Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/202

 If Lamb had known and read the first work published by Rowley, it is impossible to imagine that it would not have been honoured by the tribute of some passing and priceless word. Why it has never been reissued (except in a private reprint for the Percy Society) among the many less deserving and less interesting revivals from the apparently and not really ephemeral literature of its day would be to me an insoluble problem, if I were so ignorant as never to have realised the too obvious fact that chance, pure and simple chance, guides or misguides the intelligence, and suggests or fails to suggest, the duty of scholars and of students who have given time and thought to such far from unimportant or insignificant matters. 'A Search for Money; or, a Quest for the Wandering Knight Monsieur L'Argent,' is not comparable with the best pamphlets of Nash or of Dekker: a competent reader of those admirable improvisations will at the first opening feel inclined to regard it as a feeble and servile imitation of their quaint and obsolescent manner; but he will soon find an original and a vigorous vein of native humour in their comrade or their disciple. The seekers after the wandering knight, baffled in their search on shore, are compelled to recognise the sad fact that 'the sea is lunatic, and mad folks keep no money, he would sink if he