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In Licum. 42.

Lycus which lately is to Venice gone,
Shall if he do returne, gaine three for one:
But ten to one, his knowledge and his wit,
Will not be bettered or increas'd a whit.

In Publium. 43.

Publius student at the common law,

Oft leaues his bookes, and for his recreation
To Paris-garden doth himselfe withdrawe
Where he is rauisht with such delectation

As downe amongst the Beares and Dogges he goes,

Where whilst he skiping cries to head, to head,
His satten doublet and his veluet hose

Are all with spittle from aboue be-spread,
When he is like his fathers country hall,
Stinking with dogges, and muted all with haukes.
And rightly too on him this filth doth fall,
Which for such filthy sports his bookes forsakes,
Leauing old Ployden, Dier and Brooke alone,
To see old Harry Hunkes and Sacarson.

In Sillam. 44.

When I this proposition had defended,

A coward cannot be an honest man,

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Thou Silla seemest forth-with to be offended:
And holds the contrary and sweares he can.
But when I tell thee that hee will forsake

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His dearest friend, in perill of his life,

Thou then art chang'd and saist thou didst mistake,

And so we end our argument and strife.

Yet I thinke oft, and thinke I thinke aright,
Thy argument argues thou wilt not fight.

ΙΟ

In Dacum. 45.

Dacus with some good collour and pretence,
Tearmes his loues beauty silent eloquence:
For she doth lay more collours on her face,
Then euer Tully vs'd his speech to grace.

In Marcum. 46.

Why dost thou Marcus in thy misery,

Raile and blaspheme, and call the heau'ns vnkind?
The heauens do owe no kindenesse vnto thee,

Thou hast the heauens so little in thy minde,

For in thy life thou neuer vsest prayer,

But at primero, to encounter faire.

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Meditations of a Gull. 47.

See yonder melancholie gentleman,

Which hoode-winked with his hat, alone doth sit,
Thinke what he thinkes and tell me if you can,
What great affaires troubles his little wit.

He thinkes not of the war twixt France and Spaine
Whether it be for Europs good or ill,

Nor whether the Empire can it selfe maintaine
Against the Turkish power encroching still.
Nor what great towne in all the Netherlands
The States determine to besiege this spring,
Nor how the Scottish pollicy now standes,
Nor what becomes of the Irish mutining.
But he doth seriously bethinke him whether
Of the guld people he be more esteem'd,
For his long cloake, or his great black feather,
By which each gull is now a gallant deem'd.
Or of a Iourney he deliberates,

To Paris-garden, cocke-pit or the play:

Or how to steale a dogge he meditates,

Or what he shall vnto his mistris say:

Yet with these thoughts he thinks himselfe most fit
To be of Counsell with a king for wit.

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Ad Musam. 48.

Peace idle muse, haue done, for it is time
Since lowsie Ponticus enuies my fame,

And sweares the better sort are much to blame
To make me so well knowne for my ill rime.
Yet Bankes his horse is better knowne then he,
So are the Cammels and the westerne Hog,
And so is Lepidus his printed dogge :
Why doth not Ponticus their fames enuie ?
Besides this muse of mine, and the blacke fether
Grew both together fresh in estimation,
And both growne stale, were cast away togither:
What fame is this that scarse lasts out a fashion?
Onely this last in credit doth remaine,
That from hence-forth, ech bastard cast forth rime
Which doth but sauour of a libell vaine
Shall call me father, and be thought my crime,
So dull and with so little sence endu'd,

Is my grose headed iudge the multitude.

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LUCAN'S PHARSALIA

BOOK I

THE FIRST BOOK OF LUCAN

MARLOWE'S translation of Book I of the Pharsalia is first mentioned in an entry in the Stationers' Register, dated September 28, 1593: John Wolf Entred for his Copye vnder the h]andes of Master MURGETROD and bothe the wardens a booke intituled LUCANS firste booke of the famous Civill warr betwixt POMPEY and CESAR Englished by CHRISTOPHER MARLOW.' The very next entry is that of a booke intituled HERO and LEANDER beinge an amorous poem devised by CHRISTOPHER MARLOW', likewise registered by John Wolf and on the same day.

There is a curious and unexplained connexion between these two poems in the circumstances of publication. The First Book of Lucan exists in a single old quarto issued in 1600 by Thomas Thorpe,1 who in the Epistle Dedicatory to his fellow stationer, Edward Blount, alludes to the latter's 'old right' in the work. This Edward Blount himself published in 1598 the earliest extant edition of Marlowe's portion of Hero and Leander. In 1600 another edition 2 of the latter poem appeared with the puzzling title-page Hero and Leander: Begunne by Christopher Marloe: Whereunto is added the first booke of Lucan translated line for line by the same Author: Printed for John Flasket.' In spite of this plain statement there is no trace that the Lucan ever formed a part of the book in question or was printed during the Elizabethan age in any other edition than that of Thorpe.

The most likely conjecture would seem to be that John Wolf, who registered Lucan and Hero and Leander on the same day perhaps with the intention of bringing them out together-transferred his right in both to Blount. The latter resigned his property in Hero and Leander, and pre

1 The famous publisher of Shakespeare's sonnets (1609). It is worthy of note that Thorpe also published in 1614 a complete translation of the Pharsalia, the work of Sir Arthur Gorges.

The third (?) edition, at least one other having been issued in

sumably in Lucan as well, to Paul Linley on March 2, 1597-8, and Linley certainly made over both works to John Flasket on June 26, 1600.1 Flasket's 1600 edition of Hero and Leander is undoubtedly the result of the transaction last referred to, but it is not easy to account for the misleading allusion to the Lucan translation on the title page or the failure to mention Chapman. Flasket's original design may have been to produce an edition of the Marlovian part of Hero and Leander, supplemented by the Lucan. Such an intention may have preceded the arrangement with Linley, and would naturally, in that case, have been altered when the possession of Chapman's long continuation of Hero and Leander rendered it unnecessary to eke out a thin volume by the insertion of the Lucan. The latter work, being then of no immediate consequence to Flasket, would seem to have been acquired and at once printed by Thomas Thorpe. The Stationers' Register contains no record, however, of the transfer of the piece from Flasket to Thorpe or to any one else, and the question of the precise origin of this single early edition of the poem is not easily soluble.

Marlowe's translation of Lucan is a work of some curious interest, as being one of the earliest English poems in blank verse. It displays greater maturity than the Elegies, both in expression and in metrical skill, but has the same general faults and must, like the other translation, be ascribed to an early period in the poet's career. In his later years Marlowe would hardly have submitted to the tyranny of a line-for-line translation. Erroneous renderings abound on every page, but it is seldom that the reader meets with what is so common in the Elegies-lines entirely destitute of sense or coherence. The work has, as a whole, a majestic rhythm, and the choice of words is always that of the born poet. In many of the finer passages we see the author practising, as it were, that peculiarly melodious blank verse of which he shows himself in Tamburlaine so complete a master. Such lines as the following have the distinct flavour of Marlowe's developed style:

Figulus more seene in heauenly mysteries,
Whose like Aegiptian Memphis neuer had
For skill in stars, and tune-full planeting.2

For a fuller discussion of these points see Introduction to Hero and Leander, pp. 485, 486.

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