, not with exterior formality, but with the genuine sorrow
of the heart. Of all our poets he seems to be the most courtly, the
bravest, the most active, and in the moral sense, the best.]

[Footnote 6: Camden Brit. in Kent.]

* * * * *

CHISTOPHER MARLOE

Was bred a student in Cambridge, but there is no account extant of his
family. He soon quitted the University, and became a player on the
same stage with the incomparable Shakespear. He was accounted, says
Langbaine, a very fine poet in his time, even by Ben Johnson himself,
and Heywood his fellow-actor stiles him the best of poets. In a copy
of verses called the Censure of the Poets, he was thus characterized.

Next Marloe bathed in Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave sublunary things,
That your first poets had; his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

His genius inclined him wholly to tragedy, and he obliged the world
with six plays, besides one he joined for with Nash, called Dido Queen
of Carthage; but before I give an account of them, I shall present his
character to the reader upon the authority of Anthony Wood, which is
too singular to be passed over. This Marloe, we are told, presuming
upon his own little wit, thought proper to practise the most epicurean
indulgence, and openly profess'd atheism; he denied God, Our Saviour;
he blasphemed the adorable Trinity, and, as it was reported, wrote
several discourses against it, affirming Our Saviour to be a deceiver,
the sacred scriptures to contain nothing but idle stories, and all
religion to be a device of policy and priestcraft; but Marloe came to
a very untimely end, as some remarked, in consequence of his execrable
blasphemies. It happened that he fell deeply in love with a low girl,
and had for his rival a fellow in livery, who looked more like a pimp
than a lover. Marloe, fired with jealousy, and having some reason to
believe that his mistress granted the fellow favours, he rushed upon
him to stab him with his dagger; but the footman being quick, avoided
the stroke, and catching hold of Marloe's wrist stabbed him with his
own weapon, and notwithstanding all the assistance of surgery, he soon
after died of the wound, in the year 1593. Some time before his death,
he had begun and made a considerable progress in an excellent poem
called Hero and