To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until doomsday; for hardly will a fift 3

was sometime a retainer to the Lord Wenman of Thame Park." There are some verses by him in Annalia Dubrensia, 4to. 1636; and in Bathurst's Life and Remains, by the Reverend Thomas Warton, 8vo. 1761, there is a poem by Dr. Bathurst " to Mr. William Baffe, upon the intended publication of his Poems, Jan, 13, 1651." The volume never, I believe, appeared.

From the words “who died in April, 1616," it may be inferred that these lines were written recently after Shakspeare's death, when the month and year in which he died were well known At a moré distant period the month would probably have been forgotten; and that was not an age of fuch curiofity as would have induced a poet to search the register at Stratford on such a subject. From the address to Chaucer and Spenser it should feem, that when these verses were composed the writer thought it probable that a cenotaph would be erected to Shakspeare in Westminster Abbey.

There is a copy of these lines in a manuscript volume of poems written by W. Herrick and others, among Rawlinson's Collections in the Bodleian library at Oxford; and another among the Sloanian MSS. in the Museum, N°. 1702. In the Oxford copy they are entitled "Shakspeare's Epitaph;" but the author is not mentioned. There are some flight variations in the different copies, which I shall fet down.

Line 2. To rare Beaumond, and learned Beaumond lie, &c. Edit. 1633.

Line 5. To lodge in one bed all four make a shift.

To lodge all four in one bed, &c.

To lie all four, &c. Edit. 1633.

by fates be flain. Edit. 1633.

Line 7. So B. S. and R.

Line 8. So B. and S.

will be drawn again. R.

MS. Brander.

MS. R. and S.

need be drawn again. 1633.

Line 9. But if precedency of death, &c. Edit. 1633.
If your precedency in death, &c. B. R. S.

Line 10. So B. R. and edit. 1633.

A fourth to have place in your fepulcher,-S.

Line 11. So, B. and R.

-under this curled marble of thine own.

-under this fable, &c. S..

Edit. 1633.

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 facred 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 confess 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 feelieft 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 seem'd to raise :
These are, as some infamous bawd, or whore,
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
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 applause, delight, the wonder of our stage,
My Shakspeare, rife! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser; or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room :4
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 disproportion'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,5
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line."

4

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

5 -our Lyly outshine, Lyly wrote nine plays during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, viz. Alexander and Campaspe, T. С. ; Endymion, C.; Galatea, C.; Loves Metamorphofis, Dram. Past.; Maids Metamorphosis, 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 polish and reform our language. See his Euphues and Euphues and his England. STEEVENS.

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- or Sporting Kyd,]

It appears from Heywood's Actor's

And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek, From thence to honour thee, I would not seek

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 some 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 1602, in the 50th year of his age. STEEVENS.

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- or Marlowe's mighty line.] Marlowe was a performer as well as an author. His contemporary, Heywood, calls him the best of our poets. He wrote fix tragedies, viz. Dr. Faustus's Tragical History; King Edward II.; Jew of Malta; Luft's Dominion; Massacre of Paris; and Tamburlaine the Great, in two parts. He likewise joined with Nath in writing Dido Queen of Carthage, and had begun a tranflation of Mufæus'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 profeffion a scholler, brought up from his youth in the universitie of Cambridge, but by practice a playmaker 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.

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 buskin tread
And shake a stage; or, when thy focks were on,
Leave thee alone; for the comparison

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.
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 Ariftophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted 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 second heat
Upon the muses' anvil; turn the same,
(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 :

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