Fourth, Observations on the Provinces united, and the state of France, printed London 1631.

Sir Thomas was about 32 years old when he was murthered, and is said to have possessed an accuteness, and strength of parts that was astonishing; and some have related that he was proud of his abilities, and over-bearing in company; but as there is no good authority for the assertion, it is more agreeable to candour to believe him the amiable knight Winstanley draws him; as it seldom happens that a soul formed for the noble quality of friendship is haughty and insolent.  There is a tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury wrote by the late Richard Savage, son of earl Rivers, which was acted in 1723, (by what was then usually called The Summer Company) with success; of which we shall speak more at large in the life of that unfortunate gentleman.

[Footnote 1:  Wood Athen.  Oxon.]

[Footnote 2:  Winst. ubi supra.]

[Footnote 3:  Winst. ubi supra.]

* * * * *

JOHN MARSTEN.

There are few things on record concerning this poet’s life.  Wood says, that he was a student in Corpus-Christi College, Oxon; but in what country he was born, or of what family descended, is no where fixed.  Mr. Langbain says, he can recover no other information of him, than what he learned from the testimony of his bookseller, which is, “That he was free from all obscene speeches, which is the chief cause of making plays odious to virtuous and modest persons; but he abhorred such writers and their works, and professed himself an enemy to all such as stuffed their scenes with ribaldry, and larded their lines with scurrilous taunts, and jests, so that whatsoever even in the spring of his years he presented upon the private and public theatre, in his autumn and declining age he needed not to to be ashamed of.”  He lived in friendship with the famous Ben Johnson, as appears by his addressing to his name a tragi-comedy, called Male-Content:  but we afterwards find him reflecting pretty severely on Ben, on account of his Cataline and Sejanus, as the reader will find on the perusal of Marsten’s Epistle, prefixed to Sophonisba.—­“Know, says he, that I have not laboured in this poem, to relate any thing as an historian, but to enlarge every thing as a poet.  To transcribe authors, quote authorities, and to translate Latin prose orations into English blank verse, hath in this subject been the least aim of my studies.”——­Langbain observes, that none who are acquainted with the works of Johnson can doubt that he is meant here, if they will compare the orations in Salust with those in Cataline.  On what provocation Marsten thus censured his friend is unknown, but the practice has been too frequently pursued, so true is it, as Mr. Gay observes of the wits, that they are oft game cocks to one another, and sometimes verify the couplet.

  That they are still prepared to praise or to abhor
  us,
  Satire they have, and panegyric for us.——­