70

His bonnet vail'd, ere ever I could think,
Th' unruly wind blows off his periwink.
He lights and runs, and quickly hath him sped
To overtake his over-running head.

The sportful wind, to mock the headless man, Tosses apace his pitch'd Rogerian,

And straight it to a deeper ditch hath blown :
There must my yonker fetch his waxen crown.
I look'd and laugh'd, whiles, in his raging mind,
He curst all courtesy and unruly wind.

I look'd and laugh'd, and much I marvelled,
To see so large a causeway in his head;
And me bethought that when it first begon,
'Twas some shroad autumn that so bared the bone.
Is't not sweet pride then, when the crowns must shade
With that which jerks the hams of every jade,
Or floor-strew'd locks from off the barber's shears?
But waxen crowns well 'gree with borrow'd hairs.

SATIRE VII*. BOOK III.

SEEST thou how gaily my young master goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side;
And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide?
"Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he dined to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humfrày.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier.
And open house, haunted with great resort;
Long service mix'd with musical disport.
Many fair yonker with a feather'd crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost,
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touch'd no meat of all this live-long day.
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seem'd sunk from very hollowness,
But could he have (as I did it mistake)

So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt,
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip?
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain,
His grandame could have lent with lesser pain?

Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore, Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.

His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head, One lock amazon-like dishevelled,

As if he meant to wear a native cord,

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard both lip and chin;
His linen collar labyrinthian set,
Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human show?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.
Lik'st a straw scare-crow in the new-sown field,
Rear'd on some stick, the tender corn to shield;
Or if that semblance suit not every deal,
Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel.

*

*

*

SATIRE VIt. BOOK IV. Quid placet ergo?

*

I wor not how the world's degenerate,
That men or know or like not their estate :
Out from the Gades up to th' eastern morn,
Not one but holds his native state forlorn.
When comely striplings wish it were their chance
For Cænis' distaff to exchange their lance,
And wear curl'd periwigs, and chalk their face,
And still are poring on their pocket-glass.
Tired with pinn'd ruffs and fans, and partlet strips
And busks and verdingales about their hips ;
And tread on corked stilts a prisoner's pace,
And make their napkin for their spitting-place,
And gripe their waist within a narrow span :
Fond Cænis, that wouldst wish to be a man!
Whose mannish housewives like their refuse state,
And make a drudge of their uxorious mate,
Who like a cot-queen freezeth at the rock,
Whiles his breech'd dame doth man the foreign stock.
Is't not a shame to see each homely groom
Sit perched in an idle chariot room,

That were not meet some pannel to bestride,
Surcingled to a galled hackney's hide?
Each muck-worm will be rich with lawless gain,
Although he smother up mows of seven years' grain,
And hang'd himself when corn grows cheap again;
Although he buy whole harvests in the spring,
And foist in false strikes to the measuring,
Although his shop be muffled from the light,
Like a day dungeon, or Cimmerian night;
Nor full nor fasting can the carle take rest,
While his george-nobles rusten in his chest ;

The general scope of this satire, as its motto denotes, is directed against the discontent of human beings with their respective conditions. It paints the ambition of the youth to become a man, of the muckworm to be rich, of the rustic to become a soldier, of the rhymer to appear in print, and of the brain-sick reader of foreign wonders to become a traveller.-E.

He sleeps but once, and dreams of burglary,
And wakes, and casts about his frighted eye,
And gropes for thieves in every darker shade;
And if a mouse but stir, he calls for aid.
The sturdy ploughman doth the soldier see,
All scarf'd with pied colours to the knee,
Whom Indian pillage hath made fortunate,
And now he 'gins to loath his former state;
Now doth he inly scorn his Kendal-green,
And his patch'd cockers now despised been;
Nor list he now go whistling to the car,
But sells his team, and fetleth to the war.
O war! to them that never tried thee, sweet!
When his dead mate falls groveling at his feet,
And angry bullets whistlen at his ear,
And his dim eyes see nought but death and drear.
O happy ploughman! were thy weal well known :
O happy all estates, except his own!
Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent,
If he can live to see his name in print,
Who, when he is once fleshed to the press,
And sees his hansell have such fair success,
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail,
He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sail,
Nor then can rest, but volumes up bodged rhymes,
To have his name talked of in future times.
The brain-sick youth, that feeds his tickled ear
With sweet-sauced lies of some false traveller,
Which hath the Spanish Decades read awhile,
Or whetstone leasings of old Mandeville,

Now with discourses breaks his midnight sleep
Of his adventures through the Indian deep,
Of all their massy heaps of golden mine,
Or of the antique tombs of Palestine,
Or of Damascus' magic wall of glass,
Of Solomon his sweating piles of brass,
Of the bird rue that bears an elephant,
Of mermaids that the southern seas do haunt,
Of headless men, of savage cannibals,
The fashions of their lives and governals;
What monstrous cities there erected be,
Cairo, or the city of the Trinity;
Now are they dunghill cocks that have not seen
The bordering Alps, or else the neighbour
Rhine:

And now he plies the news-full Grasshopper,
Of voyages and ventures to inquire.

His land mortgaged, he sea-beat in the way,
Wishes for home a thousand sighs a day;
And now he deems his home-bred fare as leaf
As his parch'd biscuit, or his barrell'd beef.
'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,
O let me lead an academic life;

Was a native of Oxfordshire, and was born, as Mr. Ellis conjectures, in 1558. He left the university of Oxford without a degree, and came to London, where he pursued the business of an attorney of the common pleas. Scott, the poet of Amwell, discovered that he had been buried in the church of that parish in 1609, having died suddenly in the night-time.*

His "Albion's England" was once exceedingly popular. Its publication was at one time interdicted by the Star-chamber, for no other reason that can now be assigned, but that it contains some love-stories more simply than delicately related. His contemporaries compared him to Virgil, whom he certainly did not make his

To know much, and to think for nothing, know
Nothing to have, yet think we have enow. ;
In skill to want, and wanting seek for more ;
In weal nor want, nor wish for greater store.
Envy, ye monarchs, with your proud excess,
At our low sail, and our high happiness.

model. Dr. Percy thinks he rather resembled Ovid, to whom he is, if possible, still more unlike. His poem is, in fact, an enormous ballad on the history, or rather on the fables appendant to the history of England; heterogeneous, indeed, like the Metamorphoses, but written with an almost doggrel simplicity. Headley has rashly preferred his works to our ancient ballads; but with the best of these they will bear no comparison. Argentile and Curan has indeed some beautiful touches, yet that episode requires to be weeded of many lines to be read with unqualified pleasure; and through the rest of his stories we shall search in vain for the familiar magic of such ballads as Chevy Chase or Gill Morrice.

*

YET well he fosters for a time the damsel, that was grown

The fairest lady under heav'n, whose beauty being known,

A TAILOR, thought a man of upright dealing-
True, but for lying-honest, but for stealing,
Did fall one day extremely sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wond'rous trance ;
The fiends of hell, mustering in fearful manner,
Of sundry colour'd silks display'd a banner
Which he had stolen, and wish'd, as they did tell,
That he might find it all one day in hell.
The man, affrighted with this apparition,
Upon recovery grew a great precisian :
He bought a Bible of the best translation,
And in his life he show'd great reformation;

I grant, quoth she, it was too much, that you did love so much,

But whom your former could not move, your second love doth touch;

Thy twice-beloved Argentile submitteth her to thee,

And, for thy double love, presents herself a single fee;

In passion, not in person, changed; and I, my lord, am she ;

Thus sweetly surfeiting in joy, and silent for a

space,

When as the ecstasy had end, did tenderly embrace.

*

His son, the translator of Ariosto, was knighted on the field by the Earl of Essex, not much to the satisfaction of Elizabeth, who was sparing of such honours, and chose to confer them herself. He was created a knight of the Bath in the reign of James, and distinguished himself, to the violent offence of the high church party, by his zeal against the marriage of bishops.

He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,
He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly;
He vow'd to shun all company unruly,

And in his speech he used no oath; but truly
And zealously to keep the sabbath's rest,
His meat for that day on the eve was drest ;
And lest the custom which he had to steal
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeal,
He gives his journeyman a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large,
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.