Immortal Ben is dead, and as that ball,
  On Ida toss’d so in his crown, by all
  The infantry of wit.  Vain priests! that chair
  Is only fit for his true son and heir. 
  Reach here thy laurel:  Randolph, ’tis thy praise: 
  Thy naked skull shall well become the bays. 
  See, Daphne courts thy ghost; and spite of fate,
  Thy poems shall be Poet Laureate.

[Footnote 1:  Athen.  Oxon. p. 224.]

* * * * *

GEORGE CHAPMAN

Was born in the year 1557, but of what family he is descended, Mr. Wood has not been able to determine; he was a man in very high reputation in his time, and added not a little to dramatic excellence.  In 1574, being well grounded in grammar learning, he was sent to the university, but it is not clear whether to Oxford or Cambridge; it is certain that he was sometime in Oxford, and was taken notice of for his great skill in the Latin and Greek languages, but not in logic and philosophy, which is the reason it may be presumed, that he took no degree there.  After this he came to London, and contracted an acquaintance, as Wood says, with Shakespear, Johnson, Sidney, Spenser and Daniel.  He met with a very warm patronage from Sir Thomas Walsingham, who had always had a constant friendship for him, and after that gentleman’s decease, from his son Thomas Walsingham, esquire, whom Chapman loved from his birth.  He was also respected, and held in esteem by Prince Henry, and Robert earl of Somerset, but the first being untimely snatched away, and the other justly disgraced for an assassination[1], his hopes of preferment were by these means frustrated; however, he was a servant either to King James I. or Queen Anne his consort, through whose reign he was highly valued by all his old friends, only there are some insinuations, that as his reputation grew, Ben Johnson, naturally haughty and insolent, became jealous of him, and endeavoured to suppress, as much as possible, his rising fame[2], as Ben, after the death of Shakespear, was without a rival.

Chapman was a man of a reverend aspect, and graceful manner, religious and temperate, qualities which seldom meet (says Wood) in a poet, and was so highly esteemed by the clergy, that some of them have said, “that as Musaeus, who wrote the lives of Hero and Leander, had two excellent scholars, Thamarus and Hercules, so had he in England in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth, two excellent imitators in the same argument and subject, viz.  Christopher Marlow, and George Chapman.”  Our author has translated the Iliad of Homer, published in folio, and dedicated to Prince Henry, which is yet looked upon with some respect.  He is said to have had the spirit of a poet in him, and was indeed no mean genius:  Pope somewhere calls him an enthusiast in poetry.  He likewise translated the Odyssey, and the Battle of Frogs and Mice, which were published