Marlowe is universally and rightly regarded as the first English poet who used blank verse with the hand of a master, and showed its possibilities. With him it became practically a new measure. Mr. Symonds says: "He found the ten-syllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods; one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words to dominate their form.... Used in this fashion, blank verse became a Proteus. It resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm; but, by the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to rise above the common and despotic beat of time.... It is true that, like all great poets, he left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that his metre is marked by an almost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity, and height of coloring." (_Blank Verse_, pp. 22-27.) In the earlier verse of _Tamburlaine_, while showing these new qualities of a metrical master, Marlowe yet kept pretty closely to the individual, end-stopped line; in his later verse, as illustrated in the fragmentary text of _Faustus_, he seems to have attained much more freedom, resembling that of the later plays of Shakspere.[28] Is it mine eye, or Valentinus' praise, Her true perfection, or my false transgression, That makes me, reasonless, to reason thus? She's fair, and so is Julia that I love,-- That I did love, for now my love is thawed, Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, Bears no impression of the thing it was. Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold, And that I love him not, as I was wont: O! but I love his lady too too much; And that's the reason I love him so little. How shall I dote on her with more advice, That thus without advice begin to love her?... If I can check my erring love, I will; If not, to compass her I'll use my skill. (SHAKSPERE: _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. iv. 196-208; 213, 214. ab. 1590.)