Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/50

 from fifteen to thirty-five. This latter age is the least he can have attained by any computation at the time when he put forth his Shadow of Night, full of loud and angry complaints of neglect and slight endured at the hands of an unthankful and besotted generation; it is somewhat late in life for the first appearance of a poet, and the poem then issued is a more crude and chaotic performance than might be looked for from a writer who has no longer the plea of unripe age to put forward in excuse of the raw green fruits which he offers to the reader.

Dr. Elze, in the learned and ingenious essay prefixed to his edition of Chapman's Alphonsus, points out that from the internal evidence of that play 'we are driven to the alternative either of supposing Chapman to have been in Germany or of allowing him a German partner' (p, 33), and a little before observes that 'there is ample room between his leaving the university without a degree in 1576 or 1578 and his first acknowledged publication in 1594 even for a lengthened stay in Germany.' In default of evidence we might perhaps be permitted to throw out a guess that the future poet had in his