To his fair love! and then he goes about,
For to perfume her rare perfection,
With some sweet smelling pink epitheton.
Then with a melting looke he writhes his head,
And straight in passion, riseth in his bed,
And having kist his hand, strok'd up his haire,
Made a French congé, cryes 'O cruall Faire!'
To th' antique bed-post."[10]
Marston manifests more vigour and nervous force in his satires than Hall, but exhibits less elegance and ease in versification. In Charles Fitz-geoffrey's Affaniæ, a set of Latin epigrams, printed at Oxford in 1601, Marston is complimented as the "Second English Satirist", or rather as dividing the palm of priority and excellence in English satire with Hall. The individual characteristics of the various leading Elizabethan satirists,—the vitriolic bitterness of Nash, the sententious profundity of Donne, the happy-go-lucky "slogging" of genial Dekker, the sledge-hammer blows of Jonson, the turgid malevolence of Chapman, and the stiletto-like thrusts of George Buchanan are worthy of closer and more detailed study than can be devoted to them in a sketch such as this. I regret that Nicolas Breton's Pasquil's Madcappe proved too long for quotation in its entirety,[11] but the man who could pen such lines as these was, of a truth, a satirist of a high order:—
But what availes unto the world to talke?