There is not much pleasure or profit to be derived from a perusal of Marston's satires. The author deliberately adopted an uncouth and monstrous style of phraseology; his allusions are frequently quite unintelligible to modern readers, and even the wits of his contemporaries must have been sorely exercised. After a course of Marston's satires Persius is clear as crystal. In the second satire there are some lines which aptly express the reader's bewilderment: "O darkness palpable; Egypt's black night! My wit is stricken blind, hath lost his sight: My shins are broke with searching for some sense To know to what his words have reference." Our sense is deafened by the tumult of noisy verbiage "as when a madman beats upon a drum." In Marston's satires there is little of the raciness and buoyancy that we find in the elder satirists--Skelton, Roy, and William Baldwin--who dealt good swashing blows in homely vigorous English. Persius would not have been flattered by Marston's or Hall's attempts at imitation: "nec pluteum cædit nec demorsos sapit ungues" would have been his comment on the spurious pseudo-classical Elizabethan satire. Hall claimed to have been the first to introduce classical satire into England. In the prologue to the first book of _Virgidemiæ_, 1597, he writes:-- "I first adventure with foolhardy might To tread the steps of perilous despight: I first adventure: follow me who list, And be the second English satirist." It matters little whether Hall's claim was well-founded or not; but it has been often pointed out that there is extant a MS. copy of Donne's satires dated 1593. Hall, who lived to be one of the glories of the English Church, in early manhood certainly did not present an example of Christian meekness and charity. He took a very low view of contemporary writers, but never had the slightest misgivings about his own abilities. It is not easy to ascertain how his quarrel with Marston arose, but it seems clear that he was the aggressor. _Pygmalion_ was published a year later than _Virgidemiæ_, but it had probably been circulated in manuscript, according to the custom of the time, before it issued from the press. There can be little doubt that the ninth satire of book i. of _Virgidemiæ_, is directed against Marston. The opening lines run thus:-- "Envy, ye Muses, at your thrilling mate, Cupid hath crowned a new laureat; I saw his statue gaily tired in green, As if he had some second Phoebus been; His statue trimm'd with the Venerean tree And shrined fair within your sanctuary. What! he that erst to gain the rhyming goal, The worn recital-post of capitol, Rhymed in rules of stewish ribaldry Teaching experimental bawdery, Whiles th' itching vulgar, tickled with the song, Hanged on their unready poet's tongue? Take this, ye patient Muses, and foul shame Shall wait upon your once profaned name."