earl Rivers, which was acted in 1723, (by what was then usually
called The Summer Company) with success; of which we shall speak more
at large in the life of that unfortunate gentleman.

[Footnote 1: Wood Athen. Oxon.]

[Footnote 2: Winst. ubi supra.]

[Footnote 3: Winst. ubi supra.]

* * * * *

JOHN MARSTEN.

There are few things on record concerning this poet's life. Wood says,
that he was a student in Corpus-Christi College, Oxon; but in what
country he was born, or of what family descended, is no where fixed.
Mr. Langbain says, he can recover no other information of him, than
what he learned from the testimony of his bookseller, which is, "That
he was free from all obscene speeches, which is the chief cause of
making plays odious to virtuous and modest persons; but he abhorred
such writers and their works, and professed himself an enemy to all
such as stuffed their scenes with ribaldry, and larded their lines
with scurrilous taunts, and jests, so that whatsoever even in the
spring of his years he presented upon the private and public theatre,
in his autumn and declining age he needed not to to be ashamed of."
He lived in friendship with the famous Ben Johnson, as appears by his
addressing to his name a tragi-comedy, called Male-Content: but we
afterwards find him reflecting pretty severely on Ben, on account of
his Cataline and Sejanus, as the reader will find on the perusal of
Marsten's Epistle, prefixed to Sophonisba.--"Know, says he, that I
have not laboured in this poem, to relate any thing as an historian,
but to enlarge every thing as a poet. To transcribe authors, quote
authorities, and to translate Latin prose orations into English
blank verse, hath in this subject been the least aim of my
studies."----Langbain observes, that none who are acquainted
with the works of Johnson can doubt that he is meant here,
if they will compare the orations in Salust with those in Cataline. On
what provocation Marsten thus censured his friend is unknown, but the
practice has been too frequently pursued, so true is it, as Mr. Gay
observes of the wits, that they are oft game cocks to one another, and
sometimes verify the couplet.

That they are still prepared to praise or to abhor
us,
Satire they have, and panegyric for us.----

Marsten has contributed eight plays to the stage, which were all acted
at the Black Fryars with applause, and one of them called the Dutch
Courteza