"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 _congé_, 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 _Affaniæ_, 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