. In every age there are writers
who delight in representing that age as the very worst of the history of
the world, and in ransacking literature and imagination for accusations
against their fellows. The sedate philosopher partly brings and partly
draws the conviction that one time is very like another. Marston, however,
has fooled himself and his readers to the very top of his and their bent;
and even Churchill, restrained by a more critical atmosphere, has not come
quite near his confused and only half-intelligible jumble of indictments
for indecent practices and crude philosophy of the moral and metaphysical
kind. A vigorous line or phrase occasionally redeems the chaos of rant,
fustian, indecency, ill-nature, and muddled thought.

"Ambitious Gorgons, wide-mouth'd Lamians,
Shape-changing Proteans, damn'd Briarians,
Is Minos dead, is Radamanth asleep,
That ye thus dare unto Jove's palace creep?
What, hath Ramnusia spent her knotted whip,
That ye dare strive on Hebe's cup to sip?
Ye know Apollo's quiver is not spent,
But can abate your daring hardiment.
Python is slain, yet his accursed race
Dare look divine Astrea in the face;
Chaos return and with confusion
Involve the world with strange disunion;
For Pluto sits in that adored chair
Which doth belong unto Minerva's heir.
O hecatombs! O catastrophe!
From Midas' pomp to Trus' beggary!
Prometheus, who celestial fire
Did steal from heaven, therewith to inspire
Our earthly bodies with a sense-ful mind,
Whereby we might the depth of nature find,
Is ding'd to hell, and vulture eats his heart
Which did such deep philosophy impart
To mortal men."

The contrast of this so-called satire, and the really satiric touches of
Marston's own plays, when he was not cramped by the affectations of the
style, is very curious.

Edward Gilpin or Guilpin, author of the rare book _Skialetheia_, published
between the dates of Hall and Marston, is, if not a proved plagiarist from
either, at any rate an obvious follower in the same track. There is the
same exaggeration, the same petulant ill-nature, the same obscurity of
phrase and ungainliness of verse, and the same general insincerity. But the
fine flower of the whole school is perhaps to be found in the miraculous
_Transformed Metamorphosis_, attributed to the powerful but extravagant
dramatist, Cyril Tourneur, who wrote this kind of thing:-