To pass from politics to poetry; little as Archbishop Whitgift's proceedings in the High Commission endear his name to posterity, I am inclined to think he may be forgiven for cleansing Stationers' Hall by fire, in 1599, of certain works purporting to be poetical; such works, namely, as Marlowe's _Elegies of Ovid_, which appeared in company with Davies's _Epigrammes_, Marston's _Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image_, Hall's _Satires_, and Cutwode's _Caltha Poetarum; or, The Bumble Bee_. The latter is a fantastic poem of 187 stanzas about a bee and a marigold, and deserved the fire rather for its insipidity than for the reasons which justified the cleansing process applied to the others, the youthful productions of men who were destined to attain celebrity in very different directions of life. Marlowe, like Shakespeare, from an actor became a writer of plays; but though Ben Jonson extolled his "mighty muse," I doubt whether his _Edward II._, _Dr. Faustus_, or _Jew of Malta_, are now widely popular. Anthony Wood has left a very disagreeable picture of Marlowe's character, which one would fain hope is overdrawn; but the dramatist's early death in a low quarrel prevented him from ever redeeming his early offences, as a kinder fortune permitted to his companions in the Stationers' bonfire. Marston came to be more distinguished for his _Satires_ than for his plays, his _Scourge of Villainie_ being his chief title to fame. Of his _Pigmalion_ all that can be said is, that it is not quite so bad as Marlowe's _Elegies_. Warton justly says, with pompous euphemism: "His stream of poetry, if sometimes bright and unpolluted, almost always betrays a muddy bottom." But this muddy bottom is discernible, not in Marston alone, but also in Hall's _Virgidemiarum_, or Satires, of which Warton did all he could to revive the popularity. Hall was Marston's rival at Cambridge, but Hall claims to be the first English satirist. He took Juvenal for his model, but the Latin of Juvenal seems to me far less obscure than the English of Hall. I quote two lines to show what this Cambridge student thought of the great Elizabethan period in which he lived. Referring to some remote golden age, he says:-- "Then men were men; but now the greater part Beasts are in life, and women are in heart."