SATIRE IV.

Now doth Rhamnusia Adrastian,
Daughter of Night, and of the Ocean,
Provoke my pen. What cold Saturnian
Can hold, and hear such vile detraction?
Ye pines of Ida, shake your fair-grown height,
For Jove at first dash will with thunder fight;
Ye cedars, bend, ’fore lightning you dismay;
Ye lions tremble, for an ass doth bray.
Who cannot rail?—what dog but dare to bark
’Gainst Phœbe’s brightness in the silent dark?    10
What stinking scavenger (if so he will,
Though streets be fair) but may right easily fill
His dungy tumbrel? Sweep, pare, wash, make clean,
Yet from your fairness he some dirt can glean.
The windy-colic striv’d to have some vent,
And now ’tis flown, and now his rage is spent.
So have I seen the fuming waves to fret,
And in the end naught but white foam beget;
So have I seen the sullen clouds to cry,
And weep for anger that the earth was dry,    20
After their spite that all the hail-shot drops
Could never pierce the crystal water tops,
And never yet could work her more disgrace
But only bubble quiet Thetis’ face
Vain envious detractor from the good,
What cynic spirit rageth in thy blood?
Cannot a poor mistaken title ’scape,
But thou must that into thy tumbrel scrape?
Cannot some lewd immodest beastliness
Lurk and lie hid in just forgetfulness,    30
But Grillus’[388] subtile-smelling swinish snout
Must scent and grunt, and needs will find it out?
Come, dance, ye stumbling satyrs by his side,
If he list once the Sion Muse deride;
Ye Granta’s white nymphs, come, and with you bring
Some sillabub, whilst he doth sweetly sing
’Gainst Peter’s tears[389] and Mary’s moving moan,
And like a fierce enragèd boar doth foam
At sacred sonnets. O daring hardiment!
At Bartas’ sweet Semains[390] rail impudent;    40
At Hopkins, Sternhold, and the Scottish King,[391]
At all translators that do strive to bring
That stranger language to our vulgar tongue,
Spit in thy poison their fair acts among;
Ding[392] them all down from fair Jerusalem,
And mew them up in thy deserved Bedlam.
Shall Paynims honour their vile falsèd gods
With sprightly wits, and shall not we by odds
Far, far more strive with wit’s best quintessence
To adore the sacred ever-living essence?    50
Hath not strong reason moved the legists’ mind,
To say the fairest of all nature’s kind
The prince by his prerogative may claim?
Why may not then our souls, without thy blame
(Which is the best thing that our God did frame),
Devote the best part to his sacred name,
And with due reverence and devotion,
Honour his name with our invention?
No, poesy not fit for such an action,
It is defiled with superstition:    60
It honoured Baal, therefore pollute, pollute—
Unfit for such a sacred institute.
So have I heard a heretic maintain
The church unholy, where Jehovah’s name
Is now adored, because he surely knows
Sometimes[393] it was defiled with Popish shows;
The bells profane, and not to be endured,
Because to Popish rites they were inured.
Pure madness! Peace, cease to be insolent,
And be not outward sober, inly impudent.    70
Fie, inconsiderate! it grieveth me
An academic should so senseless be.
Fond censurer! why should those mirrors seem
So vile to thee, which better judgments deem
Exquisite then, and in our polish’d times
May run for senseful tolerable lines?
What, not mediocria firma from thy spite?
But must thy envious hungry fangs needs light
On Magistrates’ Mirror?[394] Must thou needs detract
And strive to work his ancient honour’s wrack?    80
What, shall not Rosamond[395] or Gaveston
Ope their sweet lips without detraction?
But must our modern critic’s envious eye
Seem thus to quote some gross deformity,
Where art, not error, shineth in their style,
But error, and no art, doth thee beguile?
For tell me, critic, is not fiction
The soul of poesy’s invention?
Is’t not the form, the spirit, and the essence,
The life, and the essential difference,    90
Which omni, semper, soli, doth agree
To heavenly descended poesy?
Thy wit God comfort, mad chirurgion.
What, make so dangerous an incision?—
At first dash whip away the instrument
Of poet’s procreation! Fie, ignorant!
When as the soul and vital blood doth rest,
And hath in fiction only interest,
What, Satire, suck the soul from poesy,
And leave him spriteless! O impiety!    100
Would ever any erudite pedant[396]
Seem in his artless lines so insolent?
But thus it is when petty Priscians
Will needs step up to be censorians.
When once they can in true scann’d verses frame
A brave encomium of good Virtue’s name;
Why, thus it is, when mimic apes will strive
With iron wedge the trunks of oaks to rive.
But see, his spirit of detraction
Must nibble at a glorious action.    110
Euge! some gallant spirit, some resolvèd blood,
Will hazard all to work his country’s good,
And to enrich his soul and raise his name,
Will boldly sail unto the rich Guiane:
What then? Must straight some shameless satirist,[397]
With odious and opprobrious terms insist
To blast so high resolv’d intention
With a malignant vile detraction?
So have I seen a cur dog in the street
Piss ’gainst the fairest posts he still could meet;    120
So have I seen the March wind strive to fade
The fairest hue that art or nature made:
So envy still doth bark at clearest shine,
And strives to stain heroic acts divine.
Well, I have cast thy water, and I see
Th’ art fall’n to wit’s extremest poverty,
Sure in consumption of the spritely part.
Go, use some cordial for to cheer thy heart,
Or else I fear that I one day shall see
Thee fall into some dangerous lethargy.    130
But come, fond braggart, crown thy brows with bay,
Intrance thyself in thy sweet ecstasy;
Come, manumit thy plumy pinion,
And scour the sword of elvish champion;
Or else vouchsafe to breathe in wax-bound quill,
And deign our longing ears with music fill;
Or let us see thee some such stanzas frame,
That thou mayst raise thy vile inglorious name.
Summon the Nymphs and Dryades to bring
Some rare invention, whilst thou dost sing    140
So sweet that thou mayst shoulder from above
The eagle from the stairs of friendly Jove,[398]
And lead sad Pluto captive with thy song,
Gracing thyself, that art obscured so long.
Come, somewhat say (but hang me when ’tis done)
Worthy of brass and hoary marble stone;
Speak, ye attentive swains, that heard him never,
Will not his pastorals[399] endure for ever?
Speak, ye that never heard him ought but rail,
Do not his poems bear a glorious sail?    150
Hath not he strongly justled from above
The eagle from the stairs of friendly Jove?
May be, may be; tut! ’tis his modesty;
He could, if that he would: nay, would, if could, I see.
Who cannot rail, and with a blasting breath
Scorch even the whitest lilies of the earth?
Who cannot stumble in a stuttering style,
And shallow heads with seeming shades beguile?
Cease, cease, at length to be malevolent
To fairest blooms of virtues eminent;    160
Strive not to soil the freshest hues on earth
With thy malicious and upbraiding breath.
Envy, let pines of Ida rest alone,
For they will grow spite of thy thunder-stone;
Strive not to nibble in their swelling grain
With toothless gums of thy detracting brain;
Eat not thy dam, but laugh and sport with me
At strangers’ follies with a merry glee.
Let’s not malign our kin. Then, satirist,
I do salute thee with an open fist.[400]    170

SATIRE V.

Parva magna, magna nulla.

Ambitious Gorgons, wide-mouth’d Lamians,[401]
Shape-changing Proteans, damn’d Briarians,
Is Minos dead, is Rhadamanth asleep,
That ye thus dare unto Jove’s palace creep?
What, hath Rhamnusia spent her knotted whip,
That ye dare strive on Hebe’s cup to sip?
Yet know Apollo’s quiver is not spent,
But can abate your daring hardiment.
Python is slain, yet his accursèd race
Dare look divine Astrea in the face;    10
Chaos return, and with confusion
Involve the world with strange disunion;
For Pluto sits in that adorèd chair
Which doth belong unto Minerva’s heir.
O hecatombe! O catastrophe![402]
From Midas’ pomp to Irus’ beggary!
Prometheus, who celestial fire
Did steal from heaven, therewith to inspire
Our earthly bodies with a senseful mind,
Whereby we might the depth of nature find,    20
Is ding’d[403] to hell, and vulture eats his heart,
Which did such deep philosophy impart
To mortal men; when thieving Mercury,
That even in his new-born infancy
Stole fair Apollo’s quiver and Jove’s mace,
And would have filch’d the lightning from his place,
But that he fear’d he should have burnt his wing
And sing’d his downy feathers’ new-come spring;
He that in ghastly shade of night doth lead
Our souls unto the empire of the dead;    30
When he that better doth deserve a rope
Is a fair planet in our horoscope,
And now hath Caduceus in his hand,
Of life and death that hath the sole command.
Thus petty thefts are paid and soundly whipt,
But greater crimes are slightly overslipt;
Nay, he’s a god that can do villany
With a good grace and glib facility.
The harmless hunter, with a ventrous eye,
When unawares he did Diana spy    40
Nak’d in the fountain, he became straightway
Unto his greedy hounds a wishèd prey,
His own delights taking away his breath,
And all ungrateful forced his fatal death
(And ever since hounds eat their masters clean,
For so Diana curst them in the stream).
When strong-back’d Hercules, in one poor night,
With great, great ease, and wond[e]rous delight,
In strength of lust and Venus’ surquedry,
Robb’d fifty wenches of virginity—    50
Far more than lusty Laurence[404]—yet, poor soul,
He with Actæon drinks of Nemis’[405] bowl:
When Hercules’ lewd act is registered,
And for his fruitful labour deified,
And had a place in heaven him assigned,
When he the world unto the world resigned.
Thus little scapes are deeply punishèd,
But mighty villains are for gods adored.
Jove brought his sister to a nuptial bed,
And hath an Hebe and a Ganymede,    60
A Leda, and a thousand more beside
His chaste Alcmena and his sister-bride,
Who ’fore his face was odiously defil’d,
And by Ixion grossly got with child:
This thunderer, that right vertuously
Thrust forth his father from his empery,
Is now the great monarcho of the earth,
Whose awful nod, whose all-commanding breath,
Shakes Europe’s ground-work; and his title makes[406]
As dread a noise as when a cannon shakes    70
The subtile air. Thus hell-bred villany
Is still rewarded with high dignity,
When Sisyphus, that did but once reveal
That this incestuous villain had to deal
In isle Phliunte with Ægina fair,[407]
Is damn’d to hell, in endless black despair
Ever to rear his tumbling stone upright
Upon the steepy mountain’s lofty height;
His stone will never now get greenish moss,
Since he hath thus incurred so great a loss    80
As Jove’s high favour. But it needs must be
Whilst Jove doth rule and sway the empery.
And poor Astrea’s fled into an isle,
And lives a poor and banishèd exile,
And there penn’d up, sighs in her sad lament,
Wearing away in pining languishment.
If that Silenus’ ass do chance to bray,
And so the satyrs’ lewdness doth bewray,
Let him for ever be a sacrifice;
Prick, spur, beat, load, for ever tyrannise    90
Over the fool. But let some Cerberus
Keep back the wife of sweet-tongued Orpheus,
Gnato[408] applauds the hound. Let that same child
Of night and sleep (which hath the world defiled
With odious railing) bark ’gainst all the work
Of all the gods, and find some error lurk
In all the graces; let his laver[409] lip
Speak in reproach of Nature’s workmanship;
Let him upbraid fair Venus, if he list,
For her short heel; let him with rage insist    100
To snarl at Vulcan’s man, because he was
Not made with windows of transparent glass,
That all might see the passions of his mind;
Let his all-blasting tongue great errors find
In Pallas’ house, because if next should burn,
It could not from the sudden peril turn;
Let him upbraid great Jove with luxury,
Condemn the heaven’s queen of jealousy:
Yet this same Stygian Momus must be praised,
And to some godhead at the least be raised.    110
But if poor Orpheus sing melodiously,
And strive with music’s sweetest symphony
To praise the gods, and unadvisedly
Do but o’er-slip one drunken deity,
Forthwith the bouzing Bacchus out doth send
His furious Bacchides, to be revenged;
And straight they tear the sweet musician,
And leave him to the dogs’ division.
Hebrus, bear witness of their cruelty,
For thou didst view poor Orpheus’ tragedy.    120
Thus slight neglects are deepest villany,
But blasting mouths deserve a deity.
Since Gallus slept, when he was set to watch
Lest Sol or Vulcan should Mavortius catch
In using Venus; since the boy did nap,
Whereby bright Phœbus did great Mars intrap,
Poor Gallus now (whilom to Mars so dear)
Is turnèd to a crowing chaunticlere;
And ever since, ’fore that the sun doth shine
(Lest Phœbus should with his all-piercing eyne    130
Descry some Vulcan), he doth crow full shrill,
That all the air with echoes he doth fill;
Whilst Mars, though all the gods do see his sin,
And know in what lewd vice he liveth in,
Yet is adored still, and magnified,
And with all honours duly worshipped.
Euge! Small faults to mountains straight are raised;
Slight scapes are whipt, but damnèd deeds are praised.
Fie, fie! I am deceived all this while,
A mist of errors doth my sense beguile;    140
I have been long of all my wits bereaven;
Heaven for hell taking, taking hell for heaven;
Virtue for vice, and vice for virtue still;
Sour for sweet, and good for passing ill.
If not, would vice and odious villany
Be still rewarded with high dignity?
Would damned Jovians be of all men praised,
And with high honours unto heaven raised?
’Tis so, ’tis so; riot and luxury
Are virtuous, meritorious chastity:    150
That which I thought to be damn’d hell-born pride,
Is humble modesty, and nought beside;
That which I deemèd Bacchus’ surquedry,
Is grave and staid, civil sobriety.
O then, thrice holy age, thrice sacred men,
’Mong whom no vice a satire can discern,
Since lust is turnèd into chastity,
And riot unto sad sobriety,
Nothing but goodness reigneth in our age,
And virtues all are join’d in marriage!    160
Here is no dwelling for impiety,
No habitation for base villany;
Here are no subject for reproof’s sharp vein;
Then hence, rude satire, make away amain,
And seek a seat where more impurity
Doth lie and lurk in still security!
Now doth my satire stagger in a doubt,
Whether to cease or else to write it out.
The subject is too sharp for my dull quill;
Some son of Maia, show thy riper skill;    170
For I’ll go turn my tub against the sun,
And wistly mark how higher planets run,
Contemplating their hidden motion.
Then on some Latmos with Endymion,
I’ll slumber out my time in discontent,
And never wake to be malevolent,
A beadle to the world’s impurity.
But ever sleep in still security.
If this displease the world’s wrong-judging sight,
It glads my soul, and in some better sprite    180
I’ll write again. But if that this do please,
Hence, hence, satiric Muse, take endless ease,
Hush now, ye band-dogs, bark no more at me,
But let me slide away in secrecy.

EPICTETUS.[410]

THE SCOURGE OF VILLAINY.

The Scovrge of Villanie. Three bookes of Satyres.
Persevs.
v v v Nec scompros [sic] metuentia carmina nec thus.

To[411] his most esteemed and best beloved Self dat dedicatque.

To Detraction I present my Poesy.

In Lectores prorsus indignos.

Fie, Satire, fie! shall each mechanic slave,
Each dunghill peasant, free perusal have
Of thy well-labour’d lines?—each[413] satin suit,
Each quaint fashion-monger, whose sole repute
Rests in his trim gay clothes, lie slavering,
Tainting thy lines with his lewd censuring?
Shall each odd puisne[414] of the lawyer’s inn,
Each barmy-froth, that last day did begin
To read his little, or his ne’er a whit,
Or shall some greater ancient, of less wit    10
(That never turn’d but brown tobacco leaves,
Whose senses some damn’d occupant[415] bereaves),
Lie gnawing on thy vacant time’s expense,
Tearing thy rhymes, quite altering the sense?
Or shall perfum’d Castilio censure thee,
Shall he o’erview thy sharp-fang’d poesy
(Who ne’er read further than his mistress’ lips),
Ne’er practised ought but some spruce cap’ring skips,
Ne’er in his life did other language use,
But “Sweet lady, fair mistress, kind heart, dear cuz”—
Shall this phantasma, this Coloss peruse,    21
And blast, with stinking breath, my budding muse?
Fie! wilt thou make thy wit a courtezan
For every broken handcraft’s artisan?
Shall brainless cittern-heads,[416] each jobbernoul,[417]
Pocket the very genius of thy soul?
Ay, Phylo, ay, I’ll keep an open hall,
A common and a sumptuous festival;
Welcome all eyes, all ears, all tongues to me,
Gnaw peasants on my scraps of poesy;    30
Castilios, Cyprians, court-boys, Spanish blocks,[418]
Ribanded[419] ears, Granado netherstocks,[420]
Fiddlers, scriveners, pedlars, tinkering knaves,
Base blue-coats,[421] tapsters, broad-cloth-minded slaves—
Welcome, i’faith; but may you ne’er depart
Till I have made your gallèd hides to smart.
Your gallèd hides? avaunt, base muddy scum,
Think you a satire’s dreadful sounding drum
Will brace itself, and deign to terrify
Such abject peasants’ basest roguery?    40
No, no, pass on, ye vain fantastic troop
Of puffy youths; know I do scorn to stoop
To rip your lives. Then hence, lewd nags, away,
Go read each post,[422] view what is play’d to-day,
Then to Priapus’ gardens.[423] You, Castilio,
I pray thee let my lines in freedom go,
Let me alone, the madams call for thee,
Longing to laugh at thy wit’s poverty.
Sirra livery cloak, you lazy slipper-slave,
Thou fawning drudge, what, wouldst thou satires have?    50
Base mind, away, thy master calls, be gone.
Sweet Gnato, let my poesy alone:
Go buy some ballad of the Fairy King,
And of the beggar wench[424] some roguy thing,
Which thou mayst chant unto the chamber-maid
To some vile tune, when that thy master’s laid.
But will you needs stay? am I forced to bear
The blasting breath of each lewd censurer?
Must naught but clothes, and images of men,
But spriteless trunks, be judges of thy pen?    60
Nay then, come all; I prostitute my muse,
For all the swarms of idiots to abuse.
Read all, view all; even with my full consent,
So you will know that which I never meant;
So you will ne’er conceive, and yet dispraise
That which you ne’er conceived, and laughter raise
Where I but strive in honest seriousness
To scourge some soul-polluting beastliness.
So you will rail, and find huge errors lurk
In every corner of my cynic work.    70
Proface,[425] read on, for your extrem’st dislikes
Will add a pinion to my praise’s flights.
O how I bristle up my plumes of pride,
O how I think my satire’s dignifi’d,
When I once hear some quaint Castilio,
Some supple-mouth’d slave, some lewd Tubrio,
Some spruce pedant, or some span-new-come fry
Of inns-o’-court, striving to vilify
My dark reproofs! Then do but rail at me,
No greater honour craves my poesy.    80