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 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 " Middlebourgh"; but, whatever may have been the case with respect to the first two, the third is evidently the production of a London press. See vol. iii. 224 for the true description of that rare edition. My description of it, earlier in the same volume, p. 106, is not accurate, the copy which I first used having been wrongly done up by the binder. Ritson says (under "Davies") that these pieces were published" about 1596," and afterwards (under "Marlow") in "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 sometimes exceeds it in coarseness. 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. 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 accompany the Ovid's Elegies, are * E. g. "Snakes leap by verse from caves of broken mountains." ("Carmine dissiliunt, abruptis faucibus, angues.") vol. iii. 144. "Ida, the seat of groves, did sing with corn." vol. iii. 211. + These couplets remind us of Pope's Homer; vol. iii. 128. "What age of Varro's name shall not be told, vol. iii. 140. This alteration of the preceding version was afterwards introduced into The Poetaster: see Jonson's Works, ii. 397, ed. Gifford, who insists that both these translations are by Jonson, the former being the rough sketch of the latter. 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 appeared 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 chiefly recommend themselves to readers of the present day, as illustrating the manners and “hu" 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; and what he thus deliberately rejected, he doubtless wished to be forgotten. mours A paraphrase on the very elegant production of the PseudoMusæus had been projected and was already partly com *See vol. iii. 224. + They were probably widely circulated in manuscript before their appearance in print. See vol. 1. 227, 245, 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 Tamiu, &c, 1598, fol. 284; Fitzgeoffrey's Affanie, &c, 1601, Sigs. B3, E4; 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. $ "Musæus station'd with his lyre Supreme among th' Elysian quire, 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. 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 Epistolæ, because it is not cited by Schrader in the Prolegomena to Musaus. "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 Palingenius [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 Humourt has cited Hero and Leander; and he is reported to have spoken of it often in terms of the highest praise. See note, vol. iii. 12. I may add here, that Shakespeare seems to make Gentlemen of Verona, act 1, so. 1, carlowe's poem in The Two sc. 1. 250. 15 actul. Sorge tud and eront See note, vol. iii, 13. Busen Mant exro y fiel has boodteeing In an address To the Reader," signed R. C., prefixed to The Chast and Lost Lovers, &c, 1651, the work of William Bosworth, 66 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 was derived from Ben's verses on Shakespeare, where find the very words, Marlowe's a mighty line. me other notice see, bath any bodie in Yarmouth heard of of Marlowe's poem may be thrown toge |