That they fly buzzing round about my nostrils;
And, like so many screaming grasshoppers
Held by the wings, fill every ear with noise.
Names were certainly not necessary to portraits, where every day the
originals were standing by their side. This is the studied pleading
of a poet, who knows he is concealing the truth.
There is a passage in the play itself where Jonson gives the true
cause of "the tumult" raised against him. Picturing himself under the
character of his favourite Horace, he makes the enemies of Horace thus
describe him, still, however, preserving the high tone of poetical
superiority.
"Alas, sir, Horace is a mere sponge. Nothing but humours and
observations he goes up and down sucking from every society, and when
he comes home squeezes himself dry again. He will pen all he knows. He
will sooner lose his best friend than his least jest. What he once
drops upon paper against a man, lives eternally to upbraid him."
Such is the true picture of a town-wit's life! The age of Augustus was
much less present to Jonson than his own; and Ovid, Tibullus, and
Horace were not the personages he cared so much about, as "that
society in which," it was said, "he went up and down sucking in and
squeezing himself dry:" the formal lawyers, who were cold to his
genius; the sharking captains, who would not draw to save their own
swords, and would cheat "their friend, or their friend's friend,"
while they would bully down Ben's genius; and the little sycophant
histrionic, "the twopenny[390] tear-mouth, copper-laced scoundrel,
stiff-toe, who used to travel with pumps full of gravel after a blind
jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel-heads to an old
crackt trumpet;" and who all now made a party with some rival of
Jonson.
All these personages will account for "the tumult" which excites the
innocent astonishment of our author. These only resisted him by
"filling every ear with noise." But one of the "screaming grasshoppers
held by the wings," boldly turned on the holder with a scorpion's
bite; and Decker, who had been lashed in "The Poetaster," produced his
"Satiromastix, or the untrussing of the humorous Poet." Decker was a
subordinate author, indeed; but, what must have been very galling to
Jonson, who was the aggressor, indignation proved such an inspirer,
that Decker seemed to have caught some portion of Jonson's own genius,
who had the art of making even Decker popular; while he discovered
that his own laurel-wreath had been dexterously changed by the
"Satiromastix" into a garland of "stinging nettles."
In "The Poetaster," _Crispinus_ is the picture of one of those
impertinent fellows who resolve to become poets, having an equal
aptitude to become anything that is in fashionable request. When
Hermogenes, the finest singer in Rome, refused to sing, _Crispinus_
gladly seizes the occasion, and whispers the lady near him--"Entreat
the ladies to entreat me to sing, I beseech you." This character is
marked by a ludicrous peculiarity which, turning on an individual
characteristic, must have assisted the audience in the true
application. Probably Decker had some remarkable head of hair,[391]
and that his locks hung not like "the curls of Hyperion;" for the
jeweller's wife admiring among the company the persons of Ovid,
Tibullus, &c., _Crispinus_ acquaints her that they were poets, and,
since she admires them, promises to become a poet himself. The simple
lady further inquires, "if, when he is a poet, his looks will change?
and particularly if his hair will change, and be like those
gentlemen's?" "A man," observes _Crispinus_, "may be a poet, and yet
not change his hair." "Well!" exclaims the simple jeweller's wife, "we
shall see your cunning; yet if you can change your hair, I pray do
it."
In two elaborate scenes, poor Decker stands for a full-length.
Resolved to be a poet, he haunts the company of Horace: he meets him
in the street, and discovers all the variety of his nothingness: he
is a student, a stoic, an architect: everything by turns, "and
nothing long." Horace impatiently attempts to escape from him, but
_Crispinus_ foils him at all points. This affectionate admirer is
even willing to go over the world with him. He proposes an ingenious
project, if Horace will introduce him to Maecenas. _Crispinus_ offers
to become "his assistant," assuring him that "he would be content
with the next place, not envying thy reputation with thy patron;"
and he thinks that Horace and himself "would soon lift out of favour
Virgil, Varius, and the best of them, and enjoy them wholly to
ourselves." The restlessness of Horace to extricate himself from
this "Hydra of Discourse," the passing friends whom he calls on to
assist him, and the glue-like pertinacity of _Crispinus_, are richly
coloured.
A ludicrous and exquisitely satirical scene occurs at the trial of
_Crispinus_ and his colleagues. Jonson has here introduced an
invention, which a more recent satirist so happily applied to our
modern Lexiphanes, Dr. Johnson, for his immeasurable polysyllables.
Horace is allowed by Augustus to make _Crispinus_ swallow a certain
pill; the light vomit discharges a great quantity of hard matter, to
clear
His brain and stomach of their tumorous heats.
These consist of certain affectations in style, and adulteration of
words, which offended the Horatian taste: "the basin" is called
quickly for and _Crispinus_ gets rid easily of some, but others were
of more difficult passage:--
'Magnificate!' that came up somewhat hard!
_Crispinus._ 'O barmy froth----'
_Augustus._ What's that?
_Crispinus._ 'Inflate!--Turgidous!--and Ventositous'--
_Horace._ 'Barmy froth, inflate, turgidous, and ventosity are come
up.'
_Tibullus._ O terrible windy words!
_Gallus._ A sign of a windy brain.
But all was not yet over: "Prorumpt" made a terrible rumbling, as if
his spirit was to have gone with it; and there were others which
required all the kind assistance of the Horatian "light vomit." This
satirical scene closes with some literary admonitions from the grave
Virgil, who details to _Crispinus_ the wholesome diet to be observed
after his surfeits, which have filled
His blood and brain thus full of crudities.
Virgil's counsels to the vicious neologist, who debases the purity of
English diction by affecting new words or phrases, may too frequently
be applied.
You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms
To stuff out a peculiar dialect;
But let your matter run before your words.
And if at any time you chance to meet
Some Gallo-Belgick phrase, you shall not straight
Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment,
But let it pass; and do not think yourself
Much damnified, if you do leave it out
When not the sense could well receive it.
Virgil adds something which breathes all the haughty spirit of Ben: he
commands _Crispinus_:
------------Henceforth, learn
To bear yourself more humbly, nor to swell
Or breathe your insolent and idle spite
On him whose laughter can your worst affright:
and dismisses him
To some dark place, removed from company;
He will talk idly else after his physic.
"The Satiromastix" may be considered as a parody on "The Poetaster."
Jonson, with classical taste, had raised his scene in the court of
Augustus: Decker, with great unhappiness, places it in that of William
Rufus. The interest of the piece arises from the dexterity with which
Decker has accommodated those very characters which Jonson has
satirised in his "Poetaster." This gratified those who came every day
to the theatre, delighted to take this mimetic revenge on the arch
bard.
In Decker's prefatory address "To the World," he observes, "Horace
haled his Poetasters to the bar;[392] the Poetasters untrussed Horace:
Horace made himself believe that his Burgonian wit[393] might
desperately challenge all comers, and that none durst take up the
foils against him." But Decker is the Earl Rivers! He had been blamed
for the personal attacks on Jonson; for "whipping his fortunes and
condition of life; where the more noble reprehension had been of his
mind's deformity:" but for this he retorts on Ben. Some censured
Decker for barrenness of invention, in bringing on those characters in
his own play whom Jonson had stigmatised; but "it was not improper,"
he says, "to set the same dog upon Horace, whom Horace had set to
worry others." Decker warmly concludes with defying the Jonsonians.
"Let that mad dog Detraction bite till his teeth be worn to the
stumps; Envy, feed thy snakes so fat with poison till they burst;
World, let all thy adders shoot out their Hydra-headed forked stings!
I thank thee, thou true Venusian Horace, for these good words thou
givest me. _Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo._"
The whole address is spirited. Decker was a very popular writer,
whose numerous tracts exhibit to posterity a more detailed narrative
of the manners of the town in the Elizabethan age than is elsewhere to
be found.
In Decker's Satiromastix, Horace junior is first exhibited in his
study, rehearsing to himself an ode: suddenly the Pindaric rapture is
interrupted by the want of a rhyme; this is satirically applied to an
unlucky line of Ben's own. One of his "sons," Asinius Bubo, who is
blindly worshipping his great idol, or "his Ningle," as he calls him,
amid his admiration of Horace, perpetually breaks out into digressive
accounts of what sort of a man his friends take him to be. For one,
Horace in wrath prepares an epigram: and for _Crispinus_ and
_Fannius_, brother bards, who threaten "they'll bring your life and
death on the stage, as a bricklayer in a play," he says, "I can bring
a prepared troop of gallants, who, for my sake, shall distaste every
unsalted line in their fly-blown comedies." "Ay," replies Asinius,
"and all men of my rank!" _Crispinus_, Horace calls "a light
voluptuous reveller," and _Fannius_ "the slightest cobweb-lawn piece
of a poet." Both enter, and Horace receives them with all friendship.