We have heard much of ‘Marlowe’s mighty line,’ and this play furnishes frequent instances of it. There are a number of single lines that seem struck out in the heat of a glowing fancy, and leave a track of golden fire behind them. The following are a few that might be given. ‘I know he is not dead; I know proud death Durst not behold such sacred majesty.’ · · · · · ‘Hang both your greedy ears upon my lips, Let them devour my speech, suck in my breath.’ · · · · · ——‘From discontent grows treason, And on the stalk of treason, death.’ · · · · · ‘Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood.’ · · · · · The two following lines— ‘Oh! I grow dull, and the cold hand of sleep Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast’— are the same as those in King John— ‘And none of you will bid the winter come To thrust his icy fingers in my maw.’ and again the Moor’s exclamation, ‘Now by the proud complexion of my cheeks, Ta’en from the kisses of the amorous sun’— is the same as Cleopatra’s— ‘But I that am with Phœbus’ amorous pinches black’—&c. Eleazar’s sarcasm, ——‘These dignities, Like poison, make men swell; this rat’s-bane honour, Oh, ’tis so sweet! they’ll lick it till they burst’— shews the utmost virulence of smothered spleen; and his concluding strain of malignant exultation has been but tamely imitated by Young’s Zanga. ‘Now tragedy, thou minion of the night, Rhamnusia’s pewfellow,[17] to thee I’ll sing, Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones, The proudest instrument the world affords: To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,’ &c. It may be worth while to observe, for the sake of the curious, that many of Marlowe’s most sounding lines consist of monosyllables, or nearly so. The repetition of Eleazar’s taunt to the Cardinal, retorting his own words upon him, ‘Spaniard or Moor, the saucy slave shall die’—may perhaps have suggested Falconbridge’s spirited reiteration of the phrase—‘And hang a calve’s skin on his recreant limbs.’