avail, for he did not decrease the evil he reprobated; and not long afterwards, as I have stated, his own exaggeration was printed as a serious and passionate effusion. In his satires, upon which we will now enter, he actually complains, as you have seen, that his design had been misunderstood, and that he was placed among those he meant to lash and ridicule.

ELLIOT. The collection appears one of considerable size.

BOURNE. It is in the whole, taking both volumes or parts; but I will not fatigue you with too long or too many quotations.

ELLIOT. You need be under no apprehension of that sort satires are always an amusing sort of reading, and Marston seems a writer that will not easily tire.

BOURNE. He is very unequal: he exhausts his strength in some places by over exertion in others. I shall be the less scrupulous, because Marston has not hitherto found a place in any national collection of our poetry, not even in that of Mr. Chalmers. The following description of a finished courtier is taken from his first satire.

"But oh! the absolute Castilio

He that can all the poynts of courtship show:

He that can trot a Courser, break a rush,

And, arm'd in proofe, dare dure a strawes strong

push:

He who on his glorious scutchion

Can quaintly shew wits newe inuention,
Aduancing forth some thirstie Tantalus,
Or else the Vulture on Prometheus,
With some short motto of a dozen lines:
He that can purpose it in dainty rimes;
Can set his face, and with his eye can speake,
Can dally with his mistres dangling feake,
And wish that he were it, to kiss her eye
And flare about her beauties deitie.
Tut, he is famous for his reuelling,

For fine set speeches and for sonetting:
He scornes the violl and the scraping sticke,
And yet's but Broker of anothers wit
Certes if all things were well knowne and viewd
He doth but champe that which another chew'd.”

ELLIOT. Coarse, but pointed, and probably applicable to a great many fine gentlemen of the day.

MORTON. TO Such, you may recollect, as Gascoyne alludes to when he says, in the preface to his works, where "I wrote one line for my selfe in causes of loue, I haue written ten for other men in lays of lust."

BOURNE. Right. Marston has another hit of the same kind in his next satire, the point of which has been used over and over again in epigrams, &c. since, as you will see. He is speaking of Muto, who thrusts into his mistress's bosom some lines which he pretends are his own, but, in truth, were penned by Roscio the tragedian."

VOL. I.

R

"Yet Muto like a good Vulcanian

An honest Cuckold, calls the bastard sonne,
And braggs of that which others for him done.-
Satyre thou lyest, for that same Elegie

Is Mutos owne, his owne deare Poesie !-
Why tis his owne-and deare-for he did pay
Ten crownes for it, as I heard Roscius say."

ELLIOT. I do not think that any writer since has put the point better, or set it more acutely.

BOURNE. The name of Castilio, in the former extract, he takes from a book which had been, and then was, extremely popular, running through many editions between 1557, when, I believe, it was first printed, and 1598, when Marston wrote: it is called "Castilios Courtier," Count Baldessar Castilio, an Italian, being the author of it, and Sir Thomas Hobby the translator.

MORTON. Is there any thing curious in the work ?

BOURNE. Perhaps little or nothing but the enumeration at the end, called "a brief rehersal of the chiefe conditiōs and qualities required in a Courtier," which you will perceive, by running your eye over it, includes every kind of knowledge and accomplishment. However we need not delay to examine a book that is comparatively easy to be procured. Marston, in his second Satire, aims another blow at Hall, principally on the score of obscurity. He says of him,

"And in such pitchy cloudes enwrapped beene
His Sphinxian riddles, that old Oedipus
Would be amaz'd and take it in foule snufs,
That such Cymerian darknes should inuolue
A quaint conceit that he could not resolue.
O darknes palpable! Egipts black night :
My wit is stricken blind, hath lost his sight."

ELLIOT. Milton has the phrase 66 palpable obscure," as Marston talks of " palpable darkness." BOURNE. Nay, he has the very words " palpable darkness" too, in those lines,

"Darkness must overshadow all his bounds,

Palpable darkness, and blot out three days."

MORTON. Besides, he talks of a "Cimmerian desert" in his Allegro.

BOURNE. Notwithstanding, I do not charge him with being a plagiary in this instance.

ELLIOT. Nor in any other with being so designedly, although coincidences may arise.

BOURNE. I am no Lauder, yet if you will be patient only for half a minute, I will show you, at least, a remarkable coincidence which no one has pointed out in all the learned notes that have been written upon Paradise Lost. Of course you recollect Milton's enumeration of

"Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"

and that fine characteristic passage, put into the mouth of the rebellious Satan,

"Here we may reign secure; and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!"

Now read the following passage in a prose author, who wrote while Milton was yet almost in his cradle. You shall see the title of the book afterwards.

ELLIOT. As you please; I am not in so violent a hurry to satisfy my curiosity.

BOURNE. You must observe that the Devil is supposed to be addressing himself to the author.

ELLIOT. To whom, then, he says, "True it is, Sir," (very civil language for the Devil, I am sure), "that I (storming at the name of supremacie) sought to depose my Creatour; which the watchfull, all-seeing eye of Providence finding, degraded me of my Angelicall Dignitie, dispossessed me of all pleasures and the Seraphin and Cherubin, Throni, Dominationes, Virtutes, Potestates, Principatus, Arch-angeli, Angeli, and all the celestial Hierarchyes (with a shout of applause) sung my departure out of heauen: my Alleluia was turned into an Ehu, and too soone I found that I was corruptilibilis ab alio, though not in alio, and that he that gaue me my being could againe take it from mee. Now for as much as I was once an Angell of light, it was the will of Wisedome to confine me to Darknes and to create mee Prince therof; that so