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JOHN MARSTON.

[Died, 1634.]

THIS writer was the antagonist of Jonson in the drama, and the rival of Bishop Hall in satire,* though confessedly inferior to them both in their respective walks of poetry. While none of his biographers seem to know anything about him, Mr. Gifford (in his Memoirs of Ben Jonson') conceives that Wood has unconsciously noticed him as a gentlemen of Coventry, who married Mary, the daughter of the Rev. W. Wilkes, chaplain to King James, and rector of St. Martin, in Wiltshire. According to this notice, our poet died at London in 1634, and was buried in the church belonging to the Temple. These particulars agree with what Jonson said to Drummond respecting this dramatic opponent of his, in his conversation at Hawthornden, viz. that Marston wrote his father-in-law's preachings, and his fatherin-law Marston's comedies. Marston's comedies are somewhat dull; and it is not difficult to conceive a witty sermon of those days, when puns were scattered from the pulpit, to have been as lively as an indifferent comedy. Marston is the Crispinus of Jonson's Poetaster,' where he is treated somewhat less contemptuously that his companion Demetrius (Dekker); an allusion is even made to the respectability of his birth. Both he and Dekker were afterwards reconciled to Jonson; but Marston's reconcilement, though he dedicated his 'Malcontent' to his propitiated enemy, seems to have been subject to relapses. It is amusing to find Langbaine descanting on the chaste purity of Marston as a writer, and the author of the Biographia Dramatica' transcribing the compliment immediately before the enumeration of his plays, which are stuffed with obscenity. To this disgraceful characteristic of Marston an allusion is made in 'The Return from Parnassus,' where it is said,

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“ Give him plain naked words stripp'd from their shirts,
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine."

*He wrote The Scourge of Villany,' three books of satires, 1599. He was also author of The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image,' and certain Satires, published 1598, which makes his date as satirist nearly coeval with that of Bishop Hall.

GEORGE CHAPMAN.

[Born, 1557. Died, 1634.]

GEORGE CHAPMAN was born at Hitching-hill,* in the county of Hertford, and studied at Oxford. From thence he repaired to London, and became the friend of Shakspeare, Spenser, Daniel, Marlowe, and other contemporary men of genius. He was patronised by Prince Henry, and Carr Earl of Somerset. The death of the one, and the disgrace of the other, must have injured his prospects; but he is supposed to have had some place at court, either under King James or his consort Anne. He lived to an advanced age; and, according to Wood, was a person of reverend aspect, religious, and temperate. Inigo Jones, with whom he lived on terms of intimate friendship, planned and erected a monument to his memory over his burial-place, on the south side of St. Giles's church in the fields; but it was unfortunately destroyed with the ancient church.†

Chapman seems to have been a favourite of his own times; and in a subsequent age his version of Homer excited the raptures of Waller, and was diligently consulted by Pope. The latter speaks of its daring fire, though he owns that it is clouded by fustian. Webster, his fellow-dramatist, praises his "full and heightened style,” a character which he does not deserve in any favourable sense e; for his diction is chiefly marked by barbarous ruggedness, false elevation, and extravagant metaphor. The drama owes him very little; his 'Bussy d'Ambois' is a piece of frigid atrocity, and in 'The Widow's Tears,' where his heroine Cynthia falls in love with a sentinel guarding the corpse of her husband, whom she was bitterly lamenting, he has dramatised one of the most puerile and disgusting legends ever fabricated for the disparagement of female constancy.‡

* William Browne, the pastoral poet, calls him "the learned shepherd of fair Hitching-hill."

t[This is a mistake. It is still to be seen against the exterior south wall of the church.]

[Chapman would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written."-Charles Lamb.]

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THOMAS RANDOLPH.

[Born, 1605. Died, 1634.]

THOMAS RANDOLPH was the son of a steward to Lord Zouch. He was a king's scholar at Westminster, and obtained a fellowship at Cambridge. His wit and learning endeared him to Ben Jonson, who owned him like Cartwright as his adopted son in the Muses. Unhappily he followed the taste of Ben not only at the but at the bottle, and he closed his life in poverty at the age of twenty-nine, a date lamentably premature when we consider the promises of his genius. His wit and humour are very conspicuous in the Puritan characters, whom he supposes the spectators of his scenes in 'The Muses' Looking-Glass.' Throughout the rest of that drama (though it is on the whole his best performance) he unfortunately prescribed to himself too hard and confined a system of dramatic effect. Professing simply, "in single scenes to show,

How comedy presents each single vice,

Ridiculous-"

he introduces the vices and contrasted humours of human nature in a tissue of unconnected personifications, and even refines his representations of abstract character into conflicts of speculative opinion.

For his skill in this philosophical pageantry the poet speaks of being indebted to Aristotle, and probably thought of his play what Voltaire said of one of his own, " This would please you, if you were Greeks." The female critic's reply to Voltaire was

very reasonable, “But we are not Greeks." Judging of Randolph however by the plan which he professed to follow, his execution is vigorous: his ideal characters are at once distinct and various, and compact with the expression which he purposes to give them. He was author of five other dramatic pieces, besides miscellaneous poems. *

He died at the house of his friend, W. Stafford, Esq. of Bla

1. Aristippus, or the Jovial Philosopher.-2. The Conceited Pedler.3. The Jealous Lovers, a comedy.-4. Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry, a pastoral.-5. Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery, a comedy.

therwyke, in his native county, and was buried in the adjacent church, where an appropriate monument was erected to him by Sir Christopher (afterwards Lord) Hatton.

RICHARD CORBET.

[Born, 1582. Died, 1635.]

THE anecdotes of this facetious bishop, quoted by Headley from the Aubrey MSS., would fill several pages of a jest-book. It is more to his honour to be told, that though entirely hostile in his principles to the Puritans, he frequently softened, with his humane and characteristic pleasantry, the furious orders against them which Laud enjoined him to execute. On the whole he does credit to the literary patronage of James, who made him Dean of Christ Church, and successively Bishop of Oxford and Norwich.

THOMAS MIDDLETON.

[Born, 1570. Buried, 4th July, 1627.]

THE dates of this author's birth and death are both unknown, though his living reputation, as the literary associate of Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, Dekker, and Rowley, must have been considerable. If Oldys be correct,* he was alive after November 1627. Middleton was appointed chronologer to the city of Londont in 1620, and in 1624 was cited before the privy council, as author of The Game of Chess.' The verses of Sir W. Lower, quoted by Oldys, allude to the poet's white locks, so that he was probably born as early as the middle of the 16th century. His tragicomedy, The Witch,' according to Mr. Malone, was written anterior to Macbeth,' and suggested to Shakspeare the

*MS. notes on Langbaine. [He was buried at Newington Butts, near London, on the 4th of July, 1627.-Dyce's Middleton, vol. p. xxxviii.] [Or city poet. Jonson and Quarles filled the office after Middleton, which expired with Elkanah Settle in 1723-4.]

[The verses in question I believe to be a forgery of Chetwood.-Dyce's Middleton, vol. i. p. xiii.]

witchcraft scenery in the latter play. The songs beginning "Come away," &c., and "Black Spirits," &c., of which only the two first words are printed in 'Macbeth,' are found in 'The Witch.' Independent of having afforded a hint to Shakspeare, Middleton's reputation cannot be rated highly for the pieces to which his name is exclusively attached. His principal efforts were in comedy, where he deals profusely in grossness and buffoonery. The cheats and debaucheries of the town are his favourite sources of comic intrigue. With a singular effort at the union of the sublime and familiar, he introduces, in one of his course drafts of London vice, an infernal spirit prompting a country gentleman to the seduction of a citizen's wife.

RICHARD NICCOLS.

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[Born, 1584.]

THE plan of The Mirror for Magistrates,' begun by Ferrers and Sackville, was followed up by Churchyard, Phaer, Higgins, Drayton, and many others. The last contributor of any note was Niccols in 1610, in his Winter Night's Vision.' Niccols was the author of The Cuckow' [1607,] written in imitation of Drayton's 'Owl,' and several poems of temporary popularity, and of a drama entitled 'The Twynne's Tragedy.' He was a Londoner, and, having studied (says Wood) at Oxford, obtained some employment worthy of his faculties; but of what kind, we are left to conjecture.

CHARLES FITZGEFFREY.

[Died, 1636.]

CHARLES FITZGEFFREY was rector of the parish of St. Dominic, in Cornwall.

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