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,
Wielded by knotty arms in Man's despite,
Or on the wings of crashing battle-balls,
Bone-shattering dealers of a thousand wounds,
The roaring heralds of indignant God,
There rapture dwells, and there I too would dwell.'
"Here is power that would furnish forth a whole legion of the
poetasters who crawl through our effete literature!" But I cannot
pursue these memories. They are too painful. For who speaks of
CHEPSTOWE now? Who cares to cumber his bookshelves with the volumes
in which this inflated arm-chair prophet of the tin pots delivered his
shrieking message? His very name has flickered out; and when I spoke
of him the other day, I was asked, by a person of some intelligence,
if I referred to CHEPSTOWE who had just made 166 playing cricket for
the Gentlemen against the Players.
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