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IN DECIUM. XXV. - Christopher Marlowe, The Works of Christopher Marlowe, vol. 3 (Poems) [1598]

Edition used:

The Works of Christopher Marlowe, ed. A.H. Bullen (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885). Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Christopher Marlowe, 3 vols.

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IN DECIUM.6 XXV.

  • Audacious painters have Nine Worthies made,
  • But poet Decius, more audacious far,
  • Making his mistress march with men of war,
  • With title of “Tenth Worthy” doth her lade.
  • Methinks that gull did use his terms as fit,
  • Which term'd his love “a giant for her wit.”

[6]In this epigram, as Dyce showed, Davies is glancing at a sonnet o Drayton's “To the Celestiall Numbers” in Idea. Jonson told Drum-mond that “S J. Davies played in ane Epigrame on Draton's, who in a sonnet concluded his mistress might been the Ninth [sic] Worthy, and said he used a phrase like Dametas in Arcadia, who said, For wit his Mistresse might be a Gyant.”—Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, p. 15. (ed. Shakesp. Soc.)