is own the more,
That well may scorn base imitation.
For Lodge[46] and Watson,[47] men of some desert,
Yet subject to a critic's marginal;
Lodge for his oar in ev'ry paper boat,
He, that turns over Galen ev'ry day,
To sit and simper Euphues' Legacy.[48]

INGENIOSO.
Michael Drayton?

JUDICIO.
Drayton's sweet muse is like a sanguine dye,
Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye.

INGENIOSO.
However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times, and that is
this: he cannot swagger it well in a tavern, nor domineer in a
hothouse. John Davis?[49]

JUDICIO.
Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,
That jerk in hidden charms these looser times;
Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,
Is graced with a fair and sweeping[50] train.

INGENIOSO.
Lock and Hudson?[51]

JUDICIO.
Lock and Hudson, sleep, you quiet shavers, among the shavings of the
press, and let your books lie in some old nooks amongst old boots and
shoes; so you may avoid my censure.

INGENIOSO. Why, then, clap a lock on their feet, and turn them to
commons. John Marston?[52]

JUDICIO.
What, Monsieur Kinsayder, lifting up your leg, and pissing against the
world? put up, man, put up, for shame!
Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,
Withouten bands or garters' ornament:
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's Helicon;
Then roister doister in his oily terms,
Cuts, thrusts, and foins, at whomsoever he meets,
And strews about Ram-Alley meditations.
Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms,
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?
Give him plain naked words, stripp'd from their shirts,
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine.
Ay, there is one, that backs a paper steed,
And manageth a penknife gallantly,
Strikes his poinardo at a button's breadth,
Brings the great battering-ram of terms to towns;
And, at first volley of his cannon-shot,
Batters the walls of the old fusty world.

INGENIOSO.
Christopher Marlowe?

JUDICIO.
Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd muse;
Alas! unhappy in his life and end:
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell
Wit lent from heav'n, but vices sent from hell.[53]

INGENIOSO.
Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got,
A tragic penman for a dreary plot.
Benjamin Jonson?

JUDICIO.
The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.

INGENIOSO.
A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath by observation, and makes
only nature privy to what he indites; so slow an inventor, that he were
better betake himself to his old trade of bricklayi