and indicates his opinion of the poet, “as of some thrasonical huffe-snuffe,” indulging in “that quarrelling kind of verse.” One more specimen, to justify our text, regarding “he that writ so big:” in the address to the winds, _Æn._, Bk. i., Neptune thus rails:—
_Dare ye, lo, curst baretours, in this my Seignorie regal,_ _Too raise such racks iacks on seas and danger unorder’d?_
The recent death of Stanyhurst, 1618, strengthens our belief that _the Time-Poets_ was not later than 1620-32.
To WILLIAM BASSE we owe the beautiful epitaph on Shakespeare, printed in 1633, “_Renowned ~Spencer~, lye a thought more nigh To learned ~Chaucer~_,” _etc._, and at least two songs (beside “Great Brittaine’s Sunnes-set,” 1613), viz., the Hunter in his Career, beginning “Long ere the Morn,” and one of the best Tom o’ Bedlam’s; probably, “Forth from my sad and darksome cell.”
The name of JOHN SHANKE, here suggestively famous “for a jigg,” occurs in divers lists of players (see J. P. C.’s _Annals of the Stage_, _passim_), he having been one of Prince Henry’s Company in 1603. That he was also a singer, we have this verse in proof, written in the reign of James I. (_Bibliog. Acc._ i. 163):—
_That’s the fat foole of the ~Curtin~,_ _And the lean fool of the ~Bull~:_ _Since ~Shanke~ did leave to sing his rimes_ _He is counted but a gull._ _The Players on the ~Banckeside~,_ _The round ~Globe~ and the ~Swan~,_ _Will teach you idle tricks of love,_ _But the ~Bull~ will play the man._
(W. Turner’s _Common Cries of London Town_, 1662.)
“Broom” is RICHARD BROME (died 1652), whose racy comedies have been, like Dekker’s, lately reprinted. The insinuation that Ben Jonson had “sent him before to sweep the way,” alludes, no doubt, to the fact of Brome having earlier been Jonson’s servant, and learning from his personal discourse much of dramatic art. Neither was it meant nor accepted as an insult, when, (printed 1632,) Jonson wrote (“according to Ben’s own nature and custom, magisterial enough,” as their true friend Alexander Brome admits),
_I had you for a Servant once, ~Dick Brome~;_ _And you perform’d a Servant’s faithful parts:_ _Now, you are got into a nearer room_ _Of ~Fellowship~, professing my old Arts._ _And you do doe them well, with good applause,_ _Which you have justly gained from the Stage_, &c.