Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/104

88 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES a Papist. ... In the tyme of his close imprisonment under Queen Elizabeth, his judges could get nothing of him to all their demands but I [Ay] and No. They placed two damn'd villains to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertized by his keeper: of the Spies he hath ane epigrame." Which is No. 59:— " Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff, Who, when you've burnt yourselves down to the snuff. Stink, and are thrown away. End fair enough." Gifford antedates these events about three years, while exposing " maggoty-pated" Aubrey, who writes : " He killed Mr. Marlowe, the poet, on Bunhill, coming from the Green Curtain playhouse [a low- class theatre in Shoreditch] ; " Marlowe, whom Jonson highly esteemed, witness his *' Marlowe's mighty line," having been killed in a tavern brawl at Deptford, in May 1593: a tragical loss to English poetry, only surpassed by the drowning of Shelley at nearly the same age. Col. Cunningham, however, quotes from Collier's "Life of AUeyn," a letter of Henslowe, dated 26th September 1598: "Sence you weare with me I have lost one of my company which hurteth me greatley, that is Gabrell, for he is slayen in Hogesden fylldes by the hands of bergemen [bengemen, for Benjamin? Henslowe spelling the name thus else- where] Jonson, bricklayer." The " bricklayer " was probably added in bitterness of spirit for the loss of a friend and actor not easy to replace; perhaps, also, in spleen, because Jonson had taken the revised, " Every Man in his Humour," to another house. The spies, we may presume, were set upon him simply because of his communication with the priest.