Page:Hero and Leander - Marlowe and Chapman (1821).pdf/66

is true; but which from its needlessness to the human interest of the poem, becomes neither more or less than an overgrown conceit. This mode of judging bears still harder on that long description in the Second Sestyad, of Leander's swimming; where it seems extremely difficult for Marlow to decide whether Neptune shall be a real God, or a mere personification of the waves. An author should be consistent with himself,—it will never do to make use of Mercury, or Cupid, or Neptune now as mythological personages, and then as abstractions—but enough already of vituperation. The versification is extremely musical, and preserves a mean between the monotony of Pope, and the tiresome frequency of Chalkhill's overlappings:—many of the lines might be securely dove-tailed into Dryden's narrative poems. Neither is the language unsuited by its harshness to the melody of the verses, being remarkably free from quaintnesses, which in Marlow consist not in phrases, but in ideas.—Our author employs not many direct similes, though expository comparisons often:—