But the crowning
example of Cyril Tourneur's unique and incomparable genius is of course
to be found in the scene which would assuredly be remembered, though
every other line of the poet's writing were forgotten, by the influence
of its passionate inspiration on the more tender but not less noble
sympathies of Charles Lamb. Even the splendid exuberance of eulogy which
attributes to the verse of Tourneur a more fiery quality, a more
thrilling and piercing note of sublime and agonizing indignation, than
that which animates and inflames the address of Hamlet to a mother less
impudent in infamy than Vindice's cannot be considered excessive by any
capable reader who will candidly and carefully compare the two scenes
which suggested this comparison. To attempt the praise or the
description of anything that has been praised or described by Lamb would
usually be the veriest fatuity of presumption; and yet it is impossible
to write of a poet whose greatness was first revealed to his countrymen
by the greatest gritic of dramatic poetry who ever lived and wrote, and
not to echo his words of righteous judgement and inspired applause with
more or less feebleness of reiteration.
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