Have made, but forc'd by Nature still to fly,
First did with puffing kiss those locks display:
She, so dishevell’d, blush'd :-from window I,
With sight thereof, cried out, O fair disgrace,
Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place.

ROBERT GREENE

Was born at Norwich about 1560, was educated at Cambridge, travelled in Spain and Italy, and on his return held, for about a year, the vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex. The rest of his life seems to have been spent in London, with no other support than his pen, and in the society of men of more wit than worldly prudence. He is said to have died about 1592, from a surfeit occasioned by pickled herrings and Rhenish wine. Greene has acknowledged, with great contrition, some of the follies of his life; but the charge of profligacy which has been so merci. lessly laid on his memory, must be taken with great abatement, as it was chiefly dictated by his bitterest enemy, Gabriel Harvey, who is said to have trampled on his dead body when laid in the grave. The story, it may be hoped, for the credit of human nature, is untrue; but it shews to what a pitch the malignity of Harvey was supposed to be capable of being excited. Greene is accused of having deserted an amiable wife; but his traducers rather inconsistently re

proach him also with the necessity of writing for her maintenance.

A list of his writings, amounting to forty-five separate productions, is given in the Censura Literaria, including five plays, several amatory romances, and other pamphlets, of quaint titles and rambling contents. The writer of that article has vindicated the personal memory of Greene with proper feeling, but he seems to overrate the importance that could have ever been attached to him as a writer. In proof of the once great popularity of Greene's writings, a passage is quoted from Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, where it is said that Saviolina uses as choice figures as any in the Arcadia, and Carlo subjoins, or in Greene's works, where she may steal with more security. This allusion to the facility of stealing without detection from an author, surely argues the reverse of his being popular and well known. Greene's style is in truth most whimsical and grotesque. He lived before there was a good model of familiar prose; and his wit, like a stream that is too weak to force a channel for itself, is lost in rhapsody and diffuseness.

JEALOUSY.

FROM TULLY'S LOVE. When gods had framed the sweets of Woman's face, And lockt men's looks within her golden hair, That Phoebus blush'd to see her matchless grace, And heavenly gods on earth did make repair,

To quip fair Venus' overweening pride,
Love's happy thoughts to jealousy were tied.

Then grew a wrinkle on fair Venus' brow,
The amber sweet of love is turned to gall;
Gloomy was Heaven; bright Phæbus did avow
He would be coy, and would not love at all;
Swearing no greater mischief could be wrought,
Than love united to a jealous thought.

DORASTUS ON FAWNIA.

AH, were she pitiful as she is fair,
Or but as mild as she is seeming so,
Then were my hopes greater than my despair,
Then all the world were Heaven, nothing woe.
Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand,
That seems to melt e’en with the mildest touch,
Then knew I where to seat me in a land,
Under the wide Heavens, but yet not such.
Just as she shews so seems the budding rose,
Yet sweeter far than is an earthly flower ;
Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows;
Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd flowers ;
Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn,
She would be gather’d, though she grew on thorn.

Ah, when she sings, all music else be still,
For none must be compared to her note;

Ne'er breath'd such glee from Philomela's bill,
Nor from the morning singer's swelling throat.
And when she riseth from her blissful bed,
She comforts all the world, as doth the sun.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

Was born in 1562, took a bachelor's degree at Cambridge, and came to London, where he was a contemporary player and dramatic writer with Shakespeare. Had he lived longer to profit by the example of Shakespeare, it is not straining conjecture to suppose, that the strong misguided energy of Marlowe would have been kindled and refined to excellence by the rivalship; but his death, at the age of thirty, is alike to be lamented for its disgracefulness and prematurity, his own sword being forced upon him, in a quarrel, at a brothel. Six tragedies, however, and his numerous translations from the elassics, evince, that if his life was profligate, it was not idle. The bishops ordered his translations of Ovid's Love Elegies to be burnt in public for their licentiousness. If all the licentious poems of that period had been included in the martyrdom, Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis would have hardly escaped the flames.

In Marlowe's tragedy of Lust's Dominion there is a scene of singular coincidence with an event

that was, 200 years after, exhibited in the same country, namely Spain. A Spanish queen, instigated by an usurper, falsely proclaims her own son' .. to be a bastard.

Prince Philip is a bastard born;
O give me leave to blush at mine own shame :
But I for love to you-love to fair Spain,
Chuse rather to rip up a queen's disgrace,
Than, by concealing it, to set the crown
Upon a bastard's head.

Lust's Dom. Sc. iv. Act 3.

care up a que to fair son shame;

Compare this avowal with the confession which Bonaparte either obtained, or pretended to have obtained, from the mother of Ferdinand VII, in 1808, and one might almost imagine that he had consulted Marlowe's tragedy.

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That vallies, groves, and hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
VOL. I.

M