Oh, this damned trade of versifying
Has brought us all to hell for lying!
For writing what we do not think;
Merely to make the verse cry clink.
For rather than abuse the metre,
Black shall be white, Paul shall be Peter.
One time I called a lady, whore;
Which in my soul she was no more
Than I am; a brave lass, no beggar,
And true, as ever man laid leg o’er.
Not out of malice, Jove’s my witness,
But merely for the verses fitness.
“Now we’re all made,” said I, “if luck hold,”
And then I called a fellow cuckold;
Though the wife was (or I’ll be hanged)
As good a wench as ever twanged.
I was once plaguely put to’t;
This would not hit, that would not do’t;
At last, I circumcised (’tis true)
A Christian, and baptized a Jew.
Nay I’ve made Herod innocent
For rhyming to Long-Parliament:
Now to conclude, we are all damned ho,
For nothing but a game at crambo.
And for a little jingling pleasure,
Condemned to torments without measure:
Which is a little hard in my sense,
To fry thus for poetic licence.
’Tis not for sin of thought or deed,
But for bare sounds, and words we bleed:
While the cur Cerberus lies growling
In consort with our catterwowling.
So soon as he had done. “There is not in the world,” said I, “a more
ridiculous frenzy than yours, to be poetising in hell. The humour sticks
close sure, or the fire would have fetched it out.” “Nay,” cried a
devil, “these versifiers are a strange generation of buffoons. The time
that others spend in tears and groans for their sins and follies, these
wretches employ in songs and madrigals; and if they chance to light upon
the critical minute, and get a snap at a lady, all’s worth nothing,
unless the whole kingdom ring of it, in some miserable sing-song or
other, under the name forsooth of Phyllis, Chloris, Silvia, or the like:
and the goodly idol must be decked and dressed up with diamond, pearl,
rubies, musk, and amber, and both the Indies are too little to furnish
eyes, lips, and teeth for this imaginary goddess. And yet after all this
magnificence and bounty, it would put the poor devil’s credit upon the
stretch, to take up an old petticoat in Long Lane, or a pair of
cast-shoes, at the next cobbler’s. Beside, we can give no account either
of their country or religion. They have Christian names, but most
heretical souls; they are Arabians in their hearts: and in their
language, Gentiles; but to say the truth, they fall short of the right
Pagans in their manners.” If I stay here a little longer, (said I to
myself) this spiteful devil will hit me over the thumbs ere I’m aware;
for I was half jealous, that he took me already for a piece of a poet.
For fear of being discovered, I went my way, and my next visit was to the
impertinent devotees, whose very prayers are made up of impiety and
extravagance. Oh! what sighing was there, and sobbing! groaning and
whining! Their tongues were tied up to a perpetual silence; their souls
drooping, and their ears condemned to hear eternally the hideous cries
and reproaches of a wheezing devil, greeting them after this manner.
“Oh, ye impudent and profane abusers of prayer and holy duties! that
treat the Lord of heaven and earth in His own house, with less respect
than ye would do a merchant upon the Change, sneaking into a corner with
your execrable petitions, for fear of being overheard by your neighbours;
and yet without any scruple at all, ye can expose and offer them up to
that Eternal Purity! shameless wretches that ye are! ‘Lord,’ says one,
‘take the old man, my father, to Thyself, I beseech Thee, that I may have
his office and estate. Oh, that this uncle of mine would but march off!
There’s a fat Bishopric, and a good Deanery; I would the devil had the
incumbent so I had the dignity. Now for a lusty pot of guineas, or a
lucky hand at dice if it be Thy pleasure, and then I would not doubt of
good matches for my children. Lord, make me His Majesty’s favourite and
Thy servant; that I may get what’s convenient, and keep what I have
gotten. Grant me this, and I do here engage myself, to entertain six
blue-coats, and bind them out to good trades; to set up a lecture for
every day of the week; to give one-third part of my clear gains to
charitable uses; and another, toward the repairing of Paul’s; and to pay
all honest debts, so far as may stand with my private convenience.’
Blind and ridiculous madness! for dust and ashes thus to reason and
condition with the Almighty! for beggars to talk of giving, and obtrude
their vain and unprofitable offerings upon the inexhaustible fountain of
riches and bounty! To pray for those things as blessings, which are
commonly showered down upon us for our confusion and punishment. And
when, in case your wishes take effect, what becomes of all the sacred
vows and promises ye made, in storms, (perhaps) sickness or adversity? so
soon as ye have gained your port, recovered your health; or patched up a
broken fortune, you show yourselves, all of ye, a pack of cheats; your
vows and promises are not worth so many rushes: they are forgotten with
your dreams; and to keep a promise upon devotion, that you made out of
necessity, is no article of your religion. Why do ye not ask for peace
of conscience? Increase of grace? The aid of the Blessed Spirit? But
you are too much taken up with the things of this world, to attend those
spiritual advantages and treasures; and to consider, that the most
acceptable sacrifices and obligations you can make to the Almighty, are
purity of mind, an humble spirit, and a fervent charity. The Almighty
takes delight to be often called upon, that He may often pour down His
blessings upon His petitioners. But such is the corruption of human
nature, that men seldom think of Him, unless under afflictions; and
therefore it is that they are often visited; for by adversity they are
brought to the knowledge and exercise of their duty. I would now have
you consider, how little reason there is in your ordinary demands. Put
case you have your asking; what are you the better for the grant? since
it fails you at last; because you did not ask aright. When you die, your
estate goes to your children; and for their parts, you are scarce cold,
before you are forgotten. You are not to expect they should bestow much
upon works of charity; for if nothing went that way while you were
living, they’ll live after your example when you are dead. And, beside,
there’s no merit in the case.” At this word some of the poor creatures
were about to reply; but the devils had put barnacles upon their lips,
that hindered them.
From thence, I went to the witches and wizards; such as pretend to cure
man and beast by charms, words, amulets, characters: and these were all
burning alive. “These,” says a devil, “are a company of cozening rogues;
the most accursed villains in nature. If they help one man, they kill
another, and only remove the disease from a worse to a better: and yet
there’s no great clamour against them neither; for if the patient
recover, he’s well enough content, and the doctor gets both reputation
and reward for his pains. If he dies, his mouth is stopped, and forty to
one the next heir does him a good turn for the dispatch. So that, hit or
miss, all is well at last. If you enter into a debate with them about
their remedies, they’ll tell you, they learned the mystery of a certain
Jew; and there’s the original of the secret. Now to hear these quacks
give you the history of their cures, is beyond all the plays and farces
in the world. You shall have a fellow tell you of fifteen people that
were run clean through the body, and glad for a matter of three days to
carry their puddings in their hands; that in four-and-twenty hours he
made them as whole as fishes, and not so much as a scar for a remembrance
of the orifice. Ask him, when and where? you’ll find it some twelve
hundred leagues off, in a _terra incognita_, by the token, that at that
time he was physician in ordinary to a great prince that died about
five-and-twenty years ago.”
“Come, come,” cried a devil, “make an end of this visit, and you shall
see those now that Judas told you were ten times worse than himself.” I
went along with him, and he brought me to a passage into a great hall,
where there was a damned smell of brimstone, and a company of
match-makers, as I thought at first; but they proved afterward to be
alchymists, and the devils examining them upon interrogatories, who were
filthily put to’t, to understand their gibberish. Their talk was much of
the planetary metals; gold they called Sol; silver, Luna; tin, Jupiter;
copper, Venus. They had about them their furnaces, crucibles, coal,
bellows, clay, minerals, dung, man’s blood, powders, and alembics. Some
were calcining, others washing, here purifying, there separating. Fixing
what was volatile in one place, and rarefying what was fix in another.
Some were upon the work of transmutation, and fixing of mercury with
monstrous hammers upon an anvil. And after they had resolved the vicious
matter, and sent out the subtler parts, that they came to the coppel, all
went away in fume. Some again were in a hot dispute, what fuel was best;
and whether Raymund Lullius his fire, and no fire, could be anything else
than lime; or otherwise to be understood of the light effective of heat,
and not of the effective heat of fire. Others were making their entrance
upon the great work, after the hermetical method. Here they were
watching the progress of their operations, and making their observations
upon proportions and colour. While all the rest of these blind oracles
lay waiting for the recovery of the _materia prima_, till they brought
themselves to the last cast both of their lives and fortunes, and instead
of turning base metals and materials into gold, as they pretended, they
made the contrary inversion, and were glad at length to take up with
beggarly fools and false coiners. What a stir was there, with crying
out, ever and anon! “Look ye, look ye! the old father is got up again;
down with him, down with him;” what glossing and commenting upon the old
chymical text, that says, “Blessed be Heaven, that has ordered the most
excellent thing in nature out of the vilest.” “If so,” quoth one, “let’s
try if we can fetch the Philosopher’s Stone out of a common strumpet,
which is of all creatures undoubtedly the vilest.” And the word was no
sooner out, but a matter of three-and-twenty whores went to pot, but the
flesh was so cursedly mawmish and rotten, that they soon gave over the
thought of that projection. And then they entered upon a fresh
consultation, and concluded, _nemine contradicente_, that the
mathematicians, by that rule, were the only fit matter to work upon; as
being most damnably dry, (to say nothing of their divisions among and
against themselves) so that with one voice, they called for a parcel of
mathematicians, to the furnace, to begin the experiment. But a devil
came in just in the God-speed, and told them, “Gentlemen philosophers,”
says he, “if you would know the wretchedest and most contemptible thing
in the world, it is an alchymist: and we are of opinion, that you’ll make
as good philosopher’s stones as the mathematicians. However, for
curiosity’s sake, we’ll try for once.” And so he threw them all together
into a great caldron; and to say the truth, the poor snakes suffered very
contentedly; out of a desire, I suppose, to help on toward the perfecting
of the operation.
On the other side were a knot of astrologers, and one among the rest that
had studied chiromancy or palmistry, who took all the damned by the
hands, one after another. One he told, that it was as plain as the nose
on his face, that he was to go to the devil, for he perceived it by the
Mount of Saturn. “You,” says he to another, “have been a swindging
whore-master in your days; I see that by the Mount of Venus here, and by
her girdle.” And in short, every man’s destiny he read in his fist.
After him advanced another, creeping upon all four, with a pair of
compasses betwixt his teeth, his spheres and globes about him, his
Jacob’s staff before him, and his eyes upon the stars, as if he were
taking a height or making an observation. When he had gazed a while, up
he starts of a sudden, and, wringing his hands, “Good Lord,” says he,
“what an unlucky dog was I! If I had come into the world but one half
quarter of an hour sooner, I had been saved; for just then Saturn
shifted, and Mars was lodged in the house of life.” One that followed
him, bade his tormentors be sure he was dead; “for,” says he, “I am a
little doubtful of it myself; in regard that I had Jupiter for my
ascendant, and Venus in the house of life, and no malevolent aspect to
cross me. So that by the rules of astrology, I was to live, precisely, a
hundred years and one, two months, six days, four hours, and three
minutes.” The next that came up was a geomancer; one that reduced all
his skill to certain little points, and by them would tell you, as well
things past as to come: these points he bestowed at a venture, among
several unequal lines; some long, others shorter, like the fingers of a
man’s hand; and then, with a certain ribble-rabble of mysterious words,
he proceeds to his calculation, upon even or odd, and challenges the
whole world to allow him the most learned and infallible of the trade.
There were divers great masters of the science that followed him. As
Haly, Gerard, Bart’lemew of Parma, and one Toudin; a familiar friend, and
companion of the great Cornelius Agrippa, the famous conjurer, who though
he had but one soul was yet burning in four bodies. (I mean the four
damnable books he left behind him.) There was Trithemius too, with his
polygraphy and stenography; that had devils now, his belly-full, though
in his lifetime his complaint was, that he could never have enough of
their company; over against him was Cardan; but they could not set their
horses together, because of an old quarrel, whether was the more impudent
of the two. And there I saw Misaldus, tearing his beard, in rage, to
find himself pumped dry; and that he could not fool on, to the end of the
chapter. Theophrastus was there too, bewailing himself for the time he
had spent at the alchymist’s bellows. There was also the unknown author
of _Clavicula Solomonis_, and _The Hundred Kings of Spirits_, with the
composer of the book, _Adversus Omnia pericula Mundi_; Taysnerus too,
with his book of _Physiognomy_ and _Chiromancy_; and he was doubly
punished, first for the fool he was, and then for those he had made.
Though, to give the man his due, he knew himself to be a cheat, and that
he that gives a judgment upon the lines of a face takes but a very
uncertain aim. There were magicians, necromancers, sorcerers, and
enchanters innumerable, beside divers private boxes that were kept for
lords and ladies; and other personages of great quality, that put their
trust in these disciples of the devil, and go to Strand Bridge or
Billiter Lane, for resolution in cases of death, love, or marriage, and
now and then to recover a gold watch or a pearl necklace.
Not far from these were a company of handsome women, that were tormented
in the quality of witches, which grieved my very heart to see it; but to
comfort me, “What?” says a devil, “have you so soon forgot the roguery of
these carrions? Have you not had trial enough yet of them? they are the
very poison of life, and the only dangerous magicians that corrupt all
our senses, and disturb the faculties of your soul; these are they that
cozen your eyes with false appearances, and set up your wills in
opposition to your understanding and reason.” “’Tis right,” said I, “and
now you mind me of it, I do very well remember, that I have found them
so; but let’s go on and see the rest.”
I was scarce gone three steps farther, but I was got into so hideous a
dark place that it was e’en a mercy we knew where we were. There was
first at the entrance, Divine Justice, which was most dreadful to behold;
and a little beyond stood Vice, with a countenance of the highest pride
and insolence imaginable; there was Ingratitude, Malice, Ignorance,
obstinate and incorrigible Infidelity, brutish and headstrong
Disobedience, rash and imperious Blasphemy, with garments dipped in
blood, eyes sparkling, and a hundred pair of chops, barking at
Providence, and vomiting rage and poison. I went in (I confess) with
fear and trembling, and there I saw all the sects of idolaters and
heretics, that ever yet appeared upon the stage of the universe; and at
their feet, in a glorious array, was lascivious Barbara, second wife to
the Emperor Sigismund, and the queen of harlots: one that agreed with
Messalina in this, that virginity was both a burden and a folly; and that
in her whole life she was never either wearied or satisfied; but herein
she went beyond her, in that she held the mortality as well of the soul
as of the body; but she was now better instructed, and burnt like a
bundle of matches.
Passing forward still, I spied a fellow in a corner, all alone, with the
flames about his ears, gnashing his teeth and blaspheming through fury
and despair. I asked him what he was, and he told me he was Mahomet.
“Why, then,” said I, “thou art the damnedest reprobate in hell, and hast
brought more wretches hither than half the world beside: and Lucifer has
done well to allot thee a quarter here by thyself, for certainly thou
hast well deserved the first place in his dominions. But since every man
chooses to talk of what he loves, I prithee, good impostor, tell me,
what’s the reason that thou hast forbidden wine to all thy disciples?”
“Oh,” says he, “I have made them so drunk with my Alchoran they need no
tipple.” “But why hast thou forbidden them swines’ flesh too?” said I.
“Because,” says he, “I would not affront the jambon; for water upon
gammon would be false heraldry. And beside I never loved my people well
enough to afford them the pleasure, either of the grape or the spare-rib.
Nay, and for fear they should chance to grope out the way to heaven, I
have established my power and my dominion by force of arms; without
subjecting my laws to idle disputes and discourses of reason. Indeed
there is little of reason in my precepts, and I would have as little in
their obedience. A world of disciples I have, but I think they follow me
more out of appetite than religion, or for the miracles I work. I allow
them liberty of conscience; they have as many women as they please, and
do what they list, provided they meddle not with the Government. But
look about ye now, and you’ll find that there are more knaves than
Mahomet.”
I did so, and found myself presently surrounded with a ring of heretics,
and their adherents; many of which were ready to tear out the throats of
their leaders. One among the rest was beset with a brace of devils, and
either of them a pair of bellows, puffing into each ear fire instead of
air, which made him a little hot-headed. There was another, that, as I
was told, was a kind of a symoniac, and had taken up his seat in a
pestilential chair; but it was so dark I could not well discern whether
it was a Pope or a Presbyter.
By this time I had enough of hell, and began to wish myself out again;
but as I was looking about for a retreat, I stumbled upon a long gallery
before I was aware: and there I saw Lucifer himself, with all his
nobility about him, male and female. (For let married men say their
pleasure, there are she-devils too,) I should have been at a damned loss
what to do, or how to behave myself among so many strange faces, if one
of the ushers had not come to me, and told me, that, being a stranger, it
was His Majesty’s pleasure I should enter and have free liberty of seeing
what was there to be seen. We exchanged a couple or two of compliments,
and then I began to look about me, but never did I see a palace so
furnished, nor indeed comparable to it.
Our furniture at the best is but a choice collection of dead and dumb
statues, or paintings, without life, sense, or motion; but there, all the
pieces were animated, and no trash in the whole inventory; there was
hardly anything to be seen, but emperors and princes, with some few
(perhaps) of their choicest nobility and privados. The first bank was
taken up by the Ottoman family; and after them sat the Roman emperors, in
their order; and the Roman kings down to Tarquin the proud; beside
highnesses and graces, lords spiritual and temporal innumerable. My
lungs began now to call for a little fresh air, and I desired my guide to
show me the way out again. “Yes, yes, with all my heart,” says he,
“follow me then:” and so he carried me away by a back passage into
Lucifer’s house of office, where there was I know not how many ton of Sir
Reverence, and bales of flattering panegyrics, not to be numbered; all of
them licensed, and entered according to order. I could not but smile at
this provision of tail-timber, and my guide took notice of it, who was a
good kind of a damned droll. But I called still to be gone, and at
length he led me to a little hole like the vent of a vault, and I crept
through it as nimbly as if the devil himself had given me a lift at the
crupper; when, to my great wonder, I found myself in the park again,
where I begun my story: not without an odd medley of passions, partly
reflecting upon what others endured, and in part upon my own condition of
ease and happiness, that had deserved, perhaps, the contrary as well as
they. This thought put me upon a resolution of leading such a course of
life, for the future, that I might not come to feel these torments in
reality which I had now only seen in vision.
And I must here entreat the reader to follow my example, without making
any further experiment; and likewise not to cast an ill construction upon
a fair meaning. My design is to discredit and discountenance the works
of darkness, without scandalising of persons; and since I speak only of
damned, I’m sure no honest man alive will reckon this discourse a satire.
* * * * *