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IN DACUM. XLV. - 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 DACUM. XLV.

  • Dacus,4 with some good colour and pretence,
  • Terms his love's beauty “silent eloquence;”
  • For she doth lay more colours on her face
  • Than ever Tully us'd his speech to grace.

[4]Dyce shows that Samuel Daniel is meant by Dacus (who has already been ridiculed in Ep. xxx.). In Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond (1592) are the lines —

  • “Ah, beauty, syren, faire enchanting good,
  • Sweet silent rhetorique of perswading eyes,
  • Dumb eloquence, whose power doth move the blood
  • More than the words or wisedome of the wise,” &c.



Perhaps there is an allusion to this epigram in Marston's fourth satire:—

  • “What, shall not Rosamond or Gaveston
  • Ope their sweet lips without detraction?
  • But must our modern critticks envious eye
  • Seeme thus to quote some grosse deformity,
  • Where art not error shineth in their stile,
  • But error and no art doth thee beguile?”