Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/148

 and verse; and had produced at least some bright graceful couplets and stanzas, among others hardly so definable. But to such a task he was now not likely to be called again; the turning-point of his fortunes as far as they bung upon the chance of patronage at court was the wedding-day of Carr.

As a favourite of the dead prince to whom his Homer had been ascribed in weighty and worthy verses, he may have been thought fit the year before to assist as the laureate of a day at the marriage which had been postponed by the death of the bride's brother in the preceding autumn; and some remembrance of the favour shown him by the noble youth for whom the country if not the court had good reason to mourn may have kept his name for awhile before the eyes of the better part of the courtiers, if a better part there were; but if ever, as we may conjecture, his fortune had passed through its hour of rise and its day of progress, we must infer that its decline was sudden and its fall irremediable.

In the same year which witnessed the unlucky venture of his Andromeda Chapman put forth a