pany with Davies's _Epigrammes_, Marston's
_Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image_, Hall's _Satires_, and
Cutwode's _Caltha Poetarum; or, The Bumble Bee_. The latter is a
fantastic poem of 187 stanzas about a bee and a marigold, and
deserved the fire rather for its insipidity than for the reasons
which justified the cleansing process applied to the others, the
youthful productions of men who were destined to attain
celebrity in very different directions of life.

Marlowe, like Shakespeare, from an actor became a writer of
plays; but though Ben Jonson extolled his "mighty muse," I doubt
whether his _Edward II._, _Dr. Faustus_, or _Jew of Malta_, are
now widely popular. Anthony Wood has left a very disagreeable
picture of Marlowe's character, which one would fain hope is
overdrawn; but the dramatist's early death in a low quarrel
prevented him from ever redeeming his early offences, as a kinder
fortune permitted to his companions in the Stationers' bonfire.

Marston came to be more distinguished for his _Satires_ than for
his plays, his _Scourge of Villainie_ being his chief title to
fame. Of his _Pigmalion_ all that can be said is, that it is not
quite so bad as Marlowe's _Elegies_. Warton justly says, with
pompous euphemism: "His stream of poetry, if sometimes bright and
unpolluted, almost always betrays a muddy bottom." But this muddy
bottom is discernible, not in Marston alone, but also in Hall's
_Virgidemiarum_, or Satires, of which Warton did all he could to
revive the popularity. Hall was Marston's rival at Cambridge, but
Hall claims to be the first English satirist. He took Juvenal for
his model, but the Latin of Juvenal seems to me far less obscure
than the English of Hall. I quote two lines to show what this
Cambridge student thought of the great Elizabethan period in
which he lived. Referring to some remote golden age, he says:--

"Then men were men; but now the greater part
Beasts are in life, and women are in heart."

But strange are the evolutions of men. The author of the burnt
satires rose from dignity to dignity in the Church. He became
successively Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Norwich, and to this
day his devotional works are read by thousands who have never
heard of his satires. He was sent as a deputy to the famous Synod
of Dort, and was faithful to his Church and king through the
Civil War. For this in his old age he suffered sequestration and
imprisonment, and he lived to see his cath