PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

TO HIS KIND AND TRUE FRIEND,

EDWARD BLOUNT.

BLOUNT: I purpose to be blunt with you, and out of my dulness to encounter you with a dedication in memory of that pure elemental wit Chr. Marlowe, whose ghost or genius is to be seen walk the churchyard in, at the least, three or four sheets. Methinks you should presently look wild now, and grow humorously frantic upon the taste of it. Well, lest you should, let me tell you: this spirit was sometime a familiar of your own, Lucan's first book translated; which, in regard of your old right in it, I have raised in the circle of your patronage. But stay now, Edward, if I mistake not, you are to accommodate yourself with some few instructions, touching the property of a patron, that you are not yet possessed of; and to study them for your better grace as our gallants do fashions. First, you must be proud and think you have merit enough in you, though you are never so empty; then when I bring you the book take physic, and keep state, assign me a time by your man to come again, and afore the day be sure to have changed your lodging; in the mean time sleep little, and sweat with the invention of some pitiful dry jest or two which you may happen to utter, with some little, or not at all, marking of your friends when you

have found a place for them to come in at: or if by chance something has dropped from you worth the taking up, weary all that come to you with the often repetition of it; censure scornfully enough, and somewhat like a traveller; commend nothing, lest you discredit your (that which you would seem to have) judgment. These things, if you can mould yourself to them, Ned, I make no question but they will not become you. One special virtue in our patrons of these days I have promised myself you shall fit excellently, which is to give nothing; yes, thy love I will challenge as my peculiar object both in this, and, I hope, many more succeeding offices: Farewell, Í affect not the world should measure my thoughts to thee by a scale of this nature; leave to think good of me when I fall from thee.

Thine in all rights of perfect friendship,
THOM. THORpe.

Lucan's first Booke, translated line for line by Chr. Marlow. At London, Printed by P. Short, and are to be sold by Walter Burre, at the signe of the Flower de Luce in Paules Churchyard, 1600.

The present edition is reprinted from a copy in the Bodleian Library, (the only one we believe known to be extant) formerly belonging to Mr. Malone, who has made the following note on the fly leaf. "This is, I believe, the third specimen of blank verse in the English language. Lord Surrey's translation of the fourth Æneid of Virgil was the first. Turverville's translations from Ovid, I believe, the second."

THE

FIRST BOOK OF LUCAN,

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH.

WARS worse then civil on Thessalian plains,
And outrage-strangling law and people strong,
We sing, whose conquering swords their own breasts
launch'd,

Armies allied, the kingdom's league uprooted,
Th' affrighted world's force bent on public spoil,
Trumpets and drums, like deadly, threat'ning other,
Eagles alike display'd, darts answering darts.
Romans, what madness, what huge lust of war
Hath made barbarians drunk with Latin blood?
Now Babylon, (proud through our spoil) should stoop,
While slaughter'd Crassus' ghost walks unreveng'd.
Will ye wage war, for which you shall not triumph?
Aye me! O what a world of land and sea,

Might they have won whom civil broils have slain,
As far as Titan springs, where night dims heaven,-
Aye to the torrid zone where mid-day burns,
And where stiff winter, whom no spring resolves,
Fetters the Euxine sea with chains of ice!

Scythia and wild Armenia had been yok'd,