Their rich attire so diff'ring, yet so well
Becoming her that wore it, none could tell
Which was the fairest——."[607:A]
Mr. Beloe, in the first volume of his Anecdotes, p. 70., has given us a Latin epitaph on a John Chalkhill, copied from Warton's History of Winchester. This inscription tells us, that the person whom it commemorates died a Fellow of Winchester College, on the 20th of May, 1679, aged eighty; and yet Mr. Beloe, merely from similarity of name and character, contends that this personage must have been the Chalkhill of Isaac Walton; a supposition which a slight retrospection as to dates, would have proved impossible. Walton, in the title-page of Thealma and Clearchus, describes Chalkhill as an acquaintant and friend of Edmund Spenser; now as Spenser died in January, 1598, and the subject of this epitaph, aged 80, in 1679, the latter must consequently have been born in 1599, the year after Spenser's death! The coincidence of character and name is certainly remarkable, but by no means improbable or unexampled.
5. Chapman, George, who was born in 1557 and died in 1634, aged seventy-seven, is here introduced as the principal translator of his age; to him we are indebted for Homer, Musæus, and part of Hesiod. His first published attempt on Homer appeared in 1592[607:B], under the title of "Seaven Bookes of the Shades of Homere, Prince of Poets;" and shortly after the accession of James the First, the entire Iliad was completed and entitled, "The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets. Never before in any language truly translated. With a comment upon some of his chief places: done according to the Greeke."
This version, which was highly prized by his contemporaries, is executed in rhymed couplets, each line containing fourteen syllables; a species of versification singularly cumbrous and void of harmony; and, notwithstanding this protracted metre, fidelity is, by no means, the characteristic of Chapman. He is not only often very paraphrastic, but takes the liberty of omitting, without notice, what he could not comprehend. It has been asserted by Pope, that a daring fiery spirit, something like what we might imagine Homer himself to have written before he arrived to years of discretion, animates his translation, and covers his defects[608:A]; an opinion which seems rather the result of partiality than unbiassed judgment; for though Chapman is certainly superior to his successor Hobbes, and occasionally exhibits some splendid passages, he must be considered by every critic of the present day as, in general, coarse, bombastic, and often disgusting; a violator, indeed, in almost every page, of the dignity and simplicity of his original.
The magnitude and novelty of the undertaking, however, deserved and met with encouragement, and Chapman was induced, in 1614, to present the world with a version of the Odyssey. This is in the pentameter couplet; inferior in vigour to his Iliad, but in diction and versification more chaste and natural. Of his Musæus and his Georgics of Hesiod, we shall only remark that the former was printed in 1616, the latter in 1618, and that the first, which we have alone seen, does not much exceed the character of mediocrity. As an original writer, we shall have to notice Chapman under the dramatic department, and shall merely add now, that he was, in a moral light, a very estimable character, and the friend of Spenser, Shakspeare, Marlowe, Daniel, and Drayton.
6. Churchyard, Thomas. This author merits notice rather for the quantity than the quality of his productions, though a few of his pieces deserve to be rescued from utter oblivion. He commenced a writer,
according to his own account[609:A], in the reign of King Edward the Sixth, and as Wood informs us that at the age of seventeen he went to seek his fortune at court, and lived four years with Howard Earl of Surry, who died 1546, it is probable that he was born about 1524. Shrewsbury had the honour of producing him, and he continued publishing poetical tracts until the accession of James the First. Ritson has given us a catalogue, which might be enlarged, of seventeen of his publications, with dates, from 1558 to 1599, independent of a variety of scattered pieces; some of these are of such bulk as to include from twelve to twenty subjects, and in framing their titles the old bard seems to have been very partial to alliteration; for we have Churchyards Chippes, 1575; Churchyards Choice, 1579; Churchyards Charge, 1580; Churchyards Change; Churchyards Chance, 1580; Churchyards Challenge, 1593; and Churchyards Charity, 1595.[609:B] In the "Mirror for Magistrates," first published in 1559, he contributed "The Legend of Jane Shore," which he afterwards augmented in his "Challenge," by the addition of twenty-one stanzas; this is perhaps the best of his poetical labours, and contains several good stanzas. His "Worthiness of Wales," also, first published in 1587, and reprinted a few years ago, is entitled to preservation. This pains-taking author, as Ritson aptly terms him, died poor on April 4th, 1604, after a daily exertion of his pen, in the service of the Muses, for nearly sixty years.
7. Constable, Henry, of whom little more is personally known, than that he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1579[609:C]; that he was compelled to leave his native country from a zealous attachment to the Roman Catholic religion, and that, venturing to return, he was imprisoned in the