Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain,
For whom your curtains may be drawn again.
But if precedency in death doth bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carved marble of thine own,
Sleep, rare tragedian, Shakspeare, fleep alone.
Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave,
Possess, as lord, not tenant, of thy grave;
That unto us and others it may be
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.

WILLIAM BASSE.

To the Memory of my Beloved,
the Author, Mr. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE,
and what he hath left us.

To draw no envy, Shakspeare, on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book, and fame; While I confefs thy writings to be such, As neither man, nor muse, can praise too much; 'Tis true, and all men's fuffrage: but these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise : For feeliest ignorance on these may light, Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, And think to ruin, where it feem'd to raife: These are, as some infamous bawd, or whore, Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?

3 Fifth was formerly corruptly written and pronounced fift. I have adhered to the old spelling on account of the rhyme. This corrupt pronunciation yet prevails in Scotland, and in many parts of England. MALONE.

But thou art proof against them; and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need:
I, therefore, will begin:-Soul of the age,
The applaufe, delight, the wonder of our stage,
My Shakspeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenfer; or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument, without a tomb;
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;
I mean, with great but difproportion'd muses:
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers;
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or fporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line."

* to make thee a room :) See the preceding verses by Basse. MALONE.

5

- our Lyly outshine, Lyly wrote nine plays during the reign of Q. Eliz. viz. Alexander and Campafpe, T. C.; Endymion, C; Galatea, C; Loves Metamorphofis, Dram. Paft.; Maids Metamorphofis, C; Mother Bombie, C; Mydas, C; Sapho and Phao, C; and Woman in the Moon, C. To the pedantry of this author perhaps we are indebted for the first attempt to polith and reform our language. See his Euphues and his England.

6

STEEVENS.

or sporting Kyd,) It appears from Heywood's Actor's Vindication that Thomas Kyd was the author of the Spanish Tragedy. The late Mr. Hawkins was of opinion that Soliman and Perfeda was by the fame hand. The only piece however, which has descended to us, even with the initial letters of his name affixed to it, is Pompey the Great his fair Cornelia's Tragedy, which was first published in 1594, and, with fome alteration in the title-page, again in 1595. This is no more than a tranflation from Robert Garnier, a French poet, who diftinguished himself during the reigns of Charles IX. Henry III. and Henry IV. and died at Mans in 16oz, in the 56th year of his age. STEEVENS.

7

or Marlowe's mighty line.) Marlowe was a performer as well as an author. His contemporary Heywood calls him the beft of our poets. He wrote fix tragedies, viz. Dr. Faustus's Tragwat

And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not feek
For names; but call forth thund'ring Æschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles, to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordoua dead,
To life again, to hear thy bufkin tread
And shake a stage: or, when thy focks were on,
Leave thee alone; for the comparifon
Of all, that infolent Greece, or haughty Rome,
Sent forth, or fince did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time;
And all the muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm.

-History; King Edward II.; Jew of Malta; Luft's Dominion Maffacre of Paris; and Tamburlaine the Great, in two parts. He likewise joined with Nash in writing Dido Queen of Carthage, and had begun a tranflation of Musæus's Hero and Leander, which was finished by Chapman, and published in 1606. STEEVENS.

Chriftopher Marlowe was born probably about the year 1566, as he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge, in 1583. I do not believe that he ever was an actor, nor can I find any authority for it higher than the Theatrum Poetarum of Philips, in 1674, which is inaccurate in many circumstances. Beard, who four years after Marlowe's death gave a particular account of him, does not speak of him as an actor. "He was," says that writer, " by profession a scholler, brought up from his youth in the universitie of Cambridge, but by practice a play-maker and a poet of scurrilitie." Neither Drayton, nor Decker, nor Nashe, nor the author of The Return from Parnassus, 1606, nor Heywood in his prologue to The Jew of Malta, give the flightest intimation of Marlowe's having trod the stage. He was stabbed in the street, and died of the wound, in 1593. His Hero and Leander was published in quarto, in 1598, by Edward Blount, as an imperfect work. The fragment ended with this line:

"

Dang'd down to hell her loathsome carriage." Chapman completed the poem, and published it as it now appears, in 1600.

MALONE.

Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines;
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, fince, she will vouchsafe no other wit:
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deferted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part:-
For, though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion: and that he,
Who cafts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the fecond heat
Upon the muses' anvil; turn the fame,
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame;
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,-
For a good poet's made, as well as born :
And fuch wert thou. Look, how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race

Of Shakspeare's mind, and manners, brightly shines
In his well-torned and true-filed lines; 9

8

thy art,

My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part:) Yet this writer in his conversation with Mr. Drummond of Hawthornden in 1619, faid, that Shakspeare "wanted art, and sometimes sense."

9

MALONE.

-true-filed lines;) The fame praise is given to Shakspeare by a preceding writer. "As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus his tongue, if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Mufes would speak with Shakspeare's fine filed phrafe, if they would fpeak English." Wit's Treasury, by Francis Meres, 1598.

It is fomewhat fingular that at a subsequent period Shakspeare was cenfured for the want of that elegance which is here justly attributed to him. Though all the laws of Heroick Poem," fays the author of Theatrum Poetarum, 1674, "all the laws of tragedy, were exactly observed, yet still this tour entrejanté, this poetick energie, if I may so call it, would be required to give life to all the

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet swan of Avon, what a fight it were,
To fee thee in our waters yet appear;
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That fo did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay; I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a constellation there :-
Shine forth, thou star of poets; and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping stage;
Which, fince thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd

like night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume's light!

BEN JONSON.