Before leaving the second volume there is one other poem of which I cannot refrain from quoting a part, to show the subtlety with which a phase of the psychology of sentiment has been grasped and analyzed in these lines called “The Knot”: Oh, I hated me, That when I loved you not, yet I could feel Some charm in me the deeper for your love: Some singing-robe invisible—and spun Of your own worship—fold me silverly In very moonlight, so that I walked fair When you were by, who had no wish to be The fairer for your eyes! But at some cost Of other life the hyacinth grows blue, And sweetens ever…. So it is with us, The sadder race. I would have fled from you, And yet I felt some fibre in myself Binding me here, to search one moment yet— The only well that gave me back a star,— Your eyes reflecting. And I grew aware How worship that must ever spend and burn Will have its deity from gold or stone; Till that fain womanhood that would be fair And lovable,—the hunger of the plant— Against my soul’s commandment reached and took The proffered fruit, more potent day by day. And the lines which follow close with the wholly feminine query, Will you not go?—and yet, why will you go? It is a human bit of dramatic analysis, and reduces inconsistent femininity to a common denominator. In her third volume, _Marlowe_, a drama, founded upon the life of the lovable but erratic poet and playwright, Miss Peabody essayed an ambitious undertaking, but one which, as literature, carries its full justification. As drama, one must qualify. In characterization, aside from Marlowe himself, who comes before one vividly, there is a lack of sharp definition. Nashe, Lodge, Peele, and Green, Marlowe’s fellow playwrights and friends, might, from the evidence of the dialogue, be the same character under different names, so alike are they in speech and temperament. Next to Marlowe himself, Bame, who through jealousy becomes his enemy, and brings on the final tragedy, is the most individually drawn. Of the women characters, the drama presents practically but one,—Alison, the little country maid who loves Marlowe secretly, and becomes in a way his good angel,—as “Her Ladyship” of the Court, object of his adoration, is introduced but twice in the play, and that veiled, so that only for a moment at the last may one see the beauty that—under guise of Helen—inspired Marlowe’s lines: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burned the topless towers of Ilium!