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
That God dwells in the senseless clay they mould,
Who live their little lives and die their deaths,
Lapped in a smug respectability;
Who never dreamt of breaking puny laws
Formed for a puny race of grovellers;
But in the blood-stained track of flaming swords,