player and play-writer, and who had ventured "to dally with interdicted subjects," should be obnoxious to the censure of such writers as this, or have his memory traduced, and his tragic exit accounted a special visitation of the wrath of God?
True it is that among the papers of Lord Keeper Puckering, in the Harleian collection[1] at the British Museum, a paper exists which may be considered evidence of his heretical, and as it styles them, "damnable" opinions. The writer, one Richard Bome, who appears to have taken a note of his conversation for the purpose of giving information against him, at the conclusion of his diabolical catalogue, says, "These things, with many other, shall by good and honest men be proved to be his opinions and common speeches, and that this Marloe per-
- ↑ No. 6853. This paper will be found printed at large in the splenetic Ritson's "Observations upon Warton's History of Poetry," 4to. 1782, p. 40.—It is a singular circumstance that Ritson, of all men, should have sought to substantiate the charges against Marlow! The very bitterness and excess of depravity in this document render the veracity of the writer suspicious.
