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posed 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.

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In this paraphrase† Marlowe has somewhat impeded the

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 wonder when we find Marlowe, and his continuator Chapman, entertaining 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 Epistola, because it is not cited by Schrader in the Prolegomena to Musæus. "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 slip of the kind which he has made. For instance, in vol. ii. 461, he mentions Grindal's "recommending such barbarous and degenerate classics as Pulingenius [i. e. Pier Angelo Manzolli], Sedulius, and Prudentius," &c.

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. Jonson, too, in Every Man in his Humour + has cited Hero and Leander; and he is reported to have spoken of it often in terms of the highest praise. †

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* See note, vol. iii. 12. I may add here, that Shakespeare seems to make two allusions to Marlowe's poem in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, act i. sc. 1, act iii. sc. 1.

See note, vol. iii. 13.

In an address "To the Reader," signed R. C., prefixed to The Chast and Lost Lovers, &c, 1651, the work of William Bosworth, "a young gentleman 19 years of age," who was then deceased, is the following passage; "The strength of his fancy and the shadowing of it in words he [Bosworth] taketh from Mr. Marlow in his Hero and Leander, whose mighty lines Mr. Benjamin Johnson (a man sensible enough of his own abilities) was often heard to say that they [sic] were examples fitter for admiration than for parallel." But I cannot help suspecting that all R. C.'s knowledge of Jonson's admiration of “ Mr. Marlow 99 was derived from Ben's verses on Shakespeare, where we find the very words," Marlowe's mighty line."

Some other notices of Marlowe's poem may be thrown together here." Let me see, hath any bodie in Yarmouth heard of Leander and Hero, of whome diuine Musæus sung, and a diuiner Muse than him, Kit Marlow? . . . At that, she

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The age of Elizabeth, so fertile in great poets, had also its indifferent rhymers in abundance; and one of the latter class lost no time in attempting to complete this beautiful fragment. Before the close of the year 1598 Henry Petowe put forth The Second Part of Hero and Leander, conteyning their further fortunes;* and, though none of his contemporaries has informed us how it was received by the public, there can be little doubt that it met with the contempt and ridicule which it deserved. In a Dedicatory Epistle to Sir Henry Guilford, knight, Petowe writes as follows. historie of Hero and Leander, penned by that admired poet Marloe, but not finished (being preuented by sodaine death), and the same (though not abruptly, yet contrary to all menns expectation) resting, like a heade seperated from the body, with this harsh sentence, Desunt nonnulla; I, being inriched by a gentleman, a friend of mine, with the true Italian discourse of those louers' further fortunes, haue presumed to finish the historie, though not so well as diuers riper wits doubtles would haue done," &c. Whether Petowe really

[Hero] became a franticke Bacchanal outright, and made no more bones but sprang after him [Leander], and so resignd vp her priesthood, and left worke for Musæus and Kit Marlowe." Nash's Lenten Stuffe, &c, 1599, pp. 42, 45.-" [Will you read] Catullus? [take] Shakespeare, and Barlowes [Marlowe's] Fragment." R. Carew's Epistle on the Excell. of the English Tongue, p. 13. (appended to his Survey of Cornwall, ed. 1769.)—"Marlowe his excellent fragment of Hero and Leander." Bolton's Hypercritica, according to a MS. copy, Anc. Crit. Essays (edited by Haslewood), ii. 247.-" In his begun poem of Hero and Leander he [Marlowe] seems to have a resemblance of that clean and unsophisticated wit which is natural to that incomparable poet [Shakespeare]." Phillips's Theat. Poet. (Modern Poets), p. 24,

ed. 1675.

* It was entered in the Stationers' Books, 14th April of that year. As poems in those days were much read in MS., Marlowe's Hero and Leander was probably familiar to Petowe before it had reached the press. This observation applies, of course, to Chapman also (see afterwards).

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borrowed the substance of this Continuation from a foreign original, or whether what he says about "the true Italian discourse" is to be understood as an ingenious fiction, I haue taken no pains to inquire: it is at least certain that the wretched style in which he relates the very foolish incidents is all his own. One passage (and the best, too,) of the poem must be inserted here, because it affords a remarkable proof of the celebrity which Marlowe had acquired :

Quicke-sighted spirits, this suppos'd Apollo,—
Conceit no other but th' admired Marlo;
Marlo admir'd, whose honney-flowing vaine
No English writer can as yet attaine;
Whose name in Fame's immortall treasurie
Truth shall record to endles memorie;
Marlo, late mortall, now fram'd all diuine,
What soule more happy then that soule of thine?
Liue still in heauen thy soule, thy fame on earth!
Thou dead, of Marlos Hero findes a dearth.
Weepe, aged Tellus! all on earth + complaine !
Thy chiefe-borne faire hath lost her faire ‡ againe :
Her faire in this is lost, that Marlo's want
Inforceth Hero's faire be wonderous scant.
Oh, had that king of poets breathed longer,

Then had faire beautie's fort been much more stronger!

* In an address "To the quicke-sighted Reader," Petowe declares that this production was "the first fruits of an vnripe wit, done at certaine vacant howers."-He afterwards published:

Philochasander and Elanira the faire Lady of Britaine, &c, 1599.-Elizabetha quasi vivens. Eliza's Funerall, &c, 1603, (reprinted in The Hurl. Miscel. vol. x. ed. Park).—Englands Casar. His Majesties most royall Coronation, &c, 1603 (reprinted ibid.).— The Whipping of Runawaies, &c, 1603. And he probably was author of The Movs-trap (a collection of Epigrams), 1606, as it has a dedication signed H. P.-From what I have read of these pieces, I should say that Petowe improved as he continued to write, for they are much superior to his Hero and Leander : still they give him no claim to be styled a poet.

tall on earth] Old ed. "all earth on earth." faire] i. e. beauty.

His goulden pen had clos'd her so about,
No bastard æglet's quill, the world throughout,
Had been of force to marre what he had made;
For why they were not expert in that trade.
What mortall soule with Marlo might contend,
That could 'gainst reason force him stoope or bend?
Whose siluer-charming toung mou'd such delight,
That men would shun their sleepe in still darke night
To meditate vpon his goulden lynes,

His rare conceyts, and sweete-according rimes.
But Marlo, still-admired Marlo's gon
To liue with beautie in Elyzium;
Immortall beautie, who desires to heare
His sacred poesies, sweete in euery eare:
Marlo must frame to Orpheus' melodie
Himnes all diuine to make heauen harmonie.
There euer liue the prince of poetrie,
Liue with the liuing in eternitie ! ” *

As the piece just quoted, however despicable in itself, possesses a sort of interest from its connection with Marlowe's fragment, and as it is of such rare occurrence that little more than its title has been cited by poetical antiquaries, some other extracts from it have been appended to the present volumes.+

But Chapman,—the well-known translator of Homer,— had also been busy with a continuation of Marlowe's" halftold tale;" and it appears to have been completed as early as Petowe's Second Part above described. "As Musæus, who wrote the loue of Hero and Leander, had two excellent schollers, Thamaras and Hercules, so hath he in England two excellent poets imitators of him in the same argument and subiect, Christopher Marlow and George Chapman," are the words of Meres in his Palladis Tamia, &c. 1598.‡

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Fol. 282. Meres, we may presume, had seen Chapman's Continuation in a manuscript copy. A little before the passage just quoted, he mentions Shakespeare's Sonnets, which certainly were not then in print.

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