When she would talk of peace, methinks her tongue
Commanded war to prison; {246} when of war,
It wakened Caesar from his Roman grave
To hear war beautified by her discourse.
Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue;
Beauty a slander, but in her fair face;
There is no summer but in her cheerful looks,
Nor frosty winter but in her disdain.
I cannot blame the Scots that did besiege her,
For she is all the treasure of our land;
But call them cowards that they ran away,
Having so rich and fair a cause to stay.
But if for a moment we may fancy that here and there we have caught such
an echo of Marlowe as may have fallen from the lips of Shakespeare in his
salad days, in his period of poetic pupilage, we have but a very little
way to go forward before we come upon indisputable proof that the pupil
was one of feebler hand and fainter voice than Shakespeare. Let us take
the passage on poetry, beginning--
Now, Lodowick, invocate {247} some golden Muse
To bring thee hither an enchanted pen;
and so forth. No scholar in English poetry but will recognise at once
the flat and futile imitation of Marlowe; not of his great general style
alone, but of one special and transcendant passage which can never be too
often quoted.
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