John John Marston also did no more than begin life as a writer in these last years of Elizabeth. He was of an old Shropshire family. His father was John, son of Ralph Marston, of Gayton, Shropshire. This elder John was admitted member of the Middle Temple in 1570. After first marriage to an Elizabeth Gray, he took as his second wife Maria Guarsi, daughter of an Italian surgeon settled in London. John Marston the elder settled and practised law in Coventry, but he kept chambers in the Middle Temple, at which Inn in 1592 he lectured on law. On the fourth of February, 1592, this lawyer sent his son John, the poet, aged sixteen-born, therefore, in 1575 or 1576-to Oxford, where he matriculated at Brasenose College, and, as "eldest son of an esquire," graduated B.A. on the sixth of February; 1594. John Marston the elder died in October or November, 1599, leaving his house and the main part of his property to his wife, Mary, with remainder to his son John. He left the furniture and law books in his chambers in the Temple to his said son, "who," says the will, "I hoped would have profited by them in the study of the law, but man proposeth and God disposeth." The said son had forsaken law for poetry. He had published in the year before his father's death, "The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image: And Certain Satires," which were entered at Stationers' Hall on the twenty-seventh of May, 1598. They were followed, four months later, by another set of satires, nine in number, called "The Scourge of Villainy." This was republished, with an additional satire, in 1599. Marston produced these satires at the age of twenty-three, and they included some war with another young satirist, the Joseph Hall that lived to be a famous Bishop who had John Milton among his antagonists. Joseph Hall, born on the first of July, 1574, was of about Marston's age. John Hall, his father, lived at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and served there, at Bristow Park, as deputy under the Earl of Huntingdon, President of the North. His mother, Winifred, was a strict PuriJoseph Hall. tan. Young Joseph was first educated at the Ashby Grammar School, and then sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He graduated as B.A. in 1592; in 1595 he was made a fellow of his College; and he took his degree of M.A. in 1596. In that year he contributed to a memorial book of elegies on the death of Dr. William Whitaker, the only English poem it contained. His reputation was high in his university for wit and scholarship, and for two years, like young Gabriel Harvey before him, he was reader of a Rhetoric lecture. Marston's "Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image" is not a satire, but a poem of 243 lines in six-lined stanzas on the bodily delights of love. Pygmalion dotes upon the naked image he has carved, seeks more than sight, puts his image to bed, prays to Venus, and his metamorphosed image becomes mother to a boy. Young Marston inscribes "to his Mistress" the poem, which, Satires of he says, "My wanton Muse lasciviously doth sing and bids her take compassion as she reads:—' Pigmalion's "Force me not envy my Pigmalion." With satirical praise of his own Pygmalion, Marston introduces then four satires, with one inserted between the third and fourth under the title of " Reactio." The first satire is of some that seem and be not. It attacks the usual false colours of the world, in characters of Ruscus, Briscus, Castilio, Sporo, Tubrio, and the like. If in this and other satires he has in mind men of his own day who answer to the old types, Marston certainly is not so fond of personalities as the misguided readers who look out for them. His second satire is of some who are and seem not; the third of some who are and seem. "Reactio" is against the low spirit of censure that will find dirt in the cleanest street, that will condemn the poet who writes in the praise of God, or can condemn "The Mirror for Magistrates," as Joseph Hall had done in t..e fifth satire of his first book, Virgidemiarum. "Fie," says Marston, "Fie, inconsiderate, it grieveth me An Academic should so senseless be. Fond censurer, why should those Mirrors seem May run for senseful, tolerable rhymes?" Hall satirised "Pigmalion's Image," and thus there were between the two young Cambridge men some obvious cross-thrusts that broke no bones. The wit-combats of young men, if they be good for anything, are lively, but not bitter, although Dryasdust is apt to argue that they are. The theme of the fourth and last satire appended to "Pigmalion's Image" is the world's habit of magnifying trifles, while making nothing of things really great. "Thus petty thefts are paid and soundly whipt, But greater crimes are slightly overslipt." Jove, mightiest of villains, is the master God. These satires follow the manner of the Latins; they are clearly written in rhymed couplets, and deal very generally with the morals of the world. "The Scourge of Villanie." In Marston's series of satires called "The Scourge of Villanie," which followed at the end of the year, and was reprinted in 1599, there is the same general aim; but in this collection the desire to give weight to the sentences sometimes causes a loss of clearness, and what should have been pithy is obscure. The young author offers his book "To Detraction," saying that “True judgment slight regards Opinion, "A partial praise shall never elevate My settled censure of mine own esteem. A cankered verdict of malignant hate Shall ne'er provoke me worse myself to deem : I am myself, so is my poesie." A preface in verse to unworthy readers bids them rail, and ends with this ingenious little ditty "But ye diviner wits, celestial souls, Whose free-born minds no kennel thought controls, Ye sacred spirits, Maia's eldest sons; "Ye substance of the shadows of our age, To you how cheerfully my Poem runs! O how my love embraces your great worth! "Ye idols of my soul, ye blessed spirits, "You sacred spirits, Maia's eldest sons, To you how cheerfully my Poem runs! O how my love embraceth your great worth, There followed a prose address "to those that seem judicial perusers," whereto Marston, whose name is not on the title-page, signed himself "W. Kinsayder." The name was taken from a homely word for the cure of mad dogs by cropping their tails. Its root is in the old French cagnon or kignon (“a little dog "), applied also in Picardy to a pitiably deformed man. In the three books of satires called "The Scourge for Villanie," there is much honest maintenance of the higher life against the man whose thoughts are low, and there is but one piece directly personal, the added tenth or Satyra Nova of the Third Book, on the theme Stultorum plena sunt omnia. Here he quotes and satirises Hall's attack on his "Pigmalion " "An Epigram which the Authour Vergidemiarum caused to be pasted to the latter page of euery Pigmalion that came to the stacioners of Cambridge. "I Ask'd Phisitions what theyr counsell was For a mad dog, or for a mankind Asse? They told mee though there were confections store Of poppie seede and soueraigne Hellebore, Whether thou be a mad dog, or a mankind Asse." • Mark the witty allusion to my name. Marston might well laugh, in a satire addressed to E. G. (Edward Guilpin), a Cambridge friend, at that very poor specimen of academic wit. Virgidemiarum, Joseph's Hall's six books Virgidemiarum-i.e., of rodharvests, stripes, or blows—were the work of a clever young man who had read Juvenal and Persius and the satires of Ariosto, and who, because he was the first to write English satire in the manner of Juvenal, ignorantly believed himself to be the first English satirist. "I first adventure," he said in his prologue "I first adventure, follow me who list, And be the second English satirist." Libri VI. Hall's satires are in The mistake is of no consequence. rhyming couplets of ten-syllabled lines; he thought English rhyme inferior to Latin quantity, but saw that the Latin metres could not be applied to English verse, and laughed at Stanihurst. |