ere
conspicuous inheritors of the true Elizabethan spirit, and who united
virility of thought to robustness and trenchancy of sarcasm.

Marston and Breton were amongst the best of the group, though they are
not represented in these pages owing to the unsuitability of their
writings for extract. Here is a picture from one of the satires of
Marston which is instinct with satiric power. It is a portrait of a
love-sick swain, and runs as follows:--

"For when my ears received a fearful sound
That he was sick, I went, and there I found,
Him laid of love and newly brought to bed
Of monstrous folly, and a franticke head:
His chamber hanged about with elegies,
With sad complaints of his love's miseries,
His windows strow'd with sonnets and the glasse
Drawn full of love-knots. I approach'd the asse,
And straight he weepes, and sighes some Sonnet out
To his fair love! and then he goes about,
For to perfume her rare perfection,
With some sweet smelling pink epitheton.
Then with a melting looke he writhes his head,
And straight in passion, riseth in his bed,
And having kist his hand, strok'd up his haire,
Made a French _conge_, cryes 'O cruall Faire!'
To th' antique bed-post."[10]

Marston manifests more vigour and nervous force in his satires than
Hall, but exhibits less elegance and ease in versification. In Charles
Fitz-geoffrey's _Affaniae_, a set of Latin epigrams, printed at Oxford
in 1601, Marston is complimented as the "Second English Satirist", or
rather as dividing the palm of priority and excellence in English
satire with Hall. The individual characteristics of the various leading
Elizabethan satirists,--the vitriolic bitterness of Nash, the
sententious profundity of Donne, the happy-go-lucky "slogging" of
genial Dekker, the sledge-hammer blows of Jonson, the turgid
malevolence of Chapman, and the stiletto-like thrusts of George
Buchanan are worthy of closer and more detailed study than can be
devoted to them in a sketch such as this. I regret that Nicolas
Breton's _Pasquil's Madcappe_ proved too long for quotation in its
entirety,[11] but the man who could pen such lines as these was, of a
truth, a satirist of a high order:--

But what availes unto the world to talke?
Wealth is a witch that hath a wicked charme,
That in the minds of wicked men doth walke,
Unto the heart and Soule's etern