Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/166

inevitable by a poet's mind of his peculiar bent and bias. There are superfluities which we would fain see removed, deformities which we would fain see straightened, in all but the greatest among poets or men; and these are doubtless in effect irremovable and incurable. Even the Atlantean shoulders of Jonson, fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies, have been hardly tasked to support and transmit to our own day the fame of his great genius, overburdened as it was with the twofold load of his theories on art and his pedantries of practice. And Chapman, though also a brother of the giant brood, had not the Herculean sinews of his younger friend and fellow-student. That weight which could but bend the back that carried the vast world of invention whose twin hemispheres are Volpone and The Alchemist was wellnigh enough to crush the staggering strength of the lesser Titan. His style reels and struggles under the pressure; he snorts and heaves as Typhoeus beneath Etna, sending up at each huge turn and convulsion of his uneasy bulk some shower of blinding sparkles or volume of stifling vapour.