I have already called attention to the fact, that the impression of Marlowe's being an earlier writer than Shakspeare, was founded solely upon the circumstance that his plays were printed at an earlier date. That nothing could be more fallacious than this conclusion, the fact that many of Shakspeare's earliest plays were not printed at all until after his death is sufficient to evince. The motive for withholding Shakspeare's plays from the press is as easily understood as that for publishing Marlowe's. Thus stood the question when Mr. Collier approached the subject. Meanwhile it should be borne in mind, that not a syllable of evidence has been advanced to show that Shakspeare could not have written the _First part of the Contention_ and the _True Tragedy_, if not the later forms of _Henry VI._, _Hamlet_ and _Pericles_ in their earliest forms, if not _Timon of Athens_, which I think is also an early play revised, _Love's Labour's Lost_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, &c., all of which I should place at least seven years distance from plays which I think were acted about 1594 or 1595. I now proceed to give the kernel of Mr. Collier's argument, omitting nothing that is really important to the question:-- "'Give me the man' (says Nash) 'whose extemporal vein, in any humour, will excel our greatest _art masters_' deliberate thoughts.' "Green, in 1588, says he had been 'had in derision' by 'two gentlemen poets' because I could not make my verses get on the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bow-bell, daring God out of heaven with that atheist tamburlane, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the sun. Farther on he laughs at the 'prophetical spirits' of those 'who set the end of scholarism in an _English blank-verse_.' "Marlowe took his degree of _Master of Arts_ in the very year when Nash was unable to do so, &c. "I thus arrive at the conclusion, that Christopher Marlowe was our first poet who used blank-verse in dramatic compositions performed in public theatres."--_Hist. of Dramatic Poetry_, vol. iii. pp. 110, 111, 112. This is literally all; and, I ask, can any "conclusion" be much more inconclusive? Yet Mr. Collier has been so far misled by the deference paid to him on the strength of his unquestionably great services, and appears to have been so fully persuaded of the correctness of his deduction, that he has since referred to as a _proved fact_ what is really nothing more than an exceedingly _loose conjecture_.