Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, September 17, 1892 by Various
page 16 of 45 (35%)
page 16 of 45 (35%)
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Unplumbed abyss, where, girt with red limbs torn.
The shark Sported, and eyeless monsters crawled in slime--' "No extract can, however, convey an adequate idea of this grand poem, on which, as on the bed rock, Mr. CHEPSTOWE's fame is established for ever, SHAKSPEARE himself might have been proud to have written it." I may remark, parenthetically, that in his "Ode" CHEPSTOWE pictured himself as a sort of animate skeleton:-- "Sockets where light once shone grinned emptiness; The teeth Were fallen from the gaping, gumless jaws; nathless Beneath The cold smooth skull, the brain retained her throne." Amid these uncomfortable surroundings CHEPSTOWE described himself as penetrated with raptures of fierce joy at having shaken himself free from the world and its puling insincerities to dwell amid "Unpitying shapes of death's dread twin despair," where "Rapine and slaughter raged, and none rebuked." Another reviewer observed that "The soul of ARCHER's, the tavern-brawler's glorious victim, KIT MARLOWE, has taken again a habitation of clay. She speaks trumpet-tongued by the mouth of Mr. CHEPSTOWE. We note in these outpourings of dramatic passion an audacity, an energy, an enthusiasm, that are calculated to shake Peckham Rye to its centre, and make Balham tremble in its ridiculous carpet slippers. Who--to take only one example--but Mr. CHEPSTOWE or MARLOWE could have written thus of 'Rapture'?-- "'Not in the mouths of prating men who deem |
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