f Night_ of an incident in Sir Francis Vere's campaign, that he saw
service in the Netherlands. There are frequent entries with regard to
Chapman in Henslowe's diary for the years 1598-1599, but his dramatic
activity slackened during the following years, when his attention was
chiefly occupied by his _Homer_. In 1604 he was imprisoned with John
Marston for his share in _Eastward Ho_, in which offence was given to
the Scottish party at court. Ben Jonson voluntarily joined the two, who
were soon released. Chapman seems to have enjoyed favour at court, where
he had a patron in Prince Henry, but in 1605 Jonson and he were for a
short time in prison again for "a play." Beaumont, the French ambassador
in London, in a despatch of the 5th of April 1608, writes that he had
obtained the prohibition of a performance of _Biron_ in which the queen
of France was represented as giving Mademoiselle de Verneuil a box on
the ears. He adds that three of the actors were imprisoned, but that the
chief culprit, the author, had escaped (Raumer, _Briefe aus Paris_,
1831, ii. 276). Among Chapman's patrons was Robert Carr, earl of
Somerset, to whom he remained faithful after his disgrace. Chapman
enjoyed the friendship and admiration of his great contemporaries. John
Webster in the preface to _The White Devil_ praised "his full and
heightened style," and Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that
Fletcher and Chapman "were loved of him." These friendly relations
appear to have been interrupted later, for there is extant in the
Ashmole MSS. an "Invective written by Mr George Chapman against Mr Ben
Jonson." Chapman died in the parish of St Giles in the Fields, and was
buried on the 12th of May 1634 in the churchyard. A monument to his
memory was erected by Inigo Jones. (M. Br.)

Chapman, his first biographer is careful to let us know, "was a person
of most reverend aspect, religious and temperate, qualities rarely
meeting in a poet"; he had also certain other merits at least as
necessary to the exercise of that profession. He had a singular force
and solidity of thought, an admirable ardour of ambitious devotion to
the service of poetry, a deep and burning sense at once of the duty
implied and of the dignity inherent in his office; a vigour, opulence,
and loftiness of phrase, remarkable even in that age of spiritual
strength, wealth and exaltation of thought and style; a robust
eloquence, touched not unfrequently with flashes of fancy, and ki