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TO THE

VIRTUOUS, AND MY WORTHY FRIEND,

MR. RICHARD MARTIN..

SIR,

THANKFUL man owes a courtesy ever; the unthankful but when he needs it. To make mine own mark appear, and shew by which of these seals I am known, I send you this piece of what may live of mine; for whose innocence, as for the author's, you were once a noble and timely undertaker2 to the greatest justice of this kingdom.

To the virtuous, and my worthy friend, Mr. Richard Martin.] This gentleman, who was bred a lawyer, and who was recorder of the city of London, was himself a man of parts, and a poet, and much respected by the learned and ingenious of his own age. See a more particular account of him in Wood's Athena Oxon. vol. i. col. 441. WHAL.

Whalley has not said too much of Richard Martin. He was a man of great eloquence, and possessed of many virtues. He was besides pleasant and facetious in a high degree; and it is therefore more to be regretted than wondered at, that these sociable but dangerous qualities should sometimes lead him into excesses. Aubrey says in one of his MS. notes, that he finally fell a sacrifice to the glass; in which he indulged with the wits of the age, not improbably with Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and his admired Jonson. He died in 1618, two years after the appearance of this dedication, and was buried in the Temple Church.

2 For whose innocence, as for the author's, you were once a noble and timely undertaker, &c.] It appears from the Apologetical Dialogue subjoined to this Drama, that Jonson was accused of having reflected in it, on the professions of law, and arms. By one of these he was probably threatened with a prosecution either in the Star-chamber, or the King's Bench, from which the friendly offices

Enjoy now the delight of your goodness, which is to see that prosper you preserved, and posterity to owe the reading of that, without offence, to your name, which so much ignorance and malice of the times then conspired to have supprest.

Your true Lover,

BEN. JONSON3

of Mr. Martin with the Lord Chief Justice seem to have delivered him. So, at least, I understand the passage. There was, indeed, another occasion on which the friendship of this generous man might have stood Jonson in great stead. I speak of his imprisonment, together with Chapman and Marston, for the satire against the Scots in Eastward Hoe! but as this was a most serious affair, and really implicated the poet's safety, he would, perhaps, have been more explicit had the allusion been to this circumstance.

3 The quarto has no dedication, but merely the following address to the reader :

"Ludimus innocuis verbis, hoc juro potentis

Per Genium Fama, Castalidumque gregem;
Perque tuas aures, magni mihi numinis instar,
Lector, inhumana liber ab invidia.” Mart.

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That our sunk eyes have waked for all this while:
Here will be subject for my snakes and me.
Cling to my neck and wrists, my loving worms,2
And cast you round in soft and amorous folds,
Till I do bid uncurl; then, break your knots,

ay;

1 What's here? THE ARRAIGNMENT!] Envy says this upon discovering, as Whalley observes, the title of the play, which, as is already mentioned, was always written or painted in large letters, and fixed in some conspicuous part of the stage. To this practice there are innumerable allusions in our old dramatists.

2 Cling to my neck and wrists, my loving worms.] Worms, the generic English word for snake, is very common in our ancient writers, though now confined to one or two of the species. Cowley seems to have had this description in view, in the first book of в в

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