Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/207

the same old hand, at the head of the first page and again on the last page under the last line, the same contemptuous three words—'silly old story.' And I fear it can hardly be maintained that either Chapman, when writing 'The Blind Beggar of Alexandria,' or Rowley, when writing 'A Shoemaker, a Gentleman,' was engaged in any very rational or felicitous employment of his wayward and unregulated powers. 'The Printer' of the play last named assures 'the Reader' of 1638, whom he assumes to be a member of the gentle craft, that 'as plays were then, some twenty years agone, it was in the fashion.' A singular fashion, the rare modern reader will probably reflect: especially when he remembers how far finer and how thoroughly charming a tribute of dramatic and poetic celebration had been paid full eighteen years earlier to the same favoured craft by the sweeter and rarer genius of Dekker. This quaintly apologetic assurance of by-gone popularity in subject and in style will remind all probable readers of Heywood's prologue to 'The Royal King and Loyal Subject,' and his dedicatory address prefixed to 'The Four Prentices of London.' It happily was not, however, in the printer's power to aver that such impudently immetrical verse as Rowley at once breaks ground with was ever in fashion with any of his famous fellows. Nothing can be