unacquainted with what Tanner and Warton have stated concerning Dido, regards it as a drama undoubtedly written by Marlowe and Nash in conjunction; and moreover is of opinion that their respective shares may be easily distinguished, those of Nash being more monotonous in versification and less poetical than those of Marlowe.* For my own part, since I find Tanner's statement so circumstantially confirmed by Warton, I consider myself bound to believe, till some positive evidence be produced to the contrary, that Dido was completed for the stage by Nash after the decease of Marlowe. As to any marked difference of versification which would enable us to determine exactly what parts of the play are by Marlowe and what by Nash,+-I must confess that it is not quite so perceptible to me as to Mr. Collier; nor do 1 think that we are warranted in assigning to the latter poet all the less brilliant passages, since we know that Marlowe, though often soaring to a height which Nash could not have reached, yet frequently sinks to the level of a very ordinary writer. In short, I cannot but suspect that Nash's contributions to Dido were comparatively small. The date of its original representation has not been ascertained: it was acted by the Children of the Chapel ; and (as already noticed) was first printed

in 1594.

Previous to the appearance of this tragedy, several dramas on the story of Dido had been attempted in England.§ John Rightwise, master of St. Paul's School, London, "made the Tragedy of Dido out of Virgil, and acted the same with the scholars of his school, before Cardinal Wolsey, with great applause :" it would

other authority than this for saying that this play was left imperfect by Marlowe, and completed and published by Nash."

* See Hist. of Engl. Dram. Poet. iii. 225.-At p. 138 Mr. Collier remarks that "Marlowe and Nash were not acquainted with each other in 1587," but at p. 221, that Dido was apparently written previous to 1590."

Mr. Collier particularly gives to Nash the description of the fall of Troy,-a description which I should rather say is Marlowe's, its splendid extravagance being above the powers of Nash.

It is doubtful, as Mr. Collier observes, whether the following entry in Henslowe's Diary refers to some alteration and revival of Marlowe's Dido, or to some new piece on the same subject (for Henslowe afterwards mentions a play called Æneas' Revenge);

"Layd owte for lace; for the boye,}

ageanste the playe of Dido and Eneus, the 3 of Jenewary 1597

xxix"."

p. 117, ed. Shake. Soc. Among the stage-properties of the Lord Admiral's men we find "j tome of Dido," and among their stage-dresses "Dides robe." Ibid. pp. 273, 276. For Marlowe's Dido tomb was not wanted.-In an inventory of Alleyn's theatrical wardrobe is "Pryams hose in Dido" (Collier's Mem. of Alleyn, p. 21): qy. were the said hose [i. e. breeches] used for the statue of Priam in Marlowe's tragedy (see the first scene of act ii. p. 255)? It is at least certain that Priam could not possibly be a character in any play on the story of Dido.

§ Warton, Hist. of Engl. Poet. iii. 435, ed. 4to., notices "the interlude of Dido and Eneas at Chester," which, he says, "I have before mentioned:" but I cannot find the earlier mention of it.

Wood's Ath. Oxon. i. 35, ed. Bliss. See too Tanner's Biblioth. p. 632, where, however, the notice of this play is taken from Wood.-Warton, Hist. of Engl. Poet. ii. 434, ed. 4to., states that it was written by Rightwise and in Latin; but he afterwards, iii. 84, wrongly assigns it to Edward Haliwell, and says "it may be doubted whether this drama was in English."-A mistake of Harwood

seem to have been a Latin composition. In 1564, "a tragedie named Dido, in hexametre verse, without anie chorus," * written by Edward Haliwell, was played before Queen Elizabeth in King's-College chapel, Cambridge: and in 1583 a Latin Dido was represented for the amusement of Prince Alasco in Christ-Church hall, Oxford. The author of the last-mentioned piece has hitherto been unknown: but I can now state that it was composed by Dr. William Gager, whose Latin plays were greatly admired even beyond the precincts of the university; and large fragments of it, which I have recovered from his own manuscript, may be read in an appendix to the present volume.†

Much of Marlowe's play is necessarily derived from Virgil; and, as those portions of the Eneid that relate to Dido are in a high degree truthful and passionate, the comparison which we are forced to make between them and the English tragedy is so unfavourable to the latter, that we are in some danger of estimating it below its real worth. But, though Marlowe's portrait of Dido be nearly as inferior to Virgil's as Hogarth's Sigismonda is to Correggio's, and though the other characters of the play have little force or variety, our author must yet be allowed the praise of having engrafted on the Roman fable some well-imagined circumstances, and of having given to many passages, which are wholly unborrowed, such richness of colouring and such beauty of expression as the genuine poet only can bestow.

Nash, whose name has occurred more than once in this memoir, and whose partnership in Dido has just been mentioned, survived the publication of that tragedy for several years. If his Summer's last Will and Testament, 1600, was not put forth by himself, his Lenten Stuffe, 1599, must be regarded as the piece with which he closed his literary career. In 1601 he was certainly deceased.§ His talents as a writer were very considerable and various; but his strength is chiefly displayed in his prose-invectives, which, whatever be their offences against good taste and perhaps against good feeling, are scarcely to be paralleled for bitterness of

concerning Rightwise's Dido has perplexed Mr. Hallam, Jatrod. to the Lit. of Europe, i. 433, ed 1843.

* Nichols's Prog. of Elizabeth, i. 186, ed. 1823.-It "was written by Edward Haliwell, fellow of King's College, as appears from Hatcher's account of the provosts, fellows, &c. of that society. Bodl. MSS. Rawlinson, B. 274." Note by Bliss in Wood's Ath. Oxon., i. 35.-See also Tanner's Biblioth. p. 372.-Warton, Hist. of Engl. Poet. ii. 383, ed. 4to., supposes it to have been an English play + See Appendix III. (Gager's MS. was lent me by the late Mr. T. Rodd the bookseller.)—The comedy Rivales, with which Prince Alasco had been entertained on the preceding night, was also by Gager; see Wood's Ath. Oxon. ii. 87, ed. Bliss. Of Gager's plays two only, I believe, have been printed, -Ulysses Redux, 1591, and Meleager, 1592. Meres mentions "Doctor Gager of Oxforde," as one o "the best for comedy amongst us," in a list of names where Shakespeare's occurs! Palladis Tamia, &c, 1598, fol. 283.

Marlowe is under no obligations either to the Didone of Dolce (first printed in 1547) or to the Didone of Cinthio (first printed in 1583),-Italian tragedies of some celebrity.

§ As is proved by one of the "Cenotaphia" in Fitzgeoffrey's Affaniæ, &c, 1601.—Nash was baptized at Lowestoft in November 1567 (the day not known): see Shakespeare Soc. Papers, iii. 178.

sarcasm and volubility of language.* Like other wits of the day, he subsisted by his pen; and sometimes he did not scruple to employ it on subjects of the vilest ribaldry. In Dekker's tract called A Knight's Conjuring, &c, 1607, he is introduced, together with Marlowe, Greene, and Peele, in the Elysian fields: but I now subjoin only a portion of the passage, because I have quoted it more fully elsewhere; "Whil'st Marlow, Greene, and Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash (that was but newly come to their colledge) still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall spirit that followed him heere upon earth."

As the various editions of Marlowe's Ovid's Elegies, printed together with Davies's Epigrams, have no dates, we cannot determine in what years they were successively published. Of the three editions which I have collated (and others, I believe, exist) the volume entitled Epigrammes and Elegies by J. D. and C. M., containing only a portion of the Amores, and exhibiting a comparatively antiquated orthography, is undoubtedly the earliest.§ A later edition which I have used, and which contains the Elegies complete, with their more objectionable passages rather heightened than softened down, is probably that which was burnt at Stationers' Hall by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, in June 1599.|| A much

* The lines on Nash in Drayton's Epistle to H. Reynolds have been frequently cited but not so, I believe, the following epigram in Freeman's Rubbe and a great Cast, 1614 (Part Sec. Ep. 96);

"Nash, had Lycambes on earth liuing beene

The time thou wast, his death had bin al one;
Had he but mou'd thy tartest Muse to spleene,
Vnto the forke he had as surely gone;
For why there liued not that man, I thinke,
Vsde better or more bitter gall in inke."

+ See Davies's Wits Bedlam, 1617, Sig. F 2, where a certain piece by Nash is mentioned as "knowne to euery trull."—But in estimating Nash's character, we must not attach any importance to the following lines, which seem to have been dictated merely by friendship for the person addressed;

"To Dr. Harvey of Cambridge.

"The proverb sayes, Who fights [fight] with durty foes

Must needs be foyl'd, admit they win or lose :

Then think it doth a Doctor's credit dash,

To make himself antagonist to Nash."

Sir J. Harington's Epigrams, B ii. Ep. 36, ed. folio.

Account of Peele and his Writings, p. v. (prefixed to his Works), ed. 1829.

§ Ritson says (under "Davies") that these pieces were printed "about 1596;" afterwards (under "Marlow") he dates them, "1596." Bibl. Poet. pp. 181, 276.

We may wonder at the inconsistency of the book-inquisitors of those days, who condemned to the flames Marlowe's Ovid's Elegies, Marston's Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image, nay, even Hall's Satires, and yet spared Harington's Orlando Furioso, which equals the original in licentiousness, and is occasionally so gross in expression that it would have shocked Ariosto. The truth may be that "the authorities" did not choose to meddle with a translation which was not only dedicated to the Virgin Queen, but had been executed at her desire.-Though Sir John took every sort of liberty with the original, omitting, altering, &c, and though (as innumerable passages shew) he wanted an eye for its charming picturesqueness, his Orlando Furioso did not deserve Jonson's sweeping censure, that it, "under all translations, was the worst." Conversations with Drummond, p. 3, ed. Shake. Soc.

later edition, collated by me, is a re-impression of the one last mentioned, and appears to have been published about 1640. These three editions bear each the imprint "Middleburgh;" but, whatever may have been the case with respect to the first two, the third is evidently the production of a London press.

This version of the Amores, taken altogether, does so little credit either to Marlowe's skill as a translator or to his scholarship, that one is almost tempted to believe it was never intended by him to meet the eye of the world, but was made, merely as a literary exercise, at an early period of life, when classical studies chiefly engaged his attention. We look in vain for the graces of Ovid. In many passages we should be utterly puzzled to attach a definite meaning to the words, if we had not the original at hand; and in many others the Latin is erroneously rendered, the mistranslations being sometimes extremely ludicrous.* I doubt if more can be said in praise of this version than that it is occasionally spirited and flowing. Of the XVth Elegy of the First Book there are two translations, the second, which is "by B. J." (i. e. Ben Jonson) being, however, only an alteration of the first.‡

The Epigrams, which appeared along with the Ovid's Elegies, are wholly by John (afterwards, Sir John) Davies; a man so celebrated as the author of Nosce Teipsum, that I need not touch on his biography. Like other collections of the kind which came from the press a little later, these Epigrams are, for the most part, satires in miniature. They possess some poignancy of ridicule and some vigour of expression, but hardly enough to justify the applauses which they once called forth; § and they

Both versions would seem to be by Jonson. See note †, p. 324. § They were probably widely circulated in manuscript before their appearance in print. See note ‡, p. 354, and note ‡‡, p. 359, of the present volume, for notices of them from Guilpin's Skialetheia, &c, 1598, (where Davies is termed "our English Martiall,") from Sir J. Harington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, and from Bastard's Chrestoleros, &c, 1598. See also Meres's Palladis Tamia, &c, 1598, fol. 284; Fitzgeoffrey's Affaniæ, &c, 1601, Sigs. B 3, E 4; R. Carew's Epistle on the Excell. of the English Tongue, p. 13 (appended to his Survey of Cornwall, ed. 1769); and Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, pp. 15, 26, 37, (where mention is made of two epigrams not in the printed collection), ed. Shake. Soc.-In Jonson's xviiith Epigram is the line "Davis and Weever, and the best have been " (i.e. and the best epigrammatists that have been), Works, VIII. 161; where Gifford gives, without any addition of his own, a note by Whalley, who says that Jonson alludes to Davies of Hereford and to Weever's Funeral Monuments: but the allusion is to Sir John Davies's Epigrams and to Weever's Epigrams, 1599.

chiefly recommend themselves to readers of the present day, as illustrating the manners and "humours" which prevailed towards the close of Elizabeth's reign. I have given them with the text considerably improved by means of one of the Harleian MSS. When Davies republished his poems in 1622, he did not admit a single Epigram into the volume.

A paraphrase on the very elegant production of the Pseudo-Museus* had been projected and was already partly composed by Marlowe, when death put an end to his labours; and as much of Hero and Leander as could be discovered after his decease having been entered in the Stationers' Books 28th September, 1593,+ was given to the press in 1598.-While the poem of the Greek grammarian is comprised in 341 verses, the fragment in question extends to above 800.

In this paraphrase ‡ Marlowe has somewhat impeded the progress and weakened the interest of the story by introducing extraneous matter and by indulging in whimsical and frivolous details; he occasionally disregards costume; he is too fond of conceits, and too prodigal of "wise saws and moral axioms. But he has amply redeemed these faults by the exquisite perception of the beautiful which he displays throughout a large portion of the fragment, by descriptions picturesque and vivid in the extreme, by lines which glow with all the intensity of passion, by marvellous felicities of language, and by skilful modulation of the verse.-The quotation from this poem in As you like it § may be considered as a proof that it was admired by Shakespeare; and the words which are there applied to the author,-"dead shepherd," sound not unlike an expression of pity for his sad and untimely end.

"Musæus station'd with his lyre
Supreme among th' Elysian quire,
Is, for the dwellers upon earth,

Mute as a lark ere morning's birth.”

(Wordsworth's Lines written in a blank leaf of Macpherson's Ossian.)

Yet various learned men believed that the Greek poem on Hero and Leander was really composed by the ancient Musæus and we therefore need not be surprised at finding Marlowe and his continuator Chapman entertain that belief. The elder Scaliger had not only persuaded himself that the poem was genuine, but that it was superior to the works of Homer. The younger and the greater Scaliger, however, thought very differently; and I give the following passage from his Epistolæ, because it is not cited by Schrader in the Prolegomena to Musœus. "Parcior et castigatior [Dionysio Per., Oppiano, et Nonno] quidem Musæus, sed qui cum illorum veterum frugalitate comparatus, prodigus videatur. Neque in hoc sequimur optimi parentis nostri judicium, quem acumina illa et flores declamatorii ita cœperunt, ut non dubitavit eum Homero præferre." p. 531, ed. 1627.

"It occurs again in the registers of the Stationers, in 1597, 1598, and 1600." [The latest entry must refer to an edition of the poem with Chapman's continuation.] Warton's Hist. of Engl. Poet. iii. 434, ed. 4to.

By an oversight, Warton calls it a "translation." Hist. of Engl. Poet. iii. 434, ed. 4to. Though Warton was perhaps better acquainted with the Greek and Roman writers than any of our poetical antiquaries, Tyrwhitt always excepted, yet this is not the only mistake he has made in such matters. For instance, in vol. ii. 461, he mentions Grindal's "recommending such barbarous and degenerate classica as Palingenius [i. e. Pier Angelo Manzolli], Sedulius, and Prudentius," &c.

§ See note t, p. 281 of the present volume.