astonishing and
bewildering production of belated human genius that ever distracted or
discomfited a student. Verses more delicately beautiful followed by
verses more simply majestic than these have rarely if ever given
assurance of eternity to the fame of any but a great master in song:

Conceit you me: as having clasped a rose
Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away,
My hand retains a little breath of sweet,
So may man's trunk, his spirit slipped away,
Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.
'Tis so: for when discursive powers fly out,
And roam in progress through the bounds of heaven,
The soul itself gallops along with them
As chieftain of this winged troop of thought,
Whilst the dull lodge of spirit standeth waste
Until the soul return.

Then follows a passage of sheer gibberish; then a dialogue of the
noblest and most dramatic eloquence; then a chaotic alternation of sense
and nonsense, bad Italian and mixed English, abject farce and dignified
rhetoric, spirited simplicity and bombastic jargon. It would be more and
less than just to take this act as a sample or a symbol of the author's
usual way of work; but I cannot imagine that a parallel to it, for evil
and for good, could be found in the works of any other writer.

The Muse of this poet is no maiden of