Its occasionally
exquisite delicacy is as remarkable as its more frequent excess of
coarseness, awkwardness, or violent and elaborate extravagance. No
sooner has he said anything especially beautiful, pathetic, or sublime,
than the evil genius must needs take his turn, exact as it were the
forfeit of his bond, impel the poet into some sheer perversity, deface
the flow and form of the verse with some preposterous crudity or
flatulence of phrase which would discredit the most incapable or the
most fantastic novice. And the worst of it all is that he limps or
stumbles with either foot alternately. At one moment he exaggerates the
license of artificial rhetoric, the strain and swell of the most
high-flown and hyperbolical poetic diction; at the next, he falls flat
upon the naked level of insignificant or offensive realism.
These are no slight charges; and it is impossible for any just or sober
judgment to acquit John Marston of the impeachment conveyed in them. The
answer to it is practical and simple: it is that his merits are great
enough to outweigh and overshadow them all. Even if his claim to
remembrance were merely dependent on the value of single passages, this
would suffice to secure him his place of honor in the train of
Shakespeare.
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