[48] [This passage is a rather important piece of evidence in favour of the identity of the poet with the physician.]
[49] [Sir] John Davis [author of "Nosce Teipsum," &c.]
[50] Old copy, sooping.
[51] Lock and Hudson were the Bavius and Maevius of that time. The latter gives us this description of fear—
"Fear lendeth wings to aged folk to fly,
And made them mount to places that were high;
Fear made the woful child to wail and weep,
For want of speed on foot and hands to creep."
[Hudson, however, enjoyed some repute in his time, and is known as the translator from Du Bartas of the "History of Judith," 8vo, 1584. Lock published in 1597 a volume containing an English version of "Ecclesiastes" and a series of sonnets.]
[52] John Marston, a bold and nervous writer in Elizabeth's reign: the work here censured was, no doubt, his "Scourge of Villanie, 3 Books of Satyrs," 1598.
[53] Marlowe's character is well marked in these lines: he was an excellent poet, but of abandoned morals, and of the most impious principles; a complete libertine and an avowed atheist. He lost his life in a riotous fray; for, detecting his servant with his mistress, he rushed into the room with a dagger in order to stab him, but the man warded off the blow by seizing Marlowe's wrist, and turned the dagger into his own head: he languished some time of the wound he received, and then died, [in] the year 1593.—A. Wood.
[54] [Omitted in some copies.]
[55] [Omitted in some copies.]