----------------When I dip my pen
In distill'd roses, and do strive to drain
Out of mine ink all gall--
Mine enemies, with sharp and searching eyes,
Look through and through me.
And when my lines are measured out as straight
As even parallels, 'tis strange, that still,
Still some imagine that they're drawn awry.
The error is not mine, but in their eye,
That cannot take proportions.
To the querulous satirist, _Crispinus_ replies with dignified
gravity--
Horace! to stand within the shot of galling tongues
Proves not your guilt; for, could we write on paper
Made of these turning leaves of heaven, the clouds,
Or speak with angels' tongues, yet wise men know
That some would shake the head, though saints should sing;
Some snakes must hiss, because they're born with stings.
------------Be not you grieved
If that which you mould fair, upright, and smooth,
Be screw'd awry, made crooked, lame, and vile,
By racking comments.--
So to be bit it rankles not, for Innocence
May with a feather brush off the foul wrong.
But when your _dastard wit will strike at men
In corners, and in riddles fold the vices
Of your best friends_, you must not take to heart
If they take off all gilding from their pills,
And only offer you the bitter core.--
At this the galled Horace winces. _Crispinus_ continues, that it is in
vain Horace swears, that
--------------He puts on
The office of an executioner,
Only to strike off the swoln head of sin,
Where'er you find it standing. Say you swear,
And make damnation, parcel of your oath,
That when your lashing jests make all men bleed,
Yet you whip none--court, city, country, friends,
Foes, all must smart alike.--
_Fannius_, too, joins, and shows Ben the absurd oaths he takes, when
he swears to all parties, that he does not mean them. How, then, of
five hundred and four, five hundred
Should all point with their fingers in one instant,
At one and the same man?
Horace is awkwardly placed between these two friendly remonstrants, to
whom he promises perpetual love.
Captain Tucca, a dramatic personage in Jonson's Poetaster, and a copy
of his own Bobadil, whose original the poet had found at "Powles," the
fashionable lounge of that day, is here continued with the same
spirit; and as that character permitted from the extravagance of its
ribaldry, it is now made the vehicle for those more personal retorts,
exhibiting the secret history of Ben, which perhaps twitted the great
bard more than the keenest wit, or the most solemn admonition which
Decker could ever attain. Jonson had cruelly touched on Decker being
out at elbows, and made himself too merry with the histrionic tribe:
he, who was himself a poet, and had been a Thespian! The blustering
captain thus attacks the great wit:--"Do'st stare, my Saracen's head
at Newgate? I'll march through thy Dunkirk guts, for shooting jests at
me." He insists that as Horace, "that sly knave, whose shoulders were
once seen lapp'd in a player's old cast cloak," and who had reflected
on _Crispinus's_ satin doublet being ravelled out; that he should wear
one of _Crispinus's_ "old cast sattin suits," and that _Fannius_
should write a couple of scenes for his own "strong garlic comedies,"
and Horace should swear that they were his own--he would easily bear
"the guilt of conscience." "Thy Muse is but a hagler, and wears
clothes upon best be trust (a humorous Deckerian phrase)--thou'rt
_great_ in somebody's books for this!" Did it become Jonson to gibe at
the histrionic tribe, who is himself accused of "treading the stage,
as if he were treading mortar."[394] He once put up--"a supplication
to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou
couldst not set _a good face_ upon't. Thou hast forget how thou
ambled'st in leather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the highway; and
took'st mad Jeronimo's part, to get service among the mimics," &c.
Ben's person was, indeed, not gracious in the playfulness of love or
fancy. A female, here, thus delineates Ben:--
"That same Horace has the most ungodly face, by my fan; it looks for
all the world like a rotten russet-apple, when 'tis bruised. It's
better than a spoonful of cinnamon-water next my heart, for me to hear
him speak; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks and rants like the
poor fellows under Ludgate--to see his face make faces, when he reads
his songs and sonnets."
Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of his favourite,
Horace's--"You staring Leviathan! look on the sweet visage of Horace;
look, parboil'd face, look--he has not his face punchtfull of
eyelet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan."
Joseph Warton has oddly remarked that most of our poets were handsome
men. Jonson, however, was not poetical on that score; though his bust
is said to resemble Menander's.
Such are some of the personalities with which Decker recriminated.
Horace is thrown into many ludicrous situations. He is told that
"admonition is good meat." Various persons bring forward their
accusations; and Horace replies that they envy him,
Because I hold more worthy company.
The greatness of Ben's genius is by no means denied by his rivals;
and Decker makes _Fannius_ reply, with noble feelings, and in an
elevated strain of poetry:--
Good Horace, no! my cheeks do blush for thine,
As often as thou speakst so; where one true
And nobly virtuous spirit, for thy best part
Loves thee, I wish one, ten; even from my heart!
I make account, I put up as deep share
In any good man's love, which thy worth earns,
As thou thyself; we envy not to see
Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy.
No, here the gall lies;--We, that know what stuff
Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk
On which thy learning grows, and can give life
To thy, once dying, baseness; yet must we
Dance anticke on your paper--.
But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould,
I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold.
To which one adds, that "jewels, master Horace, must be hanged, you
know." This "Whip of Men," with Asinius his admirer, are brought to
court, transformed into satyrs, and bound together: "not lawrefied,
but nettle-fied;" crowned with a wreath of nettles.
With stinging-nettles crown his stinging wit.
Horace is called on to swear, after Asinius had sworn to give up his
"Ningle."
"Now, master Horace, you must be a more horrible swearer; for your
oath must be, like your wits, of many colours; and like a broker's
book, of many parcels."
Horace offers to swear till his hairs stand up on end, to be rid of
this sting. "Oh, this sting!" alluding to the nettles. "'Tis not your
sting of conscience, is it?" asks one. In the inventory of his oaths,
there is poignant satire, with strong humour; and it probably exhibits
some foibles in the literary habits of our bard.
He swears "Not to hang himself, even if he thought any man could write
plays as well as himself; not to bombast out a new play with the old
linings of jests stolen from the _Temple's Revels_; not to sit in a
gallery, when your comedies have entered their actions, and there make
vile and bad faces at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and
to make players afraid; not to venture on the stage, when your play is
ended, and exchange courtesies and compliments with gallants to make
all the house rise and cry--'That's Horace that's he that pens and
purges humours.' When you bid all your friends to the marriage of a
poor couple, that is to say, your Wits and Necessities--_alias_, a
poet's Whitsun-ale--you shall swear that, within three days after, you
shall not abroad, in bookbinders' shops, brag that your viceroys, or
tributary-kings, have done homage to you, or paid quarterage.
Moreover, when a knight gives you his passport to travel in and out to
his company, and gives you money for God's sake--you will swear not to
make scald and wry-mouthed jests upon his knighthood. When your plays
are misliked at court, you shall not cry Mew! like a puss-cat, and
say, you are glad you write out of the courtier's element; and in
brief, when you sup in taverns, amongst your betters, you shall swear
not to dip your manners in too much sauce; nor, at table, to fling
epigrams or play-speeches about you."