To those that seem judicial Perusers.

Know, I hate to affect too much obscurity and harshness, because they profit no sense. To note vices, so that no man can understand them, is as fond as the French execution in picture. Yet there are some (too many) that think nothing good that is so courteous as to come within their reach. Terming all satires bastard which are not palpable dark, and so rough writ that the hearing of them read would set a man’s teeth on edge; for whose unseasoned palate I wrote the first Satire, in some places too obscure, in all places misliking me. Yet when by some scurvy chance it shall come into the late perfumed fist of judicial Torquatus[426] (that, like some rotten stick in a troubled water, hath got a great deal of barmy[427] froth to stick to his sides), I know he will vouchsafe it some of his new-minted epithets (as real, intrinsicate, Delphic), when in my conscience he understands not the least part of it. But from thence proceeds his judgment. Persius is crabby, because ancient, and his jerks (being particularly given to private customs of his time) dusky. Juvenal (upon the like occasion) seems to our judgment gloomy. Yet both of them go a good seemly pace, not stumbling, shuffling. Chaucer is hard even to our understandings: who knows not the reason? how much more those old satires which express themselves in terms that breathed not long even in their days. But had we then lived, the understanding of them had been nothing hard. I will not deny there is a seemly decorum to be observed, and a peculiar kind of speech for a satire’s lips, which I can willinglier conceive than dare to prescribe; yet let me have the substance rough, not the shadow. I cannot, nay, I will not delude your sight with mists; yet I dare defend my plainness against the verjuice-face of the crabbed’st satirist that ever stuttered. He that thinks worse of my rhymes than myself, I scorn him, for he cannot: he that thinks better, is a fool. So favour me, Good Opinion, as I am far from being a Suffenus.[428] If thou perusest me with an unpartial eye, read on: if otherwise, know I neither value thee nor thy censure.

W. Kinsayder.

THE
SCOURGE OF VILLAINY.

I bear the scourge of just Rhamnusia,
Lashing the lewdness of Britannia.
Let others sing as their good genius moves,
Of deep designs, or else of clipping loves:
Fair fall them all, that with wit’s industry
Do clothe good subjects in true poesy;
But as for me, my vexèd thoughtful soul
Takes pleasure in displeasing sharp control.
Thou nursing mother of fair Wisdom’s lore,
Ingenuous Melancholy, I implore    10
Thy grave assistance: take thy gloomy seat,
Enthrone thee in my blood; let me entreat,
Stay his quick jocund skips, and force him run
A sad-paced course, until my whips be done.
Daphne, unclip thine arms from my sad brow;
Black cypress crown me, whilst I up do plow
The hidden entrails of rank villainy,
Tearing the veil from damn’d impiety.
Quake, guzzel dogs,[429] that live on putrid slime,
Skud from the lashes of my yerking rhyme.    20

SATIRE I.

Fronti nulla fides.

Marry, God forefend! Martius swears he’ll stab:
Phrygio, fear not, thou art no lying drab.
What though dagger-hack’d mouths of his blade swears
It slew as many as figures of years
Aquafortis eat in’t, or as many more
As methodist[430] Musus kill’d with hellebore
In autumn[431] last; yet he bears that male lie[432]
With as smooth calm as Mecho rivalry.
How ill his shape with inward form doth fage,[433]
Like Aphrogenia’s ill-yoked marriage!    10
Fond physiognomer, complexion
Guides not the inward disposition,
Inclines I yield; thou sayst law; Julia,  ⎫
Or Cato’s often-curst Scatinia,     ⎬
Can take no hold on simp’ring Lesbia. ⎭
True, not on her eye; yet alum oft doth blast
The sprouting bud that fain would longer last.
Chary Casca, right pure, or Rhodanus,
Yet each night drinks in glassy Priapus.[434]
Yon pine is fair, yet foully doth it ill    20
To his own sprouts; mark, his rank drops distill
Foul Naples’ canker[435] in their tender rind.
Woe worth, when trees drop in their proper kind!
Mistagogus, what means this prodigy?
When Hiadolgo speaks ’gainst usury,
When Verres rails ’gainst thieves, Milo doth hate
Murder, Clodius cuckolds, Marius the gate
Of squinting Janus shuts? Run beyond bound
Of Nil ultra, and hang me when one’s found
Will be himself. Had nature turn’d our eyes    30
Into our proper selves, these curious spies
Would be ashamed: Flavia would blush to flout
When Oppia calls Lucina help her out,
If she did think Lynceus did know her ill,
How nature art, how art doth nature spill.
God pardon me! I often did aver,
Quod gratis grate, the astronomer
An honest man; but I’ll do so no more.
His face deceived me; but now, since his whore
And sister are all one, his honesty    40
Shall be as bare as his anatomy,
To which he bound his wife. O, packstaff[436] rhymes!
Why not, when court of stars shall see these crimes?
Rods are in piss—ay, for thee, empirick,
That twenty grains of opium will not stick
To minister to babes. Here’s bloody days,
When with plain herbs Mutius more men slays
Than ere third Edward’s sword! Sooth, in our age,
Mad Coribantes need not to enrage
The people’s minds. You, Ophiogeni[437]    50
Of Hellespont, with wrangling villainy
The swoll’n world’s inly stung, then deign a touch,
If that your fingers can effect so much.
Thou sweet Arabian Panchaia,
Perfume this nasty age: smug Lesbia
Hath stinking lungs, although a simp’ring grace,
A muddy inside, though a surphuled[438] face.
O for some deep-searching Corycean,
To ferret out yon lewd Cinædian![439]
How now, Brutus, what shape best pleaseth thee?    60
All Protean forms, thy wife in venery,
At thy enforcement takes? Well, go thy way,
She may transform thee, ere thy dying day.
Hush, Gracchus hears, that hath retail’d more lies,
Broachèd more slanders, done more villainies,
Than Fabius’ perpetual golden coat
(Which might have Semper idem for a mott)
Hath been at feasts, and led the measuring[440]
At court, and in each marriage revelling;
Writ Palæphatus’[441] comment on those dreams    70
That Hylus takes, ’midst dung-pit reeking steams
Of Athos’ hot-house. Gramercy, modest smile,
Chremes asleep! Paphia, sport the while.
Lucia, new set thy ruff; tut, thou art pure,
Canst thou not lisp “good brother,” look demure?
Fie, Gallus, what, a sceptic Pyrrhonist,
When chaste Dictynna breaks the zonelike twist?
Tut, hang up hieroglyphics. I’ll not feign,
Wresting my humour from his native strain.

SATIRE II.

Difficile est Satiram non scribere.—Juve.

I cannot hold, I cannot, I, endure
To view a big-womb’d foggy cloud immure
The radiant tresses of the quick’ning sun:
Let custards quake,[442] my rage must freely run.
Preach not the Stoic’s patience to me;
I hate no man, but men’s impiety.
My soul is vex’d; what power will resist,
Or dares to stop a sharp-fang’d satirist?
Who’ll cool my rage? who’ll stay my itching fist?
But I will plague and torture whom I list.    10
If that the threefold walls of Babylon
Should hedge my tongue, yet I should rail upon
This fusty world, that now dare put in ure[443]
To make JEHOVA but a coverture
To shade rank filth. Loose conscience is free
From all conscience, what else hath liberty?
As’t please the Thracian Boreas to blow,
So turns our airy conscience to and fro.
What icy Saturnist, what northern pate,
But such gross lewdness would exasperate?    20
I think the blind doth see the flame-god rise
From sister’s couch, each morning to the skies,
Glowing with lust. Walk but in dusky night
With Lynceus’ eyes, and to thy piercing sight
Disguisèd gods will show, in peasants’ shape,
Prest[444] to commit some execrable rape.
Here Jove’s lust-pander, Maia’s juggling son,
In clown’s disguise, doth after milkmaids run;
And, ’fore he’ll lose his brutish lechery,
The trulls shall taste sweet nectar’s surquedry.    30
There Juno’s brat forsakes Neries’ (?) bed
And like a swaggerer, lust-firèd,
Attended only with his smock-sworn page,
Pert Gallus, slyly slips along, to wage
Tilting encounters with some spurious seed
Of marrow pies and yawning oysters’ breed.
O damn’d!
Who would not shake a satire’s knotty rod,
When to defile the sacred seat of God
Is but accounted gentlemen’s disport?    40
To snort in filth, each hour to resort
To brothel-pits; alas! a venial crime,
Nay, royal, to be last in thirtieth slime!
Ay me! hard world for satirists begin
To set up shop, when no small petty sin
Is left unpurged! Once to be pursy fat,
Had wont because that life did macerate.
Marry, the jealous queen of air doth frown,
That Ganymede is up, and Hebe down.
Once Albion lived in such a cruel age    50
That[445] men did hold by servile villenage:
Poor brats were slaves of bondmen that were born,
And marted, sold: but that rude law is torn
And disannull’d, as too too[446] inhumane,
That lords o’er peasants should such service strain.
But now (sad change!) the kennel sink of slaves,
Peasant great lords, and servile service craves.
Bond-slave sons had wont be bought and sold;
But now heroës’ heirs (if they have not told
A discreet number[447] ’fore their dad did die)    60
Are made much of: how much from merchandie?
Tail’d, and retail’d, till to the pedlar’s pack
The fourth-hand ward-ware comes; alack, alack![448]
Would truth did know I lied: but truth and I
Do know that sense is born to misery.
Oh would to God this were their worst mischance,
Were not their souls sold to dark ignorance!
Fair godness is foul ill, if mischief’s wit
Be not repress’d from lewd corrupting it.
O what dry brain melts not sharp mustard rhyme,    70
To purge the snottery of our slimy time!
Hence, idle “Cave,” vengeance pricks me on,
When mart is made of fair religion.
Reform’d bald Trebus swore, in Romish quire,
He sold God’s essence for a poor denier.[449]
The Egyptians adorèd onions,
To garlic yielding all devotions.
O happy garlic, but thrice happy you,
Whose scenting gods in your large gardens grew!
Democritus, rise from thy putrid slime,    80
Sport at the madness of that hotter clime,
Deride their frenzy, that for policy
Adore wheat dough as real deity.
Almighty men, that can their Maker make,
And force his sacred body to forsake
The cherubins, to be gnawn actually,
Dividing individuum really;
Making a score of gods with one poor word.
Ay, so I thought, in that you could afford
So cheap a pennyworth. O ample field,    90
In which a satire may just weapon wield
But I am vex’d, when swarms of Julians
Are still manured by lewd precisians,
Who, scorning Church-rites, take the symbol up
As slovenly as careless courtiers slup
Their mutton gruel! Fie! who can withhold,
But must of force make his mild muse a scold,
When that he grievèd sees, with red vex’d eyes,
That Athens’ ancient large immunities
Are eyesores to the Fates! Poor cells forlorn!    100
Is’t not enough you are made an abject scorn
To jeering apes, but must the shadow too
Of ancient substance be thus wrung from you!
O split my heart, lest it do break with rage,
To see th’ immodest looseness of our age!
Immodest looseness? fie, too gentle word,
When every sign can brothelry afford:
When lust doth sparkle from our females’ eyes,
And modesty is roosted in the skies!
Tell me, Galliottæ, what means this sign,    110
When impropriate gentles will turn Capuchine?
Sooner be damn’d! O, stuff satirical!
When rapine feeds our pomp, pomp ripes our fall;
When the guest trembles at his host’s swart look;
The son doth fear his stepdame, that hath took
His mother’s place for lust; the twin-born brother
Maligns his mate, that first came from his mother;
When to be huge, is to be deadly sick;
When virtuous peasants will not spare to lick
The devil’s tail for poor promotion;    120
When for neglect, slubber’d Devotion
Is wan with grief; when Rufus yawns for death
Of him that gave him undeservèd breath;
When Hermus makes a worthy question,
Whether of right,[450] as paraphernalion,
A silver piss-pot[451] fits his lady dame,
Or it’s too good—a pewter best became;
When Agrippina poisons Claudius’ son,
That all the world to her own brat might run;
When the husband gapes that his stale wife would die
That he might once be in by courtesy;    131
The big-paunch’d wife longs for her loath’d mate’s death,
That she might have more jointures here on earth;
When tenure for short years (by many a one)
Is thought right good be[452] turn’d forth Littleton,
All to be heady, or freehold at least,
When ’tis all one, for long life be a beast,
A slave, as have a short-term’d tenancy;
When dead’s the strength of England’s yeomanry;
When inundation of luxuriousness    140
Fats all the world with such gross beastliness:—
Who can abstain? What modest brain can hold,
But he must make his shame-faced muse a scold?

SATIRE III.

Redde, age, quæ deinceps risisti.

It’s good be wary, whilst the sun shines clear
(Quoth that old chuff that may dispend by year
Three thousand pound), whilst he of good pretence
Commits himself to Fleet, to save expense.
No country’s Christmas—rather tarry here,
The Fleet is cheap, the country hall too dear.
But, Codrus, hark! the world expects to see
Thy bastard heir rot there in misery.
What! will Luxurio keep so great a hall
That he will prove a bastard in his fall?    10
No; “Come[453] on five! St. George, by Heaven, at all!”
Makes his catastrophe right tragical!
At all? till nothing’s left! Come on, till all comes off,
Ay, hair and all! Luxurio, left a scoff
To leprous filths! O stay, thou impious slave,
Tear not the lead from off thy father’s grave
To stop base brokeage!—sell not thy father’s sheet—
His leaden sheet, that strangers’ eyes may greet
Both putrefaction of thy greedy sire
And thy abhorrèd viperous desire!    20
But wilt thou needs, shall thy dad’s lacky brat
Wear thy sire’s half-rot finger in his hat?
Nay, then, Luxurio, waste in obloquy,
And I shall sport to hear thee faintly cry,
“A die, a drab, and filthy broking knaves,
Are the world’s wide mouths, all-devouring graves.”
Yet Samus keeps a right good house, I hear—
No, it keeps him, and free’th him from chill fear
Of shaking fits. How, then, shall his smug wench,
How shall her bawd (fit time) assist her quench    30
Her sanguine heat? Lynceus, canst thou scent?
She hath her monkey and her instrument
Smooth fram’d at Vitrio. O grievous misery!
Luscus hath left his[454] female luxury;
Ay, it left him! No, his old cynic dad
Hath forc’d him clean forsake his Pickhatch[455] drab.
Alack, alack! what peace of lustful flesh
Hath Luscus left, his Priape to redress?
Grieve not, good soul, he hath his Ganymede,
His perfumed she-goat, smooth-kemb’d and high fed.    40
At Hogson[456] now his monstrous love he feasts,
For there he keeps a bawdy-house of beasts.
Paphus, let Luscus have his courtezan,
Or we shall have a monster of a man.
Tut! Paphus now detains him from that bower,
And clasps him close within his brick-built tower.
Diogenes,[457] thou art damn’d for thy lewd wit,
For Luscus now hath skill to practise it.
Faith, what cares he for fair Cinædian boys,
Velvet-caped[458] goats, Dutch mares? Tut! common toys!
Detain them all on this condition,    51
He may but use his cynic friction.
O now, ye male stews, I can give pretence
For your luxurious incontinence.
Hence, hence, ye falsèd seeming patriots,
Return not with pretence of salving spots,
When here ye soil us with impurity,
And monstrous filth of Doway seminary.
What, though Iberia yield you liberty,
To snort in sauce of Sodom villainy?    60
What, though the blooms of young nobility,
Committed to your Rhodon’s custody,
Ye, Nero-like, abuse? yet ne’er approach
Your new St. Omer’s[459] lewdness here to broach;
Tainting our towns and hopeful academes
With your lust-baiting, most abhorrèd means.
Valladolid, our Athens, ’gins to taste
Of thy rank filth. Camphire and lettuce chaste[460]
Are clean cashier’d; now Sophi ringoes eat,
Candied potatoes are Athenians’ meat.    70
Hence, holy thistle, come sweet marrow-pie,
Enflame our backs to itching luxury.
A crab’s[461] baked guts, a lobster’s butter’d thigh,
I hear them swear is blood for venery.
Had I some snout-fair[462] brats, they should endure
The new-found Castilion calenture
Before some pedant tutor, in his bed,
Should use my frie like Phrygian Ganymede.
Nay, then, chaste cells, when greasy Aretine,
For his rank fico,[463] is surnamed divine;    80
Nay, then, come all ye venial scapes to me,
I dare well warrant you’ll absolvèd be.
Rufus, I’ll term thee but intemperate—
I will not once thy vice exaggerate—
Though that each hour thou lewdly swaggerest,
And at the quarter-day pay’st interest
For the forbearance of thy chalkèd score;
Though that thou keep’st a tally with thy whore:
Since Nero keeps his mother Agrippine,
And no strange lust can satiate[464] Messaline.    90
Tullus, go scotfree; though thou often bragg’st
That, for a false French crown thou vaulting hadst;
Though that thou know’st, for thy incontinence,
Thy drab repaid thee true French pestilence.
But tush! his boast I bear, when Tegeran
Brags that he foists his rotten courtezan
Upon his heir, that must have all his lands,
And them hath join’d in Hymen’s sacred bands.
I’ll wink at Robrus, that for vicinage
Enters common on his next neighbour’s stage;    100
When Jove maintains his sister and his whore,
And she incestuous, jealous evermore
Lest that Europa on the bull should ride;
Woe worth, when beasts for filth are deified!
Alack, poor rogues! what censor interdicts
The venial scapes of him that purses picks?
When some sly golden-slopp’d Castilio
Can cut a manor’s strings at primero?
Or with a pawn shall give a lordship mate,
In statute-staple[465] chaining fast his state?    110
What academic starved satirist
Would gnaw reez’d[466] bacon, or, with ink-black fist,
Would toss each muck-heap for some outcast scraps
Of half-dung bones, to stop his yawning chaps?
Or, with a hungry, hollow, half-pined jaw
Would once a thrice-turn’d bone-pick’d subject gnaw,
When swarms of mountebanks and banditti,
Damn’d Briareans, sinks of villainy,
Factors for lewdness, brokers for the devil,
Infect our souls with all-polluting evil?    120
Shall Lucia scorn her husband’s lukewarm bed
(Because her pleasure, being hurrièd
In jolting coach, with glassy instrument,
Doth far exceed the Paphian blandishment),
Whilst I (like to some mute Pythagoran)
Halter my hate, and cease to curse and ban
Such brutish filth? Shall Matho raise his fame
By printing pamphlets in another’s name,
And in them praise himself, his wit, his might,
All to be deem’d his country’s lanthorn-light?    130
Whilst my tongue’s tied with bonds of blushing shame,
For fear of broaching my concealèd name?
Shall Balbus, the demure Athenian,
Dream of the death of next vicarian,
Cast his nativity, mark his complexion,
Weigh well his body’s weak condition,
That, with gilt sleight, he may be sure to get
The planet’s place when his dim shine shall set?
Shall Curio streak[467] his limbs on his day’s couch,
In summer bower, and with bare groping touch    140
Incense his lust, consuming all the year
In Cyprian dalliance, and in Belgic cheer?
Shall Faunus spend a hundred gallions
Of goat’s pure milk to lave his stallions,
As much rose-juice? O bath! O royal, rich,
To scour Faunus and his salt-proud bitch.
And when all’s cleans’d, shall the slave’s inside stink
Worse than the new cast slime of Thames ebb’d brink,
Whilst I securely let him over-slip,
Ne’er yerking him with my satiric whip?    150
Shall Crispus with hypocrisy beguile,
Holding a candle to some fiend a while—
Now Jew, then Turk, then seeming Christian,
Then Atheist, Papist, and straight Puritan;
Now nothing, anything, even what you list,
So that some gilt[468] may grease his greedy fist?
Shall Damas use his third-hand ward as ill
As any jade that tuggeth in the mill?
What, shall law, nature, virtue be rejected,
Shall these world-arteries be soul-infected    160
With corrupt blood, whilst I shall Martia task,
Or some young Villius all in choler ask
How he can keep a lazy waiting-man,
And buy a hood, and silver-handled fan,
With forty pound? Or snarl at Lollius’ son,
That with industrious pains hath harder won
His true-got worship and his gentry’s name
Than any swineherd’s brat that lousy came
To luskish[469] Athens and, with farming pots,
Compiling beds, and scouring greasy spots,    170
By chance (when he can, like taught parrot, cry
“Dearly belov’d,” with simpering gravity)
Hath got the farm of some gelt[470] vicary,
And now, on cock-horse, gallops jollily;
Tickling, with some stol’n stuff, his senseless cure,
Belching lewd terms ’gainst all sound literature?
Shall I with shadows fight, task bitterly
Rome’s filth, scraping base channel roguery,
Whilst such huge giants shall affright our eyes
With execrable, damn’d inpieties?    180
Shall I find trading Mecho never loath
Frankly to take a damning perjured oath?
Shall Furia broke her sister’s modesty,
And prostitute her soul to brothelry?
Shall Cossus make his well-faced wife a stale,[471]
To yield his braided[472] ware a quicker sale?
Shall cock-horse, fat-paunch’d Milo stain whole stocks
Of well-born souls with his adultering spots?
Shall broking panders suck nobility,
Soiling fair stems with foul impurity?    190
Nay, shall a trencher-slave extenuate
Some Lucrece rape, and straight magnificate
Lewd Jovian lust, whilst my satiric vein
Shall muzzled be, not daring out to strain
His tearing paw? No, gloomy Juvenal,
Though to thy fortunes I disastrous fall.