Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/137

 villains are not distorted or overdrawn, and the action is full of change and vivacity.

Of the poems published by Chapman after the first of his plays was given to the press, we may say generally that they show some signs of advance and none of retrogression from the standard of his earlier work. Out of many lovely lines embedded in much thick and turbid matter I choose one couplet from The Tears of Peace as an example of their best beauties:

Free sufferance for the truth makes sorrow sing, And mourning far more sweet than banqueting."

In this poem, with much wearisome confusion and iteration of thought and imagery, reprobation and complaint, there are several noble interludes of gnomic and symbolic verse. The allegory is of course clouded and confounded by all manner of perversities and obscurities worth no man's while to elucidate or to rectify; the verse hoarse and stiff, the style dense and convulsive, inaccurate and violent; yet ever and anon the sense becomes clear, the style pure, the imagery luminous and tender, the