TJic Reputation of Christopher Marlozvc. 359 



Of his free soule, whose liuing subiect stood 

 Vp to the chin in the Pyerean flood, 

 And drunke to me halfe this Musean storie, 

 Inscribing it to deathles Memorie : 

 Confer with it, and make mj^ pledge as deepe, 

 That neithers draught be consecrate to sleepe. 

 Tell it how much his late desires I tender, 

 (If yet it know not) and to light surrender 

 My soules darke .ofspring . . . 



Nashe in 1599 {Lenten Stuff) speaks of 'Hero and Leander, of 

 whom diuine Musaeus sung, and a diuiner Muse than him, Kit 

 Marlowe.'" Drayton's tribute is perhaps the most adequate of all : 



Neat Marlowe bathed in the Thespian Springs, 

 Had in him tliose braue translunary things 

 That your 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 poets brain." 



Jonson's laconic phrase, 'Marlowe's mighty line' (1623), is 

 characteristically impersonal ; but there is evidence enough that 

 long after his death the poet's memory retained associations not 

 ungenial. Halliwell-Phillips cited an allusion to 'kynde Kit 

 Marloe' from a manuscript poem : 'The Newe Metamorphosis, or 



" McKerrow's ed., iii. 195. Nashe's references to Marlowe are all friendly, 

 though one of those in Lenten Stuff is jocular: 'At tliat she became a fran- 

 ticke Bacchanal outright, & made no more bones but sprag after him, and 

 so resignd vp her Priesthood, and left worke for Musaeus and Kit Mar- 

 lozvc.' (McKerrow iii. 198) In Have with yon to Saffron IValden (1596), 

 Nashe asserts (ibid., iii. 131) : 'I neuer abusd Marloe, Greene, C kettle in 

 my life, nor anie of my frends that vsde me like a f rend ; which both 

 Marloe and Greene (if they were aliue) vnder their hands would testifie.' 

 In the same work (p. 85) Nashe reports Marlowe's judgment of Gabriel 

 Harvey's brother Richard: 'This is that Dick of whom Kit Marloe was 

 wont to say that he was an asse, good for nothing but to preach of the 

 Iron Age.' He reprehends, on the other hand, Gabriel's vindictiveness : 

 'How he hath handled Greene and Marloe since their deaths, those that read 

 his Bookes may iudge' (ibid., p. 132) ; 'Maister Lillie, poore deceassed Kit 

 Marlozv, reuerent Doctor Perne ... in the same worke he hath most 

 notoriously & vilely dealt with' (Christ's Tears, etc. 2nd ed., 1594, ii. 180, 

 181). Dr. McKerrow rightly points out that tliere is no reason for taking 

 the attack upon 'idiote art-masters' in the preface to Menaphon as a gibe at 

 Marlowe, though it may be inferred that Nashe was here temporarily 

 influenced by Greene's pique against the Marlovian blank verse movement. 



" To Henry Reynolds, Esquire, Of Poets and Poesie, 1627, 11. 105-110. 



