[Footnote 1: Athen, Oxon, folio, p. 226.]
[Footnote 2: Wood, p. 227.]
[Footnote 3: Earl of Leicester.]
[Footnote 4: Lord Brook's life.]
[Footnote 5: For a great many months after his death, it was reckoned indecent in any gentleman to appear splendidly dress'd; the public mourned him, not with exterior formality, but with the genuine sorrow of the heart. Of all our poets he seems to be the most courtly, the bravest, the most active, and in the moral sense, the best.]
[Footnote 6: Camden Brit. in Kent.]
* * * * *
CHISTOPHER MARLOE
Was bred a student in Cambridge, but there is no account extant of his family. He soon quitted the University, and became a player on the same stage with the incomparable Shakespear. He was accounted, says Langbaine, a very fine poet in his time, even by Ben Johnson himself, and Heywood his fellow-actor stiles him the best of poets. In a copy of verses called the Censure of the Poets, he was thus characterized.
Next Marloe bathed in Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave sublunary things,
That your first poets had; his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.