I fear, however, that it is not the poetical quality of his undramatic
verse which can ever be said to make it worth reading: it is, as far as
I know, of the very homeliest homespun ever turned out by the very
humblest of workmen. His poetry, it would be pretty safe to wager, must
be looked for exclusively in his plays: but there, if not remarkable for
depth or height of imagination or of passion, it will be found memorable
for unsurpassed excellence of unpretentious elevation in treatment of
character. The unity (or, to borrow from Coleridge a barbaric word, the
triunity) of noble and gentle and simple in the finest quality of the
English character at its best--of the English character as revealed in
our Sidneys and Nelsons and Collingwoods and Franklins--is almost as
apparent in the best scenes of his best plays as in the lives of our
chosen and best-beloved heroes: and this, I venture to believe, would
have been rightly regarded by Thomas Heywood as a more desirable and
valuable success than the achievement of a noisier triumph or the
attainment of a more conspicuous place among the poets of his country.
GEORGE CHAPMAN
George Chapman, translator of Homer, dramatist, and gnomic poet, was
born in 1559, and died in 1634.
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