of him with esteem. An anonymous eulogist called him
"kynde Kit Marlowe"; and Edward Blunt, his friend and publisher, said
"the impression of the man hath been dear unto us, living an after-life
in our memory." Assuredly Shakespeare's "dead shepherd" was no scamp.
He apparently sowed his wild oats, like hundreds of other young men who
were afterwards lauded by the orthodox. He was fond of a glass of wine
in an age when tea and coffee were unknown, and English ladies drank
beer for breakfast. And if he perished in a sudden brawl, it was at a
time when everyone wore arms, and swords and daggers were readily drawn
in the commonest quarrels. Nor should it be forgotten that he belonged
to a "vagabond" class, half-outlawed and denounced by the clergy; that
the drama was only then in its infancy; that it was difficult to earn
bread by writing even immortal plays; and that irregularity of life
was natural in a career whose penury was only diversified by haphazard
successes. After all is said, Marlowe was no man's enemy but his own;
and it is simply preposterous to judge him by the social customs of a
more fastidious and, let us add, a more hypocritical age.

Our Christian protestor is shocked at the suggestion that the Marlowe
memorial should be placed in Westminster Abbey, "an edifice which
I believe was originally built to the honor of Jesus Christ." "The
blasphemies of Voltaire," he says, "pale into insignificance when
compared with those of Marlowe;" he "deliberately accused Jesus Christ
and his personal followers of crimes which are justly considered
unmentionable in any civilised community," and "any monument which may
be erected in honor of Christopher Marlowe will be a deliberate insult
to Christ."

Now those "blasphemies" are set forth in the accusation of an informer,
one Richard Bame, who was hanged at Tyburn the next year for some
mortal offence. Marlowe's death prevented his arrest, and it is somewhat
extravagant--not to give it a harsher epithet--to write as though
the accusation had been substantiated in a legal court. One of Bame's
statements about Marlowe's itch for coining is, upon the face of it,
absurd, and the whole document is open to the gravest suspicion. It is
highly probable however, that Marlowe, who was a notorious Freethinker,
was not very guarded in his private conversation; and we have no
doubt that in familiar intercourse, which a mercenary or malicious
eavesdropper might overhear, he indulged