LUST’S DOMINION; _or_, THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN, is referable to the same general style of writing; and is a striking picture, or rather caricature, of the unrestrained love of power, not as connected with learning, but with regal ambition and external sway. There is a good deal of the same intense passion, the same recklessness of purpose, the same smouldering fire within: but there is not any of the same relief to the mind in the lofty imaginative nature of the subject; and the continual repetition of plain practical villainy and undigested horrors disgusts the sense, and blunts the interest. The mind is hardened into obduracy, not melted into sympathy, by such bare-faced and barbarous cruelty. Eleazar, the Moor, is such another character as Aaron in Titus Andronicus, and this play might be set down without injustice as ‘pue-fellow’ to that. I should think Marlowe has a much fairer claim to be the author of Titus Andronicus than Shakespear, at least from internal evidence; and the argument of Schlegel, that it must have been Shakespear’s, because there was no one else capable of producing either its faults or beauties, fails in each particular. The Queen is the same character in both these plays; and the business of the plot is carried on in much the same revolting manner, by making the nearest friends and relatives of the wretched victims the instruments of their sufferings and persecution by an arch-villain. To shew however, that the same strong-braced tone of passionate declamation is kept up, take the speech of Eleazar on refusing the proffered crown: ‘What do none rise? No, no, for kings indeed are Deities. And who’d not (as the sun) in brightness shine? To be the greatest is to be divine. Who among millions would not be the mightiest? To sit in godlike state; to have all eyes Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues Shouting loud prayers; to rob every heart Of love; to have the strength of every arm; A sovereign’s name, why ’tis a sovereign charm. This glory round about me hath thrown beams: I have stood upon the top of Fortune’s wheel, And backward turn’d the iron screw of fate. The destinies have spun a silken thread About my life; yet thus I cast aside The shape of majesty, and on my knee To this Imperial state lowly resign This usurpation; wiping off your fears Which stuck so hard upon me.’ This is enough to shew the unabated vigour of the author’s style. This strain is certainly doing justice to the pride of ambition, and the imputed majesty of kings.