Online Library of Liberty: The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1 Portable Library of Liberty

Hero and Leander shows clearly that the two poets were on terms of intimacy, and I
fail to understand how Dyce arrived at the opposite conclusion. It is much to be
regretted that no copy can now be found of the elegy on Marlowe written by Nashe
and prefixed to the Tragedy of Dido, 1594. The elegy was seen by Bishop Tanner,
who in his account of Marlowe writes,—” Hanc [sc. Tragedy of Dido] perfecit et
edidit Tho. Nashe, Lond. 1594, 4to.— Petowius in præfatione ad secundam partem
Herois et Leandri multa in Marlovii, commendationem adfert; hoc etiam facit Tho.
Nash in Carmine elegiaco tragædiæ Didonis prmfixo'
1
in obitum Christoph. Marlovii,
ubi quatuor ejus tragædiaram mentionem facit, necnon et alterius De Duce Guisio
“(Bibl. Brit., p. 512). Petowe's encomium, to which Tanner refers, runs thus:—
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“Quicke-sighted spirits,—this suppos'd Apollo,—
Conceit no other but th' admired Marlo;
Marlo admir'd, whose honney-flowmg vaine
No English writer can as yet attaine;
Whose name in Fame's immortall treasurie
Truth shall record to endles memorie;
Marlo, late mortal in, now fram'd all diume,
What soule more happy then that soule of thine?
Liu still in heauen thy soule, thy fame on earth!
Thou dead, of Marlos Hero findes a dearth.
Weepe, aged Tellus! all on earth
2
complaine!
Thy chiefe-borne faire hath lost her faire againe :
Her faire in this is lost, that Marlo's want
Inforceth Hero's faire be wonderous scant.
Oh, had that king of poets breathed longer,
Then had faire beautie's fort been much more stronger!
His goulden pen had clos'd her so about,
No bastard seglet's quill, the world throughout,
Had been of force to marre what he had made;
For why they were not expert in that trade.
What mortall soule with Marlo might contend,
That could 'gainst reason force him stoops or bend?
Whose siluer-charmmg toung mou'd such delight,
That men would shun their sleepe in still darke night
To meditate vpon his goulden lynes,
His rare conceyts, and sweet-according rimes.
But Marlo, still-admired Marlo's gon
To hue with beautie in Elyzmm;
Immortal beautie, who desires to heare
His sacred poesies, sweete in euery eare :
Marlo must frame to Orpheus' melodie
Himnes all dmine to make heauen harmonie.
There euer hue the prince of poetrie,
Lme with the liuing in eternuie!”
In his preface “To the quick-sighted Reader,” Petowe says that his poem was “the first
fruits of an unripe wit, done at certaine vacant bowers.” The poem has little merit, but
the young writer's admiration for Marlowe is genuine and striking.
Other admirers of Marlowe were not silent. George Peele, in his “Prologue to the
Honour of the Garter,” written immediately after the poet's death, has these lines:—
“Unhappy in thine end,
Marley, the Muses' darling for thy verse,
Fit to write passions for the souls below,
If any wretched souls in passion speak.”
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“J. M.” in a MS. poem written in 1600 (quoted by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his Life
of Shakespeare), speaks with tenderness of “kynde Kit Marloe.” In a famous passage
of the Hierarchic of the Biased Angels, 1635, Heywood writes:—
“Marlo, renown'd for his rare art and wit,
Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit,
Although his Hero and Leander
did Merit addition rather.”
In Michael Dray ton's admirable “Epistle to Henry Reynolds of Poets and Poesy,”
1627, occur the fine lines which have been so frequently quoted:—
“Next
1
Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things That the 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.”
Much has been written of Marlowe in glowing verse and eloquent prose by writers of
our own time; but not even Mr. Swinburne's impassioned praise is finer than the
pathetic Death of Marlowe, published nearly half a century ago by the poet who
passed so recently, full of years, from the ingratitude of a forgetful generation.
Mr. J. A. Symonds has denned the leading motive of Marlowe's work as 1}Amour de