The critics of the days closely succeeding said he would have rivalled Shakespeare if he had lived: Doubtless he would have brought more learning to the rivalry; perhaps an equal wit--maybe an even greater rhythmic faculty and as dauntless and daring imaginative power; but dignity and poise of character were not in him. He died--stabbed--in a drunken brawl before he was thirty.[103] In his tragedies--if you read them--you will find the beat and flow and rhythm--to which a great many of the best succeeding English tragedies were attuned. He scored first upon British theatre-walls, with fingers made tremulous by tavern orgies, a great sampler of dramatic story, by which scores of succeeding play-writers set their copy; but into these copies many and many a one of lesser power put a grace, a tenderness, and a dignity which never belonged to the half-crazed and short-lived Marlowe. You will remember him best perhaps as the author of the pleasant little madrigal of which I cited a verselet; and if you value the delicatest of description, you will relish still more his unfinished version of the Greek story of “Hero and Leander”--a pregnant line of which-- “who ever loved that loved not at first sight” --has the abiding honor of having been quoted by Shakespeare in his play of “As You Like It.” I leave Marlowe--citing first a beautiful bit of descriptive verse from his “Hero and Leander:”-- “At Sestos Hero dwelt: Hero the fair, Whom young Apollo courted for her hair, And offered as a dower his burning throne, Where she should sit for men to gaze upon. The outside of her garments were of lawn, --The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn. Upon her head she wore a myrtle wreath From thence her veil reached to the ground beneath; Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves, Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives; Many would praise the sweet smell, as she past, When ’twas the odor that her breath forth cast; And there_for_ honey-bees have sought in vain And beat from thence, have lighted there again. About her neck hung chains of pebble stone, Which, lighted by her neck, like diamonds shone. She wore no gloves; for neither sun nor wind Would burn or parch her hands, but, to her mind; Or warm, or cool them; for they took delight To play upon those hands, they were so white. Some say, for her the fairest Cupid pin’d And, looking in her face, was strooken blind. But this is true; so like was one the other, As he imagined Hero was his mother: And often-times into her bosom flew, About her naked neck his bare arms threw, And laid his childish head upon her breast And, with still panting rock’t, there took his rest.” I think all will agree that this is very delicately done. _A Tavern Coterie._