of heaven, but all the cope was dark
As it were hung so for her exequies!
And not a voice or sound to ring her knell
But of that dismal pair, the screeching owl
And buzzing hornet! Hark! hark! hark! the foul
Bird! how she flutters with her wicker wings!
Peace! you shall hear her screech.

_Cla._ Good Karolin, sing,
Help to divert this phant'sy.

_Kar._ All I can:

_Sings while AEg. reads the song._

'Though I am young and cannot tell
Either what Death or Love is well,
Yet I have heard they both bear darts
And both do aim at human hearts:
And then again, I have been told,
Love wounds with heat, as Death with cold;
So that I fear they do but bring
Extremes to touch and mean one thing.

'As in a ruin we it call
One thing to be blown up, or fall;
Or to our end, like way may have,
By a flash of lightning or a wave:
So Love's inflamed shaft or brand
May kill as soon as Death's cold hand,
Except Love's fires the virtue have
To fright the frost out of the grave.'"

Of no two contemporary men of letters in England can it be said that they
were, intellectually speaking, so near akin as Ben Jonson and George
Chapman. The translator of Homer was a good deal older than Jonson, and
exceedingly little is known of his life. He was pretty certainly born near
Hitchin in Hertfordshire, the striking situation of which points his
reference to it even in these railroad days. The date is uncertain--it may
have been 1557, and was certainly not later than 1559--so that he was the
oldest of the later Elizabethan school who survived into the Caroline
period. He perhaps entered the University of Oxford in 1574. His first
known work, _The Shadow of Night_, dates from 1594; and a reference of
Meres's shows that he was known for tragedy four years later. In 1613 he,
Jonson (a constant friend of his whose mutual fidelity refutes of itself
the silly calumnies as to Jonson's enviousness, for of Chapman only, among
his colleagues, was he likely to be jealous), and Marston were partners in
the venture of _Eastward Ho!_ which, for some real or fancied slight on
Scotland, exposed the authors to danger of the law. He was certainly a
_protege_ of Prince Henry, the English Ma