It is no slight honour to Marlow that one of his compositions has been thought even to be worthy of Shakspeare, to whom was long attributed that beautiful Pastoral Song
some snatches of which are also uttered by Sir Hugh Evans during his "cholars and tremplings of mind" while awaiting Caius at the trysting place, Frogmore: (see Merry Wives, act i sc. 1). The popularity of this exquisite little poem is obvious from the number of imitations to which it gave rise.
In a criticism, which is thought to bear strong traces of the hand of Milton, Marlow is styled "a kind of second Shakspeare, not only because like him he rose from an actor to be a maker of plays, though inferior both in fame and merit; but also because in his begun poem of Hero and Leander, he seems to have a resemblance
