ch other in a fashion which argues
either a very absurd sincerity of literary jealousy, or a very ignoble
simulation of it, for the purpose of getting up interest on the part of the
public. Nevertheless, both Marston and Hall are very interesting figures in
English literature, and their satirical performances cannot be passed over
in any account of it.

Joseph Hall was born near Ashby de la Zouch, of parents in the lower yeoman
rank of life, had his education at the famous Puritan College of Emanuel at
Cambridge, became a Fellow thereof, proceeded through the living of
Hawstead and a canonry at Wolverhampton to the sees of Exeter and Norwich,
of the latter of which he was violently deprived by the Parliament, and,
not surviving long enough to see the Restoration, died (1656) in a suburb
of his cathedral city. His later life was important for religious
literature and ecclesiastical politics, in his dealings with the latter of
which he came into conflict, not altogether fortunately for the younger and
greater man of letters, with John Milton. His Satires belong to his early
Cambridge days, and to the last decade of the sixteenth century. They have
on the whole been rather overpraised, though the variety of their matter
and the abundance of reference to interesting social traits of the time to
some extent redeem them. The worst point about them, as already noted, is
the stale and commonplace impertinence with which their author, unlike the
best breed of young poets and men of letters, attempts to satirise his
literary betters; while they are to some extent at any rate tarred with the
other two brushes of corrupt imitation of the ancients, and of sham moral
indignation. Indeed the want of sincerity--the evidence of the literary
exercise--injures Hall's satirical work in different ways throughout. We do
not, as we read him, in the least believe in his attitude of Hebrew
prophet crossed with Roman satirist, and the occasional presence of a
vigorous couplet or a lively metaphor hardly redeems this disbelief.
Nevertheless, Hall is here as always a literary artist--a writer who took
some trouble with his writings; and as some of his satires are short, a
whole one may be given:--

"A gentle squire would gladly entertain
Into his house some trencher-chaplain;[30]
Some willing man that might instruct his sons
And that would stand to good conditions.
First, that he lie upon the truckle bed,
Whiles his young