They digg’d true graves with eyes, but not with

hearts; 5

Repentance in their face, vice in their thought;

Their delving eyes did take the sexton’s parts;

The heart undid the labour which eyes wrought:

A new strange death was portion for their toil,

While virtue sate as judge to end the broil.

Had tongue been join’d with eyes, tongue had not

stray’d; 6

Had eyes been join’d to heart, heart then had seen;

But O, in wanting eyesight, it betray’d

The dungeon of misdeeds, where it had been!

So, many living in this orb of woe,

Have heav’d-up eyes, but yet their hearts are low.

This change of sin did make a change of feature,

A new strange death, a misery untold,

A new reform of every old-new creature,

New-serving offices which time made old:

New-living virtue from an old-dead sin,

Which ends in ill what doth in good begin.

When death did reap the harvest of despite, 7

The wicked ears of sin, and mischief’s seed,

Filling the mansion of eternal night

With heavy, leaden clods of sinful breed,

Life sow’d the plants of immortality,

To welcome old-made new felicity.

The clouds, the gloomy curtains of the air,

Drawn and redrawn with the four wingèd winds,

Made all of borrow’d vapours, darksome fair,

Did overshade their tents, which virtue finds;

The Red Sea’s deep was made a dry-trod way,

Without impediment, or stop, or stay.

The thirsty winds, with overtoiling puffs, 8

Did drink the ruddy ocean’s water dry,

Tearing the zone’s hot-cold, whole-raggèd ruffs

With ruffling conflicts in the field of sky;

So that dry earth did take wet water’s place,

With sandy mantle and hard-grounded face.

That way which never was a way before, 9

Is now a trodden path which was untrod,

Through which the people went as on a shore,

Defended by the stretch’d-out arm of God;

Praising his wondrous works, his mighty hand,

Making the land of sea, the sea of land.

That breast where anger slept is mercy’s bed, 10

That breast where mercy wakes is anger’s cave;

When mercy lives, then Nemesis is dead,

And one for either’s corse makes other’s grave:

Hate furrows up a grave to bury love,

And love doth press down hate, it cannot move.

This breast is God, which ever wakes in both;

Anger is his revenge, mercy his love:

He sent them flies instead of cattle’s growth,

And multitudes of frogs for fishes strove;

Here was his anger shewn; and his remorse,[507]

When he did make dry land of water-course.

The sequel proves what actor is the chief; 11

All things beginning know,[508] but none their end;

The sequel unto mirth is weeping grief,

As do[509] mishaps with happiness contend;

For both are agents in this orb of weeping,

And one doth wake when other falls a-sleeping.

Yet should man’s eyes pay tribute every hour

With tributary tears to sorrow’s shrine,

He would all drown himself with his own shower,

And never find the leaf of mercy’s line:

They in God’s anger wail’d, in his love joy’d;

Their love brought lust ere love had lust destroy’d.

The sun of joy dried up their tear-wet eyes, 12

And sate as lord upon their sobbing heart;

For when one comfort lives, one sorrow dies,

Or ends in mirth what it begun in smart:

What greater grief than hunger-starvèd mood?

What greater mirth than satisfying food?

Quails from the fishy bosom of the sea

Came to their comforts which were living-starv’d;

But punishments fell in the sinners’ way,

Sent down by thunderbolts which they deserv’d:

Sin-fed these sinners were, hate-cherishèd;

According unto both they perishèd.

Sin-fed, because their food was seed of sins, 13

And bred new sin with old-digested meat;

Hate-cherishèd in being hatred’s twins,

And sucking cruelty from tiger’s teat:

Was it not sin to err and go astray?

Was it not hate to stop a stranger’s way?

Was it not sin to see, and not to know?

Was it not sin to know, and not receive?

Was it not hate to be a stranger’s foe,

And make them captives which did them relieve?

Yes, it was greatest sin first for to leave them,

And it was greatest hate last to deceive them.

O hungry cannibals! which know no fill, 14

But still do starving feed, and feeding starve,

How could you so deceive? how could you spill[510]

Their loving selves which did yourselves preserve?

Why did you suck your pelican to death,

Which fed you too, too well with his own breath?

O, say that cruelty can have no law,

And then you speak with a mild-cruel tongue;

Or say that avarice lodg’d in your jaw,

And then you do yourselves but little wrong:

Say what you will, for what you say is spite

’Gainst ill-come strangers, which did merit right.

You lay in ambush,—O deceitful snares, 15

Enticing baits, beguiling sentinels!—

You added grief to grief and cares to cares,

Tears unto weeping eyes where tears did dwell:

O multitudes of sin, legions of vice,

Which thaw[511] with sorrow sorrow’s frozen ice!

A banquet was prepar’d, the fare deceit,

The dishes poison, and the cup despite,

The table mischief, and the cloth a bait,

Like spinner’s web t’ entrap the strange fly’s flight;

Pleasure was strew’d upon the top of pain,

Which, once digested, spread through every vein.

O ill conductors of misguided feet, 16

Into a way of death, a path of guile!

Poor pilgrims, which their own destruction meet

In habitations of an unknown isle:

O, had they left that broad, deceiving way,

They had been right, and never gone astray!

But mark the punishment which did ensue

Upon those ill-misleading villanies;

They blinded were themselves with their self view,

And fell into their own-made miseries;

Seeking the entrance of their dwelling-places

With blinded eyes and dark misguided faces.

Lo, here was snares ensnar’d and guiles beguil’d, 17

Deceit deceiv’d and mischief was misled,

Eyes blinded sight and thoughts the hearts defil’d,

Life living in aspècts was dying dead;

Eyes thought for to mislead, and were misled,

Feet went to make mistreads, and did mistread.

At this proud fall the elements were glad,

And did embrace each other with a kiss,

All things were joyful which before were sad;

The pilgrims in their way, and could not miss:

As when the sound of music doth resound

With changing tune, so did the changèd ground.

The birds forsook the air, the sheep the fold; 18

The eagle pitchèd low, the swallow high;

The nightingale did sleep, and uncontroll’d

Forsook the prickle of her nature’s eye;

The seely[512] worm was friends with all her foes,

And suck’d the dew-tears from the weeping rose.

The sparrow tun’d the lark’s sweet melody,

The lark in silence sung a dirge of dole,

The linnet help’d the lark in malady;

The swans forsook the quire of billow-roll;

The dry-land fowl did make the sea their nest,

The wet-sea fish did make the land their rest.

The swans, the quiristers which did complain 19

In inward feeling of an outward loss,

And fill’d the quire of waves with laving pain,

Yet dancing in their wail with surge’s toss,

Forsook her[513] cradle-billow-mountain bed,

And hies her unto land, there to be fed:

Her sea-fare now is land-fare of content;

Old change is changèd new, yet all is change;

The fishes are her food, and they are sent

Unto dry land, to creep, to feed, to range:

Now coolest water cannot quench the fire,

But makes it proud in hottest hot desire.

The evening of a day is morn to night, 20

The evening of a night is morn to day;

The one is Phœbe’s clime which is pale-bright,

The other Phœbus’ in more light array;

She makes the mountains limp in chill-cold snow,

He melts their eyes and makes them weep for woe.

His beams, ambassadors of his hot will

Through the transparent element of air,

Do[514] only his warm ambassage fulfil,

And melt[515] the icy jaw of Phœbe’s hair;

Yet those, though fiery flames, could not thaw cold,

Nor break the frosty glue of winter’s mould.

Here nature slew herself, or, at the least, 21

Did tame the passage of her hot aspècts;

All things have nature to be worst or best,

And must incline to that which she affects;

But nature miss’d herself in this same part,

For she was weak, and had not nature’s heart.

’Twas God which made her weak and makes her strong,

Resisting vice, assisting righteousness,

Assisting and resisting right and wrong,

Making this epilogue in equalness;

’Twas God, his people’s aid, their wisdom’s friend,

In whom I did begin, with whom I end.

_A Jove surgit opus; de Jove finit opus._

MICRO-CYNICON,

SIX SNARLING SATIRES.

_Micro-cynicon. Sixe Snarling Satyres._

{ _Insatiat_ _Cron_. }

{ _Prodigall_ _Zodon_. }

{ _Insolent_ _Superbia_. }

{ _Cheating_ _Droone_. }

{ _Ingling_ _Pyander_. }

{ _Wise_ _Innocent_. }

_Adsis pulcher homo canis hic tibi pulcher emendo.

Imprinted at London by Thomas Creede, for Thomas

Bushell, and are to be sold at his shop at the North

doore of Paules Church._ 1599. 8vo.

“In 1599,” says Warton, “appeared ‘MICRO-CYNICON sixe

snarling satyres by T. M. Gentleman,’ perhaps Thomas

Middleton.” _Hist. of English Poetry_, vol. iv. p. 70,

ed. 4to.

On account of the concluding couplet of the “Defiance to

Envy,”—

“I, but the author’s mouth, bid thee avaunt!

He more defies thy hate, thy hunt, thy haunt,”—

and because that “Defiance” is followed by what bears

expressly the title of “The Author’s Prologue,” Mr. J.

P. Collier suspects that T. M. was only the author’s

friend: see _The Poetical Decameron_, where these

satires are noticed at considerable length, vol. i. p.

282, sqq.

That T. M. and the author of _Micro-cynicon_ were the

same person, I have very little doubt; but that he was

Thomas Middleton, I feel by no means confident.

HIS DEFIANCE[516] TO ENVY.

Envy, which mak’st thyself in common guise,

To haunt deservers, and to hunt deserts;

Hard-soft, cold-hot, well-evil, foolish-wise,

Miscontrarieties, agreeing parts;

Avaunt, I say! I’ll anger thee enough,

And fold thy fiery eyes in thy smazky[517] snuff.

Defiance, resolution, and neglects,

True trine of bars against thy false assault,

Defies, resolves defiance, and rejects

Thy interest to claim the smallest fault:

Thou lawless landlady, poor prodigal,

Sour solace, credit’s crack, fear’s festival!

More angry satire-days[518] I’ll muster up

Than thou canst challenge letters in thy name;

My nigrum[519] true-born ink no more shall sup

Thy stainèd blemish, character’d in blame:

My pen’s two nebs shall turn unto a fork,

Chasing old Envy from so young a work:

I, but the author’s mouth, bid thee avaunt!

He more defies thy hate, thy hunt, thy haunt.

T. M. _Gent._

THE AUTHOR’S PROLOGUE.

FIRST BOOK.

Dismounted from the high-aspiring hills

Which the all-empty airy kingdom fills,

Leaving the scorchèd mountains threatening heaven,

From whence fell fiery rage my soul hath driven,

Passing the down-steep valleys all in hast,[520]

Have tript it through the woods; and now, at last,

Am veilèd with a stony sanctuary,

To save my ire-stuft soul, lest it miscarry,

From threatening storms, o’erturning verity,

That shames to see truth’s refin’d purity;

Those open plains, those high sky-kissing mounts,

Where huffing winds cast up their airy accounts,

Were too, too open, shelter yielding none,

So that the blasts did tyrannize upon

The naked carcass of my heavy soul,

And with their fury all my all control.

But now, environ’d with a brazen tower,

I little dread their stormy-raging power;

Witness this black defying embassy,

That wanders them beforne[521] in majesty,

Undaunted of their bugbear threatening words,

Whose proud-aspiring vaunts time past records.

Now, windy parasites, or the slaves of wine,

That wind from all things save the truth divine,

Wind, turn, and toss into the depth of spite,

Your devilish venom cannot me affright;

It is a cordial of a candy taste,

I’ll drink it up, and then let ’t run at waste;

Whose druggy lees, mix’d with the liquid flood

Of muddy fell defiance, as it stood,

I’ll belch into your throats all open wide,

Whose gaping swallow nothing runs beside;

And if it venom, take it as you list;

He spites himself that spites a satirist.

MICRO-CYNICON.

----------

THE FIRST BOOK.

SATIRE I.—INSATIATE CRON.

=Cur eget[522] indignus quisquam, te divite?=

Time was when down-declining toothless age

Was of a holy and divine presage,

Divining prudent and foretelling truth,

In sacred points instructing wandering youth;

But, O detraction of our latter days!

How much from verity this age estrays,

Ranging the briery deserts of black sin,

Seeking a dismal cave to revel in!

This latter age, or member of that time

Of whom my snarling Muse now thundereth rhyme,

Wander’d the brakes, until a hidden cell

He found at length, and still therein doth dwell:

The house of gain insatiate it is,

Which this hoar-agèd peasant deems his bliss.

O that desire might hunt amongst that fur!

It should go hard but he would loose a cur

To rouse the fox, hid in a bramble-bush,

Who frighteth conscience with a wry-mouth’d push.[523]

But what need I to wish or would it thus,

When I may find him starting at the Burse,[524]

Where he infecteth other pregnant wits,

Making them co-heirs to his damnèd fits.

There may you see this writhen-facèd mass

Of rotten mouldering clay, that prating ass,

That riddles wonders, mere compact[525] of lies,

Of heaven, of hell, of earth, and of the skies,

Of heaven thus he reasons; heaven there’s none,

Unless it be within his mansion:

O, there is heaven! why? because there’s gold,

That from the late to this last age controll’d

The massy sceptre of earth’s heavenly round,

Exiling forth her silver-pavèd bound

The leaders, brethren, brazen counterfeits,

That in this golden age contempt begets:

Vaunt then I, mortal[526] I, I only king,

And golden god of this eternal being.

Of hell Cimmerian thus Avarus reasons;

Though hell be hot, yet it observeth seasons,

Having within his kingdom residence,

O’er which his godhead hath pre-eminence:

An obscure angel of his heaven it is,

Wherein’s contain’d that hell-devouring bliss;

Into this hell sometimes an angel falls,

Whose white aspèct black forlorn souls appalls;

And that is when a saint believing gold,

Old in that heaven, young in being old,

Falls headlong down into that pit of woe,

Fit for such damnèd creature’s overthrow:

To make this public that obscurèd lies,

And more apparent vulgar secrecies;

To make this plain, harsh unto common wits,

Simplicity in common judgment sits.

This downcast angel, or declining saint,

Is greedy Cron, when Cron makes his compt;[527]

For his poor creditors faln to decay,

Being bankerouts,[528] take heels and run away:

Then frantic Cron, gall’d to the very heart,

In some by-corner plays a devil’s part,

Repining at the loss of so much pelf,

And in a humour goes and hangs himself;

So of a saint a devil Cron is made,

The devil lov’d Cron, and Cron the devil’s trade.

Thus may you see such angels often fall,

Making a working-day a festival.

Now to the third point of his deity,

And that’s the earth, thus reasons credulity;

Credulous Cron, Cron credulous in all,

Swears that his kingdom is in general;

As he is regent of this heaven and hell,

So of the earth all others he’ll expel;

The skies at his dispose, the earth his own,

And if Cron please, all must be overthrown.

Cron, Cron, advise thee, Cron with the copper nose,

And be not rul’d so much by false suppose,

Lest Cron’s professing holiness turn evil,

And of a false god prove a perfect devil.

I prithee, Cron, find out some other talk,

Make not the Burse[529] a place for spirits to walk;

For doubtless, if thy damnèd lies take place,

Destruction follows: farewell, sacred grace!

Th’ Exchange for goodly[530] merchants is appointed;

Why not for me, says Cron, and mine anointed?

Can merchants thrive, and not the usurer nigh?

Can merchants live without my company?

No, Cron helps all, and Cron hath help from none;

What others have is Cron’s, and Cron’s his own:

And Cron will hold his own, or ’t shall go hard,

The devil will help him for a small reward.

The devil’s help, O ’tis a mighty thing!

If he but say the word, Cron is a king.

O then the devil is greater yet than he!

I thought as much, the devil would master be.

And reason too, saith Cron; for what care I,

So I may live as god, and never die?

Yea, golden Cron, death will make thee away,

And each dog, Cron, must have a dying day;

And with this resolution I bequeath thee

To God or to the devil, and so I leave thee.

SATIRE II.—PRODIGAL ZODON.

Who knows not Zodon? Zodon! what is he?

The true-born child of insatiety.

If true-born, when? if born at all, say where?

Where conscience begg’d in worst time of the year:

His name young Prodigal, son to greedy Gain,

Let blood by folly in a contrary vein;

For scraping Cron, seeing he needs must die,

Bequeathèd all to prodigality:

The will once prov’d, and he possess’d of all,

Who then so gallant as young Prodigal?

Mounted aloft on flattering fortune’s wings,

Where like a nightingale secure he sings,

Floating on seas of scarce prosperity,

Ingirt with pleasure’s sweet tranquillity:

Suit upon suit, satin too, too base;

Velvet laid on with gold or silver lace

A mean man doth become; but he[531] must ride

In cloth of finèd gold, and by his side

Two footmen at the least, with choice of steeds,

Attirèd, when he[532] rides, in gorgeous weeds:

Zodon must have his chariot gilded o’er;

And when he triumphs, four bare before

In pure white satin to usher out his way,

To make him glorious on his progress-day:

Vail[533] bonnet he that doth not, passing by,

Admiring on that sun-enriching sky,

Two days encag’d at least in strongest hold:

Storm he that list, he scorns to be controll’d.

What! is it lawful that a mounted beggar

May uncontrollèd thus bear sway and swagger?

A base-born issue of a baser sire,

Bred in a cottage, wandering in the mire,

With nailèd shoes, and whipstaff in his hand,

Who with a hey and ree the beasts command;

And being seven years practis’d in that trade,

At seven years’ end by Tom a journey’s made

Unto the city of fair Troynovant;[534]

Where, through extremity of need and want,

He’s forc’d to trot with fardle at his back

From house to house, demanding if they lack

A poor young man that’s willing to take pain

And mickle labour, though for little gain.

Well, some kind Troyan, thinking he hath grace,

Keeps him himself, or gets some other place.

The world now, God be thank’d, is well amended;

Want, that erewhile did want, is now befriended;

And scraping Cron hath got a world of wealth:

Now what of that? Cron’s dead; where’s all his pelf?

Bequeathèd to young Prodigal; that’s well:

His god hath left him, and he’s fled to hell.

See, golden souls, the end of ill-got gain,

Read and mark well, to do the like refrain.

This youthful gallant, like the prince of pleasure,

Floating on golden seas of earthly treasure,

Treasure ill got by ministering of wrong,

Made a fair show, but endur’d not long;

Ill got, worse spent, gotten by deceit;

Spent on lascivious wantons, which await

And hourly expect such prodigality,

Lust-breathing lechers given to venery:

No day expir’d but Zodon hath his trull,

He hath his tit, and she likewise her gull;

Gull he, trull she: O ’tis a gallant age!

Men may have hackneys of good carriage;

Provided that there rain a golden shower,

Then come whos’ will at the appointed hour:

Hour me no hours, hours break no square;

Where gold doth rain, be sure to find them there.

Well, Zodon hath his pleasure, he hath gold;

Young in his golden age, in sin too old.

Now he wants gold, all his treasures done,

He’s banishèd the stews, pity finds none;

Rich yesterday in wealth, this day as poor,

To-morrow like to beg from door to door.

See, youthful spendthrifts, all your bravery[535]

Even in a moment turn’d to misery!

SATIRE III.—INSOLENT SUPERBIA.

List, ye profane, fair-painted images,

Predestinated by the Destinies,

At your first being, to fall eternally

Into Cimmerian black obscurity;

Ill-favour’d idols, pride-anatomy,

Foul-colour’d puppets, balls of infamy,

Whom zealous souls do racket to and fro;

Sometimes aloft ye fly, other whiles below,

Banded into the air’s loose continent,

Where hard upbearing winds hold parliament;

For such is the force of down-declining sin,

Where our short-feather’d peacocks wallow in,

That when sweet motions urge them to aspire,

They are so bathèd o’er by sweet desire

In th’ odoriferous fountain of sweet pleasure,

Wherein delight hath all embalm’d her treasure,—

I mean, where sin, the mistress of disgrace,

Hath residence and her abiding place;

And sin, though it be foul, yet fair in this,

In being painted with a show of bliss;

For what more happy creature to the eye

Than is Superbia in her bravery?

Yet who more foul, disrobèd of attire?

Pearl’d with the botch as children burnt with fire;

That for their outward cloak upon the skin,

Worser enormities abound within:

Look they to that; truth tells them their amiss,

And in this glass all-telling truth it is.

When welcome spring had clad the hills in green,

And pretty whistling birds were heard and seen,

Superbia abroad ’gan take her walk,

With other peacocks for to find her talk:

Kyron, that in a bush lay closely couch’d,

Heard all their chat, and how it was avouch’d.

Sister, says one, and softly pack’d away,

In what fair company did you dine to-day?

’Mongst gallant dames,—and then she wipes her lips,

Placing both hands upon her whalebone hips,

Puft up with a round-circling farthingale:

That done, she ’gins go forward with her tale:—

Sitting at table carv’d of walnut-tree,

All coverèd with damask’d napery,

Garnish’d with salts[536] of pure beaten gold,

Whose silver-plated edge, of rarest mould,

Mov’d admiration in my searching eye,

To see the goldsmith’s rich artificy:

The butler’s placing of his manchets[537] white,

The plated cupboard,[538] for our more delight,

Whose golden beauty, glancing from on high,

Illuminated other chambers nigh:

The slowly pacing of the servingmen,

Which were appointed to attend us then,

Holding in either hand a silver dish

Of costly cates of far-fetch’d dainty fish,

Until they do approach the table nigh,

Where the appointed carver carefully

Dischargeth them of their full-freighted hands,

Which instantly upon the table stands:

The music sweet, which all that while did sound,

Ravish the hearers, and their sense confound.

This done, the master of that sumptuous feast,

In order ’gins to place his welcome guest:

Beauty, first seated in a throne of state,

Unmatchable, disdaining other mate,

Shone like the sun, whereon mine eyes still gaz’d,

Feeding on her perfections that amaz’d;

But O, her silver-framèd coronet,

With low-down dangling spangles all beset,

Her sumptuous periwig, her curious curls,

Her high-pric’d necklace of entrailèd pearls,

Her precious jewels wondrous to behold,

Her basest jem fram’d of the purest gold!

O, I could kill myself for very spite,

That my dim stars give not so clear a light!

Heart-burning ire new kindled bids despair,

Since beauty lives in her, and I want fair:[539]

O had I died in youth, or not been born,

Rather than live in hate, and die forlorn!

And die I will,—therewith she drew a knife

To kill herself, but Kyron sav’d her life.

See here, proud puppets, high-aspiring evils,

Scarce any good, most of you worse than devils,

Excellent in ill, ill in advising well,

Well in that’s worst, worse than the worst in hell:

Hell is stark blind, so blind most women be,

Blind, and yet not blind when they should not see.

Fine madam Tiptoes, in her velvet gown,

That quotes[540] her paces in charàcters down,

Valuing each step that she had made that day

Worth twenty shillings in her best array;

And why, forsooth, some little dirty spot

Hath fell upon her gown or petticoat;

Perhaps that nothing much, or something little,

Nothing in many’s view, in her’s a mickle,

Doth thereon surfeit, and some day or two

She’s passing sick, and knows not what to do:

The poor handmaid, seeing her mistress wed

To frantic sickness, wishes she were dead;

Or that her devilish tyrannising fits

May mend, and she enjoy her former wits;

For whilst that health thus counterfeits not well,

Poor here-at-hand lives in the depth of hell.

Where is this baggage? where’s this girl? what, ho!

Quoth she, was ever woman troubled so?

What, huswife Nan! and then she ’gins to brawl;

Then in comes Nan,—Sooth, mistress, did you call?

Out on thee, quean! now, by the living God,—

And then she strikes, and on the wench lays load;

Poor silly maid, with finger in the eye,

Sighing and sobbing, takes all patiently.

Nimble affection, stung to the very heart

To see her fellow-mate sustain such smart,

Flies to the Burse-gate[541] for a match[542] or two,

And salves th’ amiss, there is no more to do:

Quick-footed kindness, quick as itself thought,

With that well-pleasing news but lately bought

By love’s assiduate care and industry,

Into the chamber runs immediately,

Where she unlades the freight of sweet content.

The haggler pleas’d doth rise incontinent;

Then thought of sickness is not thought upon,

Care hath no being in her mansion;

But former peacock-pride, grand insolence,

Even in the highest thought hath residence:

But it on tiptoe stands; well, what of that?

It is more prompt to fall and ruinate;

And fall it will, when death’s shrill, clamorous bell

Shall summon you unto the depth of hell.

Repent, proud princocks,[543] cease for to aspire,

Or die to live with pride in burning fire.

SATIRE IV.—CHEATING DROONE.

There is a cheater by profession

That takes more shapes than the chameleon;

Sometimes he jets[544] it in a black furr’d gown,

And that is when he harbours in the town;

Sometimes a cloak to mantle hoary age,

Ill-favour’d, like an ape in spiteful rage;

And then he walks in Paul’s[545] a turn or two,

To see by cheating what his wit can do:

Perhaps he’ll tell a gentleman a tale

Will cost him twenty angels[546] in the sale;

But if he know his purse well lin’d within,

And by that means he cannot finger him,

He’ll proffer him such far-fet[547] courtesy,

That shortly in a tavern neighbouring by

He hath encag’d the silly gentleman,

To whom he proffers service all he can:

Sir, I perceive you are of gentle blood,

Therefore I will our cates be new and good;

For well I wot the country yieldeth plenty,

And as they divers be, so are they dainty;

May it please you, then, a while to rest you merry,

Some cates I will make choice of, and not tarry.

The silly cony[548] blithe and merrily

Doth for his kindness thank him heartily;

Then hies the cheater very hastily,

And with some peasant, where he is in fee,

Juggles, that dinner being almost ended,

He in a matter of weight may then be friended.

The peasant, for an angel then in hand,

Will do whate’er his worship shall command,

And yields, that when a reckoning they call in,

To make reply there’s one to speak with him.

The plot is laid; now comes the cheater back,

And calls in haste for such things as they lack;

The table freighted with all dainty cates,

Having well fed, they fall to pleasant chates,[549]

Discoursing of the mickle difference

’Twixt perfect truth and painted eloquence,

Plain troth, that harbours in the country swain:

The cony stands defendant; the cheater’s vein

Is to uphold an eloquent smooth tongue,

To be truth’s orator, righting every wrong.

Before the cause concluded took effect,

In comes a crew of fiddling knaves abject,

The very refuse of that rabble rout,

Half shoes upon their feet torn round about,

Save little Dick, the dapper singing knave,

He had a threadbare coat to make him brave,[550]

God knows, scarce worth a tester[551] if it were

Valued at most, of seven it was too dear.

Well, take it as they list, Shakerag came in,

Making no doubt but they would like of him,

And[552] ’twere but for his person, a pretty lad,

Well qualified, having a singing trade.

Well, so it was, the cheater must be merry,

And he a song must have, call’d Hey-down-derry:

So Dick begins to sing, the fiddler[s] play;

The melancholy cony replies, nay, nay,

No more of this; the other[553] bids play on,—

’Tis good our spirits should something work upon:

Tut, gentle sir, be pleasant, man, quoth he,

Yours be the pleasure, mine the charge shall be;

This do I for the love of gentlemen:

Hereafter happily if we meet agen,[554]

I shall of you expect like courtesy,

Finding fit time and opportunity.

Or else I were ungrateful, quoth the cony;

It shall go hard but we will find some money;

For some we have, that some well us’d gets more,

And so in time we shall increase our store.

Meantime, said he, employ it to good use,

For time ill spent doth purchase time’s abuse.

With that, more wine he calls for, and intends

That either of them carouse to all their friends;

The cony nods the head, yet says not nay,

Because the other would the charge defray.

The end tries all; and here begins the jest,

My gentleman betook him to his rest;

Wine took possession of his drowsy head,

And cheating Droone hath brought the fool to bed.

The fiddlers were discharg’d, and all things whist,[555]

Then pilfering Droone ’gan use him as he list:

Ten pound he finds; the reckoning he doth pay,

And with the residue passeth sheer away.

Anon the cony wakes; his coin being gone,

He exclaims against dissimulation;

But ’twas too late, the cheater had his prey:—

Be wise, young heads, care for an after-day!

SATIRE V.—INGLING[556] PYANDER.

Age hath his infant youth, old trees their sprigs,

O’erspreading branches their inferior twigs:

Old beldam hath a daughter or a son,

True born or illegitimate, all’s one;

Issue she hath. The father? Ask you me?

The house wide open stands, her lodging’s free:

Admit myself for recreation

Sometimes did enter her possession,

It argues not that I have been the man

That first kept revels in that mantian;[557]

No, no, the haggling commonplace is old,

The tenement hath oft been bought and sold:

’Tis rotten now, earth to earth, dust to dust,

Sodom’s on fire, and consume it must;

And wanting second reparations,

Pluto hath seiz’d the poor reversions.

But that hereafter worlds may truly know

What hemlocks and what rue there erst did grow,

As it is Sathan’s usual policy,

He left an issue of like quality;

The still memorial, if I aim aright,

Is a pale chequer’d black hermaphrodite.

Sometimes he jets[558] it like a gentleman,

Other whiles much like a wanton courtesan;

But, truth to tell, a man or woman whether,

I cannot say she’s excellent at either;

But if report may certify a truth,

She’s neither of either, but a cheating youth.

Yet Troynovant,[559] that all-admirèd town,

Where thousands still do travel up and down,

Of beauty’s counterfeits[560] affords not one,

So like a lovely smiling paragon,

As is Pyander in a nymph’s attire,

Whose rolling eye sets gazers’ hearts on fire,

Whose cherry lip, black brow, and smiles procure

Lust-burning buzzards to the tempting lure.

What, shall I cloak sin with a coward fear,

And suffer not Pyander’s sin appear?

I will, I will. Your reason? Why, I’ll tell,

Because time was I lov’d Pyander well;

True love indeed will hate love’s black defame,

So loathes my soul to seek Pyander’s shame.

O, but I feel the worm of conscience sting,

And summons me upon my soul to bring

Sinful Pyander into open view,

There to receive the shame that will ensue!

O, this sad passion of my heavy soul

Torments my heart and senses do[th] control!

Shame thou, Pyander, for I can but shame,

The means of my amiss by thy means came;

And shall I then procure eternal blame,

By secret cloaking of Pyander’s shame,

And he not blush?

By heaven, I will not! I’ll not burn in hell

For false Pyander, though I lov’d him well;

No, no, the world shall know thy villany,

Lest they be cheated with like roguery.

Walking the city, as my wonted use,

There was I subject to this foul abuse:

Troubled with many thoughts, pacing along,

It was my chance to shoulder in a throng;

Thrust to the channel I was, but crowding her,

I spied Pyander in a nymph’s attire:

No nymph more fair than did Pyander seem,

Had not Pyander then Pyander been;

No lady with a fairer face more grac’d,

But that Pyander’s self himself defac’d;

Never was boy so pleasing to the heart

As was Pyander for a woman’s part;

Never did woman foster such another

As was Pyander, but Pyander’s mother.

Fool that I was in my affection!

More happy I, had it been a vision;

So far entangled was my soul by love,

That force perforce I must Pyander prove:

The issue of which proof did testify

Ingling Pyander’s damnèd villany.

I lov’d indeed, and, to my mickle cost,

I lov’d Pyander, so my labour lost:

Fair words I had, for store of coin I gave,

But not enjoy’d the fruit I thought to have.

O, so I was besotted with her words,

His words, that no part of a she affords!

For had he been a she, injurious boy,

I had not been so subject to annoy.

A plague upon such filthy gullery!

The world was ne’er so drunk with mockery.

Rash-headed cavaliers, learn to be wise;

And if you needs will do, do with advice;

Tie not affection to each wanton smile,

Lest doting fancy truest love beguile;

Trust not a painted puppet, as I’ve done,

Who far more doted than Pygmalion:

The streets are full of juggling[561] parasites

With the true shape of virgins’ counterfeits:[562]

But if of force you must a hackney hire,

Be curious in your choice, the best will tire;

The best is bad, therefore hire none at all;

Better to go on foot than ride and fall.

SATIRE VI.—WISE INNOCENT.[563]

Way[564] for an innocent, ho! What, a poor fool?

Not so, pure ass. Ass! where went you to school?

With innocents. That makes the fool to prate.

Fool, will you any? Yes, the fool shall ha’t.

Wisdom, what shall he have? The fool at least.

Provender for the ass, ho! stalk up the beast.

What, shall we have a railing innocent?

No, gentle gull, a wise man’s precedent.

Then forward, wisdom. Not without I list.

Twenty to one this fool’s some satirist.

Still doth the fool haunt me; fond[565] fool, begone!

No, I will stay, the fool to gaze upon.

Well, fool, stay still. Still shall the fool stay? no.

Then pack, simplicity! Good innocent, why so?

Nor go nor stay, what will the fool do then?

Vex him that seems to vex all other men.

’Tis impossible; streams that are barr’d their course

Swell with more rage and far more greater force,

Until their full-stuft gorge a passage makes

Into the wide maws of more scopious[566] lakes.

Spite me! not spite itself can discontent

My steelèd thoughts, or breed disparagement:

Had pale-fac’d coward fear been resident

Within the bosom of me, innocent,

I would have hous’d me from the eyes of ire,

Whose bitter spleen vomits forth flames of fire.

A resolute ass! O for a spurring rider!

A brace of angels![567] What, is the fool a briber?

Is not the ass yet weary of his load?

What, with once bearing of the fool abroad?

Mount again, fool. Then the ass will tire,

And leave the fool to wallow in the mire.

Dost thou think otherwise? good ass, then begone!

I stay but till the innocent get on.

What, wilt thou needs of the fool bereave me?

Then pack, good, foolish ass! and so I leave thee.

EPILOGUE

TO THE

LAST SATIRE OF THE FIRST BOOK.[568]

----------

Thus may we see by folly of[t] the wise

Stumble and fall into fool’s paradise,

For jocund wit of force must jangling be;

Wit must have his will, and so had he:

Wit must have[569] his will, yet, parting of the fray,

Wit was enjoin’d to carry the fool away.

_Qui color[570] albus erat, nunc est contrarius albo._

_On the death[571] of that great master in his art and

quality, painting and playing_, R[ICHARD] BURBAGE.

Astronomers and star-gazers this year

Write but of four eclipses; five appear,

Death interposing Burbage; and their staying

Hath made a visible eclipse of playing.

THO. MIDDLETON.

_In the just worth[572] of that well-deserver, Master_

JOHN WEBSTER, _and upon this masterpiece of

tragedy_.

In this thou imitat’st one rich and wise,

That sees his good deeds done before he dies;

As he by works, thou by this work of fame

Hast well provided for thy living name.

To trust to others’ honourings is worth’s crime;

Thy monument is rais’d in thy life-time;

And ’tis most just, for every worthy man

Is his own marble, and his merit can

Cut him to any figure, and express

More art than death’s cathedral palaces,

Where royal ashes keep their court. Thy note

Be ever plainness, ’tis the richest coat:

Thy epitaph only the title be,—

Write _Duchess_, that will fetch a tear for thee;

For who e’er saw this duchess live and die,

That could get off under a bleeding eye?

_In Tragœdiam._

_Ut lux ex tenebris ictu percussa tonantis,

Illa, ruina malis, claris fit vita poetis._

THOMAS MIDDLETONUS,

_Poeta et Chron. Londinensis_.

THE BLACK BOOK.

_The Blacke Booke. London Printed by T. C. for Jeffrey

Chorlton._ 1604. 4to.

THE EPISTLE TO THE READER;

OR,

THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THIS BOOK.

----------

To all those that are truly virtuous, and can touch

pitch and yet never defile themselves; read the

mischievous lives and pernicious practices of villains,

and yet be never the worse at the end of the book, but

rather confirmed the more in their honest estates and

the uprightness of their virtues;—to such I dedicate

myself, the wholesome intent of my labours, the modesty

of my phrases, that even blush when they discover vices

and unmask the world’s shadowed villanies: and I account

him as a traitor to virtue, who, diving into the deep of

this cunning age, and finding there such monsters of

nature, such speckled lumps of poison as panders,

harlots, and ruffians do figure, if he rise up silent

again, and neither discover or publish them to the civil

rank of sober and continent livers, who thereby may shun

those two devouring gulfs, to wit, of deceit and

luxury,[573] which swallow up more mortals than Scylla

and Charybdis, those two cormorants and Woolners[574] of

the sea, one tearing, the other devouring. Wherefore I

freely persuade myself, no virtuous spirit or judicial

worthy but will approve my politic moral, where, under

the shadow of the devil’s legacies, or his bequeathing

to villains, I strip their villanies naked, and bare the

infectious bulks[575] of craft, cozenage, and panderism,

the three bloodhounds of a commonwealth. And thus far I

presume that none will or can except at this—which I

call the Black Book, because it doubly damns the devil—

but some tainted harlot, noseless bawd, obscene ruffian,

and such of the same black nature and filthy condition,

that poison the towardly spring of gentility, and

corrupt with the mud of mischiefs the pure and clear

streams of a kingdom. And to spurgall such, who reads me

shall know I dare; for I fear neither the ratsbane of a

harlot nor the poniard of a villain.

T. M.

A MORAL.

LUCIFER _ascending, as Prologue to his own Play_.

Now is hell landed here upon the earth,

When Lucifer, in limbs of burning gold,

Ascends this dusty theatre of the world,

To join his powers; and, were it number’d well,

There are more devils on earth than are in hell.

Hence springs my damnèd joy; my tortur’d spleen

Melts into mirthful humour at this fate,

That heaven is hung so high, drawn up so far,

And made so fast, nail’d up with many a star;

And hell the very shop-board of the earth,

Where, when I cut out souls, I throw the shreds

And the white linings of a new-soil’d spirit,

Pawn’d to luxurious[576] and adulterous merit.

Yea, that’s the sin, and now it takes her turn,

For which the world shall like a strumpet burn;

And for an instance to fire false embraces,

I make the world burn now in secret places:

I haunt invisible corners as a spy,

And in adulterous circles there rise I;

There am I conjur’d up through hot desire,

And where hell rises, there must needs be fire.

And now that I have vaulted up so high

Above the stage-rails of this earthen globe,

I must turn actor and join companies,

To share my comic sleek-ey’d villanies;

For I must weave a thousand ills in one,

To please my black and burnt affection.

Why, every term-time I come up to throw[577]

Dissension betwixt ploughmen that should sow

The field’s vast womb, and make the harvest grow:

So comes it oft to pass dear years befal,

When ploughmen leave the field to till the hall;

Thus famine and bleak dearth do greet the land,

When the plough’s held between a lawyer’s hand.

I fat with joy to see how the poor swains

Do box their country thighs, carrying their packets

Of writings, yet can neither read nor write:

They’re like to candles, if they had no light;

For they are dark within in sense and judgment

As is the Hole[578] at Newgate; and their thoughts

Are, like the men that lie there, without spirit.

This strikes my black soul into ravishing music,

To see swains plod and shake their ignorant skulls;

For they are nought but skull, their brain but burr,

Wanting wit’s marrow and the sap of judgment;

And how they grate with their hard naily soles

The stones in Fleet-street, and strike fire in Paul’s;

Nay, with their heavy trot and iron stalk,

They have worn off the brass in the Mid-walk.[579]

But let these pass for bubbles, and so die,

For I rise now to breathe my legacy,

And make my last will, which, I know, shall stand

As long as bawd or villain strides the land.

For which I’ll turn my shape quite out of verse,

Mov’d with the Supplication[580] of poor Pierce,

That writ so rarely villanous from hence

For spending-money to my excellence;

Gave me my titles freely;[581] for which giving,

I rise now to take order for his living.

The black Knight of the Post[582] shortly returns

From hell, where many a tobacconist burns,

With news to smoky gallants, riotous heirs,

Strumpets that follow theatres and fairs,

Gilded-nos’d usurers, base-metall’d panders,

To copper-captains and Pict-hatch[583] commanders,

To all infectious catchpolls through the town,

The very speckled vermin of a crown:

To these and those and every damnèd one

I’ll bequeath legacies to thrive upon;

Amongst the which I’ll give for his redress

A standing pension to Pierce Pennyless.

THE BLACK BOOK.

No sooner was _Pierce Pennyless_ breathed forth, but I,

the light-burning sergeant, Lucifer, quenched my fiery

shape, and whipt into a constable’s night-gown, the

cunningest habit that could be, to search tipsy taverns,

roosting inns, and frothy alehouses; when calling

together my worshipful bench of bill-men,[584] I

proceeded toward Pict-hatch, intending to begin there

first, which (as I may fitly name it) is the very skirts

of all brothel-houses. The watchmen, poor night-crows,

followed, and thought still they had had the constable

by the hand, when they had the devil by the gown-sleeve.

At last, I looking up to the casements of every

suspected mansion, and spying a light twinkling between

hope and desperation, guessed it to be some sleepy

snuff, ever and anon winking and nodding in the socket

of a candlestick, as if the flame had been a-departing

from the greasy body of Simon Snuff the stinkard.

Whereupon I, the black constable, commanded my white

guard not only to assist my office with their brown

bills, but to raise up the house extempory: with that,

the dreadful watchmen, having authority standing

by them, thundered at the door, whilst the candle

lightened in the chamber; and so between thundering and

lightening, the bawd risse,[585] first putting the snuff

to an untimely death, a cruel and a lamentable murder,

and then, with her fat-sagg chin[586] hanging down like

a cow’s udder, lay reeking out at the window, demanding

the reason why they did summon a parley. I told her in

plain terms that I had a warrant to search from the

sheriff of Limbo.[587] How? from the sheriff of

Lime-street? replied mistress wimble-chin (for so she

understood the word Limbo, as if Limbo had been Latin

for Lime-street); why then all the doors of my house

shall fly open and receive you, master constable. With

that, as being the watchword, two or three vaulted out

of their beds at once, one swearing, stocks and stones,

he could not find his stockings, other that they could

not hit upon their false bodies, when to speak troth and

shame myself, they were then as close to their flesh as

they could, and never put them off since they were

twelve year old. At last they shuffled up, and were shut

out at the back part, as I came in at the north part. Up

the stairs I went to examine the feather-beds, and carry

the sheets before the justice, for there was none

else then to carry; only the floor was strewed with

busk-points,[588] silk garters, and shoe-strings,

scattered here and there for haste to make away from me,

and the farther such run, the nearer they come to me.

Then another door opening rearward, there came puffing

out of the next room a villanous lieutenant without a

band, as if he had been new cut down, like one at

Wapping, with his cruel garters[589] about his neck,

which fitly resembled two of Derrick’s necklaces.[590]

He had a head of hair like one of my devils in _Doctor

Faustus_,[591] when the old theatre cracked and frighted

the audience: his brow was made of coarse bran, as if

all the flour had been bolted out to make honester men,

so ruggedly moulded with chaps and crevices, that I

wonder how it held together, had it not been pasted with

villany: his eyebrows jetted out like the round casement

of an alderman’s dining-room, which made his eyes look

as if they had been both dammed in his head; for if so

be two souls had been so far sunk into hell-pits, they

would never have walked abroad again: his nostrils were

cousin-germans to coral, though of a softer condition

and of a more relenting humour: his crow-black

muchatoes[592] were almost half an ell from one end to

the other, as though they would whisper him in the ear

about a cheat or a murder; and his whole face in general

was more detestable ugly than the visage of my grim

porter Cerberus, which shewed that all his body besides

was made of filthy dust and sea-coal ashes: a down

countenance he had, as if he would have looked thirty

mile into hell, and seen Sisyphus rolling, and Ixion

spinning and reeling. Thus in a pair of hoary slippers,

his stockings dangling about his wrists, and his red

buttons like foxes out of their holes, he began, like

the true champion of a vaulting-house,[593] first to

fray me with the bugbears of his rough-cast beard, and

then to sound base in mine ears like the bear-garden

drum; and this was the humour he put on, and the very

apparel of his phrases: Why, master constable, dare you

balk us in our own mansion, ha? What! is not our house

our Cole-harbour,[594] our castle of come-down and

lie-down? Must my honest wedded punk here, my glory-fat

Audrey,[595] be taken napping, and raised up by the

thunder of bill-men?[596] Are we disannulled of our

first sleep, and cheated of our dreams and fantasies? Is

there not law too for stealing away a man’s slumbers, as

well as for sheets off from hedges? Come you to search

an honest bawdy-house, this seven and twenty years in

fame and shame? Go to, then, you shall search, nay, my

very boots too; are you well now? the least hole in my

house[597] too; are you pleased now? Can we not take our

ease in our inn,[598] but we must come out so quickly?

Naud,[599] go to bed, sweet Naud; thou wilt cool thy

grease anon, and make thy fat cake. This said, by the

virtue and vice of my office I commanded my bill-men

down stairs; when in a twinkling discovering myself a

little, as much as might serve to relish me, and shew

what stuff I was made of, I came and kissed the bawd,

hugged her excellent villanies and cunning rare

conveyances;[600] then turning myself, I threw mine

arms, like a scarf or bandileer,[601] cross the

lieutenant’s melancholy bosom, embraced his resolute

phrases and his dissolute humours, highly commending the

damnable trade and detestable course of their living, so

excellent-filthy and so admirable-villanous. Whereupon

this lieutenant of Pict-hatch[602] fell into deeper

league and farther acquaintance with the blackness of

my bosom, sometimes calling me master Lucifer the

head-borough, sometimes master Devillin the little black

constable. Then telling me he heard from Limbo[603] the

second of the last month, and that he had the letter to

shew, where they were all very merry; marry, as he told

me, there were some of his friends in Phlegethon

troubled with the heart-burning; yea, and with the

soul-burning too, thought I, though thou little dreamest

of the torment: then complaining to me of their bad

takings all the last plaguy summer,[604] that there was

no stirrings, and therefore undone for want of doings:

whereupon, after many such inductions to bring the scene

of his poverty upon the stage, he desired, in cool

terms, to borrow some forty pence of me. I, stuft with

anger at that base and lazy petition, knowing that a

right true villain and an absolute practised pander

could not want silver damnation, but, living upon the

revenues of his wits, might purchase the devil and all,

half-conquered with rage, thus I replied to his

baseness: Why, for shame! a bawd and poor? why, then,

let usurers go a-begging, or, like an old Greek, stand

in Paul’s with a porringer; let brokers become whole

honest then, and remove to heaven out of Houndsditch;

lawyers turn feeless, and take ten of a poor widow’s

tears for ten shillings; merchants never forswear

themselves, whose great perjured oaths a’ land turn to

great winds and cast away their ships at sea, which

false perfidious tempest splits their ships abroad and

their souls at home, making the one take salt water and

the other salt fire; let mercers then have conscionable

thumbs when they measure out that smooth glittering

devil, satin, and that old reveller, velvet, in the days

of Monsieur,[605] both which have devoured many an

honest field of wheat and barley, that hath been

metamorphosed and changed into white money. Pooh, these

are but little wonders, and may be easily possible in

the working. A usurer to cry bread and meat is not a

thing impossible; for indeed your greatest usurer is

your greatest beggar, wanting as well that which he hath

as that which he hath not; then who can be a greater

beggar? He will not have his house smell like a cook’s

shop, and therefore takes an order no meat shall be

dressed in it: and because there was an house upon

Fish-street-hill burnt to the ground once, he can abide

by no means to have a fire in his chimney ever since. To

the confirming of which I will insert here a pretty

conceit[606] of a nimble-witted gentlewoman, that was

worthy to be ladified for the jest; who, entering into

a usurer’s house in London to take up money upon

unmerciful interest for the space of a twelvemonth, was

conducted through two or three hungry rooms into a fair

dining-room by a lenten-faced fellow, the usurer’s man,

whose nose shewed as if it had been made of hollow

pasteboard, and his cheeks like two thin pancakes clapt

together; a pitiful knave he was, and looked for all the

world as if meal had been at twenty shillings a bushel.

The gentlewoman being placed in this fair room to await

the usurer’s leisure, who was casting up ditches of gold

in his counting-house, and being almost frozen with

standing—for it was before Candlemas’ frost-bitten term—

ever and anon turning about to the chimney, where she

saw a pair of corpulent, gigantical andirons, that stood

like two burgomasters, at both corners, a hearth briskly

dressed up, and a great cluster of charcoal piled up

together like black puddings, which lay for a dead fire,

and in the dining-room too: the gentlewoman, wondering

it was so long a-kindling, at last she caught the

miserable conceit of it, and calling her man to her,

bade him seek out for a piece of chalk, or some peeling

of a white wall, whilst in the meantime she conceited

the device; when, taking up the six former[607] coals,

one after another, she chalked upon each of them a

satirical letter; which six were these,

T. D. C. R. U. S.;

explained thus,

_These dead coals

Resemble usurers’ souls._

Then placing them in the same order again, turning the

chalked sides inward to try conclusions,[608] which, as

it happened, made up the jest the better: by that time

the usurer had done amongst his golden heaps, and

entertaining the gentlewoman with a cough a quarter of

an hour long, at last, after a rotten hawk and a hem, he

began to spit and speak to her. To conclude; she was

furnished of the money for a twelvemonth, but upon large

security and most tragical usury. When, keeping her day

the twelvemonth after, coming to repay both the money

and the breed of it—for interest may well be called the

usurer’s bastard—she found the hearth dressed up in the

same order, with a dead fire of charcoal again, and yet

the Thames was half-frozen at that time with the

bitterness of the season: when turning the foremost rank

of coals, determining again, as it seemed, to draw some

pretty knavery upon them too, she spied all those six

letters which she chalked upon them the twelvemonth

before, and never a one stirred or displaced; the

strange sight of which made her break into these words:—

Is it possible, quoth she, a usurer should burn so

little here, and so much in hell? or is it the cold

property of these coals to be above a twelvemonth

a-kindling? So much to shew the frozen charity of a

usurer’s chimney.

And then a broker to be an honest soul, that is, to

take but sixpence a-month, and threepence for the

bill-making; a devil of a very good conscience! Possible

too to have a lawyer bribeless and without fee, if his

clientess, or female client, please his eye well: a

merchant to wear a suit of perjury but once a quarter or

so,—mistake me not, I mean not four times an hour; that

shift were too short, he could not put it on so soon, I

think: and, lastly, not impossible for a mercer to have

a thumb in folio, like one of the biggest of the guard,

and so give good and very bountiful measure. But, which

is most impossible, to be a right bawd and poor—it

strikes my spleen into dulness, and turns all my blood

into cool lead. Wherefore was vice ordained but to be

rich, shining, and wealthy, seeing virtue, her opponent,

is poor, ragged, and needy? Those that are poor are

timorous-honest and foolish-harmless; as your carolling

shepherds, whistling ploughmen, and such of the same

innocent rank, that never relish the black juice of

villany, never taste the red food of murder, or the

damnable suckets of luxury:[609] whereas a pander is the

very oil of villains and the syrup of rogues; of

excellent rogues, I mean, such as have purchased five

hundreds a-year by the talent of their villany. How many

such gallants do I know, that live only upon the revenue

of their wits! some whose brains are above an hundred

mile about; and those are your geometrical thieves,

which may fitly be called so, because they measure the

highways with false gallops, and therefore are heirs of

more acres than five-and-fifty elder brothers: sometimes

they are clerks of Newmarket Heath, sometimes the

sheriffs of Salisbury Plain; and another time they

commit brothelry, when they make many a man stand at

Hockley-in-the-Hole. These are your great head landlords

indeed, which call the word _robbing_ the gathering

in of their rents, and name all passengers their

tenants-at-will.

Another set of delicate knaves there are, that dive into

deeds and writings of lands left to young gullfinches,

poisoning the true sense and intent of them with the

merciless antimony of the Common Law, [610] and so by

some crafty clau[s]e or two shove the true foolish

owners quite beside the saddle of their patrimonies, and

then they hang only by the stirrups, that is, by the

cold alms and frozen charity of the gentlemen-defeaters,

who—if they take after me, their great grandfather—will

rather stamp them down in the deep mire of poverty than

bolster up their heads with a poor wisp of charity. Such

as these corrupt the true meanings of last wills and

testaments, and turn legacies the wrong way, wresting

them quite awry, like Grantham steeple.[611]

The third rank, quainter than the former, presents us

with the race of lusty vaulting gallants, that, instead

of a French horse, practise upon their mistresses all

the nimble tricks of vaulting, and are worthy to be made

dukes for doing the somerset so lively. This nest of

gallants, for the natural parts that are in them,

are maintained by their drawn-work dames and their

embroidered mistresses, and can dispend their two

thousand a-year out of other men’s coffers; keep at

every heel a man, beside a French lacquey (a great boy

with a beard), and an English page, which fills up the

place of an ingle:[612] they have their city-horse,

which I may well term their stone-horse, or their horse

upon the stones; for indeed the city being the lusty

dame and mistress of the land, lays all her foundation

upon good stone-work, and somebody pays well for’t

where’er it lights, and might with less cost keep London

Bridge in reparations every fall than mistress Bridget

his wife; for women and bridges always lack mending, and

what the advantage of one tide performs comes another

tide presently and washes away. Those are your gentlemen

gallants that seeth uppermost, and never lin[613]

gallopping till they run over into the fire; so

gloriously accoutred that they ravish the eyes of all

wantons, and take them prisoners in their shops with a

brisk suit of apparel; they strangle and choke more

velvet in a deep-gathered hose[614] than would serve to

line through my lord What-call-ye-him’s coach.

What need I infer[615] more of their prodigal

glisterings and their spangled damnations, when these

are arguments sufficient to shew the wealth of sin,

and how rich the sons and heirs of Tartary[616] are?

And are these so glorious, so flourishing, so brimful

of golden Lucifers or light angels[617] and thou a

pander and poor? a bawd and empty, apparelled in

villanous packthread, in a wicked suit of coarse

hop-bags, the wings[618] and skirts faced with the

ruins of dishclouts? Fie, I shame to see thee dressed

up so abominable scurvy! Complainest thou of bad

doings, when there are harlots of all trades; and

knaves of all languages? Knowest thou not that sin may

be committed either in French, Dutch, Italian, or

Spanish, and all after the English fashion? But thou

excusest the negligence of thy practice by the last

summer’s pestilence: alas, poor shark-gull[619] that

put-off is idle! for sergeant Carbuncle, one of the

plague’s chief officers, dares not venture within

three yards of an harlot, because monsieur Drybone,

the Frenchman, is a leiger[620] before him. At which

speech the slave burst into a melancholy laugh, which

shewed for all the world like a sad tragedy with a

clown in’t; and thus began to reply:—I know not

whether it be [a] cross or a curse, noble Philip of

Phlegethon, or whether both, that I am forced to pink

four ells of bag to make me a summer-suit; but I

protest, what with this long vacation, and the fidging

of gallants to Norfolk and up and down countries,

Pierce was never so pennyless as poor lieutenant

Prigbeard.

With those words he put me in mind of him for whom I

chiefly changed myself into an officious constable, poor

Pierce Pennyless: when presently I demanded of this

lieutenant the place of his abode, and when he last

heard of him (though I knew well enough both where to

hear of him and find him); to which he made answer: Who,

Pierce? honest Pennyless? he that writ the madcap’s

_Supplication_? why, my very next neighbour, lying

within three lean houses of me, at old mistress

Silverpin’s, the only door-keeper[621] in Europe: why,

we meet one another every term-time, and shake hands

when the Exchequer opens; but when we open our hands,

the devil of penny we can see.

With that I cheered up the drooping slave with the

aqua-vitæ[622] of villany, and put him in excellent

comfort of my damnable legacy; saying I would stuff him

with so many wealthy instructions that he should excel

even Pandarus himself, and go nine mile beyond him in

pandarism, and from thenceforward he should never know a

true rascal go under his red velvet slops,[623] and a

gallant bawd indeed below her loose-bodied[624] satin.

This said, the slave hugged himself, and bussed the bawd

for joy: when presently I left them in the midst of

their wicked smack, and descended to my bill-men[625]

that waited in the pernicious alley for me, their

master constable. And marching forward to the third

garden-house, there we knocked up the ghost of mistress

Silverpin, who suddenly risse[626] out of two white

sheets, and acted out of her tiring-house[627] window:

but having understood who we were, and the authority of

our office, she presently, even in her ghost’s apparel,

unfolded the doors and gave me my free entrance; when in

policy I charged the rest to stay and watch the house

below, whilst I stumbled up two pair of stairs in the

dark, but at last caught in mine eyes the sullen blaze

of a melancholy lamp that burnt very tragically upon the

narrow desk of a half bedstead, which descried[628] all

the pitiful ruins throughout the whole chamber. The bare

privities of the stone-walls were hid with two pieces of

painted cloth,[629] but so ragged and tottered,[630]

that one might have seen all nevertheless, hanging for

all the world like the two men in chains between

Mile-end and Hackney. The testern, or the shadow over

the bed, was made of four ells of cobwebs, and a number

of small spinner’s-ropes hung down for curtains: the

spindle-shank spiders, which shew like great lechers

with little legs, went stalking over his head as if they

had been conning of _Tamburlaine_.[631] To conclude,

there was many such sights to be seen, and all under a

penny, beside the lamentable prospect of his hose[632]

and doublet, which, being of old Kendal-green, fitly

resembled a pitched field, upon which trampled many a

lusty corporal. In this unfortunate tiring-house lay

poor Pierce upon a pillow stuffed with horse-meat; the

sheets smudged so dirtily, as if they had been stolen by

night out of Saint Pulcher’s[633] churchyard when the

sexton had left a grave open, and so laid the dead

bodies wool-ward:[634] the coverlet was made of pieces

a’ black cloth clapt together, such as was snatched off

the rails in King’s-street at the queen’s funeral. Upon

this miserable bed’s-head lay the old copy of his

_Supplication_, in foul-written hand, which my black

Knight of the Post conveyed to hell; which no sooner I

entertained in my hand, but with the rattling and

blabbing of the papers poor Pierce began to stretch and

grate his nose against the hard pillow; when after a

rouse or two, he muttered these reeling words between

drunk and sober, that is, between sleeping and waking:—I

should laugh, i’faith, if for all this I should prove a

usurer before I die, and have never a penny now to set

up withal. I would build a nunnery in Pict-hatch[635]

here, and turn the walk in Paul’s[636] into a bowling

alley: I would have the Thames leaded over, that they

might play at cony-holes with the arches under London

Bridge. Well (and with that he waked), the devil is mad

knave still.

How now, Pierce? quoth I, dost thou call me knave to my

face? Whereat the poor slave started up with his hair

a-tiptoe; to whom by easy degrees I gently discovered

myself; who, trembling like the treble of a lute under

the heavy finger of a farmer’s daughter, craved pardon

of my damnable excellence, and gave me my titles as

freely as if he had known where all my lordships lay,

and how many acres there were in Tartary.[637] But at

the length, having recovered to be bold again, he

unfolded all his bosom to me; told me that the Knight of

Perjury had lately brought him a singed letter sent from

a damned friend of his, which was thus directed as

followeth,

_From Styx to Wood’s-close,

or

The Walk of Pict-hatch._

After I saw poor Pennyless grow so well acquainted with

me, and so familiar with the villany of my humour, I

unlocked my determinations, and laid open my intents; in

particular[638] the cause of my uprising, being moved

both with his penetrable petition and his insufferable

poverty, and therefore changed my shape into a little

wapper-eyed[639] constable, to wink and blink at small

faults, and through the policy of searching, to find him

out the better in his cleanly tabernacle; and therefore

gave him encouragement now to be frolic, for the time

was at hand, like a pickpurse, that Pierce should be

called no more Pennyless, like the Mayor’s bench at

Oxford,[640] but rather Pierce Pennyfist, because his

palm shall be pawed with pence. This said, I bade him be

resolved and get up to breakfast, whilst I went to

gather my noise[641] of villains together, and made his

lodging my convocation-house. With that, in a resulting

humour, he called his hose[642] and doublet to him

(which could almost go alone, borne like a hearse upon

the legs of vermin), whilst I thumped down stairs with

my cow-heel, embraced mistress Silverpin, and betook me

to my bill-men;[643] when, in a twinkling, before them

all, I leapt out of master constable’s night-gown into

an usurer’s fusty furred jacket; whereat the watchmen

staggered, and all their bills fell down in a swoon;

when I walked close by them, laughing and coughing like

a rotten-lunged usurer, to see what Italian faces they

all made when they missed their constable, and saw the

black gown of his office lie full in a puddle.

Well, away I scudded in the musty moth-eaten habit; and

being upon Exchange-time, I crowded myself amongst

merchants, poisoned all the Burse[644] in a minute,

and turned their faiths and troths into curds and

whey, making them swear that things now which they

forswore when the quarters struck again; for I was

present at the clapping up of every bargain, which did

ne’er hold, no longer than they held hands together.

There I heard news out of all countries, in all

languages; how many villains[645] were in Spain, how

many luxurs[646] in Italy, how many perjurds in France,

and how many reel-pots in Germany. At last I met, at

half-turn, one whom I had spent mine eyes so long for,

an hoary money-master, that had been off and on some

six-and-fifty years damned in his counting-house, for

his only recreation was but to hop about the Burse

before twelve, to hear what news from the Bank, and how

many merchants were banqrout[647] the last change of the

moon. This rammish penny-father[648] I rounded[649] in

the left ear, winded in my intent, the place and hour;

which no sooner he sucked in, but smiled upon me in

French, and replied,—

O mounsieur Diabla,

I’ll be chief guest at your tabla!

With that we shook hands, and, as we parted, I bade him

bring master Cog-bill the scrivener along with him; and

so I vanished out of that dressing.

And passing through Birchin-lane, amidst a camp-royal of

hose and doublets (master Snip’s backside being turned

where his face stood), I took excellent occasion to slip

into a captain’s suit, a valiant buff doublet, stuffed

with points[650] like a leg of mutton with parsley, and

a pair of velvet slops[651] scored thick with lace,

which ran round about the hose like ringworms, able to

make a man scratch where it itched not. And thus

accoutred, taking up my weapons a’ trust in the same

order at the next cutler’s I came to, I marched to

master Bezle’s ordinary, where I found a whole dozen of

my damned crew, sweating as much at dice as many poor

labourers do with the casting of ditches; when presently

I set in a stake amongst them: round it went; but the

crafty dice having peeped upon me once, knew who I was

well enough, and would never have their little black

eyes off a’ me all the while after. At last came my turn

about, the dice quaking in my fist before I threw them;

but when I yerked them forth, away they ran like Irish

lacqueys[652] as far as their bones would suffer them, I

sweeping up all the stakes that lay upon the table;

whereat some stamped, others swore, the rest cursed, and

all in general fretted to the gall that a new-comer, as

they termed me, should gather in so many fifteens at the

first vomit. Well, thus it passed on, the dice running

as false as the drabs in Whitefriars; and when any one

thought himself surest, in came I with a lurching cast,

and made them all swear round again; but such gunpowder

oaths they were, that I wonder how the ceiling held

together without spitting mortar upon them. Zounds,

captain, swore one to me, I think the devil be thy

good lord and master. True, thought I, and thou his

gentleman-usher. In conclusion, it fatted me better than

twenty eighteenpence ordinaries,[653] to hear them rage,

curse, and swear, like so many emperors of darkness. And

all these twelve were of twelve several companies. There

was your gallant extraordinary thief that keeps his

college of good-fellows,[654] and will not fear to rob a

lord in his coach for all his ten trencher-bearers on

horseback; your deep-conceited cutpurse, who by the

dexterity of his knife will draw out the money, and make

a flame-coloured purse shew like the bottomless pit, but

with never a soul in’t; your cheating bowler, that will

bank false of purpose, and lose a game of twelvepence to

purchase his partner twelve shillings in bets, and so

share it after the play; your cheveril-gutted catchpoll,

who like a horse-leech sucks gentlemen; and, in all,

your twelve tribes of villany; who no sooner understood

the quaint form of such an uncustomed legacy, but they

all pawned their vicious golls[655] to meet there at the

hour prefixed; and to confirm their resolution the more,

each slipped down his stocking, baring his right knee,

and so began to drink a health half as deep as mother

Hubburd’s cellar,—she that was called in[656] for

selling her working bottle-ale to bookbinders, and

spurting the froth upon courtiers’ noses. To conclude, I

was their only captain (for so they pleased to title

me); and so they all risse,[657] _poculis manibusque_

applauding my news; then the hour being more than once

and once reiterated, we were all at our hands again, and

so departed.[658]

I could tell now that I was in many a second house in

the city and suburbs afterward, where my entertainment

was not barren, nor my welcome cheap or ordinary; and

then how I walked in Paul’s[659] to see fashions, to

dive into villanous meetings, pernicious plots, black

humours, and a million of mischiefs, which are bred in

that cathedral womb and born within less than forty

weeks after. But some may object and say, What, doth the

devil walk in Paul’s then? Why not, sir, as well as a

sergeant, or a ruffian, or a murderer? May not the

devil, I pray you, walk in Paul’s, as well as the

horse[660] go a’ top of Paul’s? for I am sure I was not

far from his keeper. Pooh, I doubt, where there is no

doubt; for there is no true critic indeed that will carp

at the devil.

Now the hour posted onward to accomplish the effects of

my desire, to gorge every vice full of poison, that the

soul might burst at the last, and vomit out herself upon

blue cakes of brimstone. When returning home for the

purpose, in my captain’s apparel of buff and velvet, I

struck mine hostess into admiration at my proper[661]

appearance, for my polt-foot[662] was helped out with

bumbast; a property which many worldlings use whose toes

are dead and rotten, and therefore so stuff out their

shoes like the corners of woolpacks.

Well, into my tiring-house[663] I went, where I

had scarce shifted myself into the apparel of my

last will and testament, which was the habit of a

covetous barn-cracking farmer, but all my striplings of

perdition, my nephews of damnation, my kindred and

alliance of villany and sharking, were ready before the

hour to receive my bottomless blessing. When entering

into a country night-gown, with a cap of sickness about

my brows, I was led in between Pierce Pennyless and his

hostess, like a feeble farmer ready to depart England

and sail to the kingdom of Tartary;[664] who setting me

down in a wicked chair, all my pernicious kinsfolks

round about me, and the scrivener between my legs (for

he loves always to sit in the devil’s cot-house), thus

with a whey-countenance, short stops, and earthen

dampish voice, the true counterfeits of a dying

cullion,[665] I proceeded to the black order of my

legacies.

_The last will and testament of Lawrence Lucifer, the

old wealthy bachelor of Limbo,[666]

alias

Dick Devil-barn, the griping farmer of Kent._

In the name of Bezle-bub, Amen.

I, Lawrence Lucifer, alias Dick Devil-barn, sick in

soul, but not in body, being in perfect health to wicked

memory, do constitute and ordain this my last will and

testament irrevocable, as long as the world shall be

trampled on by villany.

_Imprimis_, I, Lawrence Lucifer, bequeath my soul to

hell, and my body to the earth: amongst you all divide

me, and share me equally, but with as much wrangling as

you can, I pray; and it will be the better if you go to

law for me.

As touching my worldly-wicked goods, I give and bequeath

them in most villanous order following:

First, I constitute and ordain Lieutenant Prigbeard,

archpander of England, my sole heir of all such lands,

closes, and gaps as lie within the bounds of my

gift; beside, I have certain houses, tenements, and

withdrawing-rooms in Shoreditch, Tunbold-street,[667]

Whitefriars, and Westminster, which I freely give and

bequeath to the aforesaid lieutenant and the base heirs

truly begot of his villanous body; with this proviso,

that he sell none of the land when he lacks money, nor

make away any of the houses, to impair and weaken the

stock, no, not so much as to alter the property of any

of them, which is, to make them honest against their

wills, but to train and muster his wits upon the

Mile-end of his mazzard,[668] rather to fortify the

territories of Tunbold-street and enrich the county of

Pict-hatch[669] with all his vicious endeavours, golden

enticements, and damnable practices. And, lieutenant,

thou must dive, as thou usest to do, into landed

novices, who have only wit to be lickerish and no more,

that so their tenants, trotting up to London with their

quartridges, they may pay them the rent, but thou and

thy college shall receive the money.

Let no young wriggle-eyed damosel, if her years have

struck twelve once, be left unassaulted, but it must be

thy office to lay hard siege to her honesty, and to try

if the walls of her maidenhead may be scaled with a

ladder of angels;[670] for one acre of such wenches will

bring in more at year’s end than a hundred acres of the

best harrowed land between Deptford and Dover. And take

this for a note by the way,—you must never walk without

your deuce or deuce-ace of drabs after your boot-heels;

for when you are abroad, you know not what use you may

have for them. And, lastly, if you be well-feed by some

riotous gallant, you must practise, as indeed you do, to

wind out a wanton velvet-cap and bodkin from the tangles

of her shop, teaching her—you know how—to cast a

cuckold’s mist before the eyes of her husband, which is,

telling him she must see her cousin new-come to town, or

that she goes to a woman’s labour,[671] when thou

knowest well enough she goes to none but her own. And

being set out of the shop, with her man afore her, to

quench the jealousy of her husband, she, by thy

instructions, shall turn the honest, simple fellow off

at the next turning, and give him leave to see _The

Merry Devil of Edmonton_,[672] or _A Woman killed with

Kindness_,[673] when his mistress is going herself to

the same murder. Thousand of such inventions, practices,

and devices, I stuff thy trade withal, beside the

luxurious[674] meetings at taverns, ten-pound suppers,

and fifteen-pound reckonings, made up afterwards with

riotous eggs and muscadine. All these female vomits and

adulterous surfeits I give and bequeath to thee, which I

hope thou wilt put in practice with all expedition after

my decease; and to that end I ordain thee wholly and

solely my only absolute, excellent, villanous heir.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to you, Gregory Gauntlet,

high thief on horseback, all such sums of money that are

nothing due to you, and to receive them in, whether the

parties be willing to pay you or no. You need not make

many words with them, but only these two, _Stand and

deliver!_ and therefore a true thief cannot choose but

be wise, because he is a man of so very few words.

I need not instruct you, I think, Gregory, about the

politic searching of crafty carriers’ packs, or ripping

up the bowels of wide boots and cloak-bags; I do not

doubt but you have already exercised them all. But one

thing I especially charge you of, the neglect of which

makes many of your religion tender their winepipes at

Tyburn at least three months before their day; that if

you chance to rob a virtuous townsman on horseback, with

his wife upon a pillion behind him, you presently speak

them fair to walk a turn or two at one side, where,

binding them both together, like man and wife, arm in

arm very lovingly, be sure you tie them hard enough, for

fear they break the bonds of matrimony, which, if it

should fall out so, the matter would lie sore upon your

necks the next sessions after, because your negligent

tying was the cause of that breach between them.

Now, as for your Welsh hue and cry—the only net to catch

thieves in—I know you avoid well enough, because you can

shift both your beards and your towns well; but for your

better disguising henceforward, I will fit you with a

beard-maker of mine own, one that makes all the false

hairs for my devils, and all the periwigs that are worn

by old courtiers, who take it for a pride in their bald

days to wear yellow curls on their foreheads, when one

may almost see the sun go to bed through the chinks of

their faces.

Moreover, Gregory, because I know thee toward enough,

and thy arms full of feats, I make thee keeper of

Combe Park,[675] sergeant of Salisbury Plain, warden

of the standing-places, and lastly, constable of all

heaths, holes, highways, and cony-groves, hoping that

thou wilt execute these places and offices as truly as

Derrick[676] will execute his place and office at

Tyburn.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to thee, Dick Dogman, grand

catchpoll—over and above thy barebone fees, that will

scarce hang wicked flesh on thy back—all such lurches,

gripes, and squeezes as may be wrung out by the fist of

extortion.

And because I take pity on thee, waiting so long as thou

usest to do, ere thou canst land one fare at the

Counter, watching sometimes ten hours together in an

ale-house, ever and anon peeping forth and sampling thy

nose with the red lattice;[677] let him whosoever that

falls into thy clutches at night pay well for thy

standing all day: and, cousin Richard, when thou hast

caught him in the mousetrap of thy liberty with the

cheese of thy office, the wire of thy hard fist being

clapt down upon his shoulders, and the back of his

estate almost broken to pieces, then call thy cluster of

fellow-vermins together, and sit in triumph with thy

prisoner at the upper end of a tavern-table, where,

under the colour of shewing him favour (as you term it)

in waiting for bail, thou and thy counter-leech may

swallow down six gallons of Charnico,[678] and then

begin to chafe that he makes you stay so long before

Peter Bail[679] comes. And here it will not be amiss if

you call in more wine-suckers, and damn as many gallons

again, for you know your prisoner’s ransom will pay for

all; this is, if the party be flush now, and would not

have his credit coppered with a scurvy counter.[680]

Another kind of rest you have, which is called

shoepenny—that is, when you will be paid for every

stride you take; and if the channel be dangerous and

rough, you will not step over under a noble:[681] a very

excellent lurch to get up the price of your legs between

Paul’s-chain and Ludgate.

But that which likes[682] me beyond measure is the

villanous nature of that arrest which I may fitly term

by the name of cog-shoulder, when you clap a’ both sides

like old Rowse[683] in Cornwall, and receive double fee

both from the creditor and the debtor, swearing by the

post of your office to shoulder-clap the party the first

time he lights upon the lime-twigs of your liberty; when

for a little usurer’s oil you allow him day by day free

passage to walk by the wicked precinct of your noses,

and yet you will pimple your souls with oaths, till you

make them as well-favoured as your faces, and swear he

never came within the verge of your eyelids. Nay, more,

if the creditor were present to see him arrested on the

one side, and the party you wot on over the way at the

other side, you have such quaint shifts, pretty

hinderances, and most lawyer-like delays, ere you will

set forward, that in the meantime he may make himself

away in some by-alley, or rush into the bowels of some

tavern or drinking-school; or if neither, you will find

talk with some shark-shift by the way, and give him the

marks of the party, who will presently start before you,

give the debtor intelligence, and so a rotten fig for

the catchpoll! A most witty, smooth, and damnable

conveyance![684] Many such cunning devices breed in the

reins of your offices beside. I leave to speak of your

unmerciful dragging a gentleman through Fleet-street,

to the utter confusion of his white feather, and

the lamentable spattering of his pearl-colour silk

stockings, especially when some six of your black dogs

of Newgate[685] are upon him at once. Therefore, sweet

cousin Richard (for you are the nearest kinsman I have),

I give and bequeath to you no more than you have

already; for you are so well gorged and stuffed with

that, that one spoonful of villany more would overlay

your stomach quite, and, I fear me, make you kick up all

the rest.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to you, Benedick Bottomless,

most deep cutpurse, all the benefit of pageant-days,

great market-days, ballat-places,[686] but especially

the sixpenny rooms in play-houses, to cut, dive, or nim,

with as much speed, art, and dexterity, as may be

handled by honest rogues of thy quality. Nay, you shall

not stick, Benedick, to give a shave of your office at

Paul’s-cross in the sermon-time: but thou holdest it

a thing thou mayest do by law, to cut a purse in

Westminster Hall; true, Benedick, if thou be sure the

law be on that side thou cuttest it on.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to you, old Bias, alias

Humfrey Hollowbank, true cheating bowler and lurcher,

the one half of all false bets, cunning hooks, subtle

ties, and cross-lays,[687] that are ventured upon the

landing of your bowl, and the safe arriving at the haven

of the mistress,[688] if it chance to pass all the

dangerous rocks and rubs of the alley, and be not choked

in the sand, like a merchant’s ship before it comes

half-way home, which is none of your fault (you’ll say

and swear), although in your own turned conscience you

know that you threw it above three yards short out of

hand, upon very set purpose.

Moreover, Humfrey, I give you the lurching of all young

novices, citizens’ sons, and country gentlemen, that are

hooked in by the winning of one twelvepenny game at

first, lost upon policy, to be cheated of twelve pounds’

worth a’ bets afterward. And, old Bias, because thou art

now and then smelt out for a cozener, I would have thee

sometimes go disguised (in honest apparel), and so

drawing in amongst bunglers and ketlers[689] under the

plain frieze of simplicity, thou mayest finely couch the

wrought-velvet of knavery.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to your cousin-german here,

Francis Fingerfalse, deputy of dicing-houses, all

cunning lifts, shifts, and couches, that ever were, are,

and shall be invented from this hour of eleven-clock

upon black Monday, until it smite twelve a’ clock at

doomsday. And this I know, Francis, if you do endeavour

to excel, as I know you do, and will truly practise

falsely, you may live more gallanter far upon three

dice, than many of your foolish heirs about London upon

thrice three hundred acres.

But turning my legacy to you-ward, Barnaby

Burning-glass, arch-tobacco-taker of England, in

ordinaries, upon stages[690] both common and private,

and lastly, in the lodging of your drab and mistress;

I am not a little proud, I can tell you, Barnaby, that

you dance after my pipe so long, and for all

counterblasts[691] and tobacco-Nashes[692] (which some

call railers), you are not blown away, nor your fiery

thirst quenched with the small penny-ale of their

contradictions, but still suck that dug of damnation

with a long nipple, still burning that rare Phœnix of

Phlegethon, tobacco, that from her ashes, burned and

knocked out, may arise another pipeful. Therefore I

give and bequeath unto thee a breath of all religions

save the true one, and tasting of all countries save

his[693] own; a brain well sooted, where the Muses

hang up in the smoke like red herrings; and look how

the narrow alley of thy pipe shews in the inside, so

shall all the pipes through thy body. Besides, I give

and bequeath to thee[694] lungs as smooth as jet, and

just of the same colour, that when thou art closed in

thy grave, the worms may be consumed with them, and

take them for black puddings.

Lastly, not least, I give and bequeath to thee, Pierce

Pennyless, exceeding poor scholar, that hath made

clean shoes in both universities, and been a pitiful

battler[695] all thy lifetime, full often heard

with this lamentable cry at the buttery-hatch, Ho,

Launcelot, a cue[696] of bread, and a cue of beer! never

passing beyond the confines of a farthing, nor once

munching commons but only upon gaudy-days;[697] to

thee, most miserable Pierce, or pierced through and

through with misery, I bequeath the tithe of all

vaulting-houses,[698] the tenth denier of each heigh,

pass, come aloft! beside the playing in and out of all

wenches at thy pleasure, which I know, as thou mayest

use it, will be such a fluent pension, that thou shalt

never have need to write _Supplication_ again.

Now, for the especial trust and confidence I have in

both you, Mihell[699] Moneygod, usurer, and Leonard

Lavender, broker or pawn-lender, I make you two my full

executors to the true disposing of all these my hellish

intents, wealthy villanies, and most pernicious damnable

legacies.

And now, kinsmen and friends, wind about me; my breath

begins to cool, and all my powers to freeze; and I can

say no more to you, nephews, than I have said,—only

this, I leave you all, like ratsbane, to poison the

realm. And, I pray, be all of you as arrant villains as

you can be; and so farewell: be all hanged, and come

down to me as soon as you can.

This said, he departed to his molten kingdom: the wind

risse,[700] the bottom of the chair flew out, the

scrivener fell flat upon his nose; and here is the end

of a harmless moral.

----------

Now, sir, what is your censure[701] now? you have read

me, I am sure; am I black enough, think you, dressed up

in a lasting suit of ink? do I deserve my dark and

pitchy title? stick I close enough to a villain’s ribs?

is not Lucifer liberal to his nephews in this his last

will and testament? Methinks I hear you say nothing; and

therefore I know you are pleased and agree to all, for

_qui tacet, consentire videtur_; and I allow you wise

and truly judicious, because you keep your censure to

yourself.

FATHER HUBBURD’S TALES;

OR,

THE ANT AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

_Father Hubburds Tales: or The Ant, and the Nightingale.

London Printed by T. C. for William Cotton, and are to

be solde at his Shop neare adioyning to Ludgate._ 1604.

4to.

The first edition of this tract, in which several verses

and the whole of “The Ant’s Tale when he was a scholar”

are omitted, made its appearance during the same year in

4to, entitled _The Ant and the Nightingale: or Father

Hubburds Tales. London Printed by T. C. for Tho:

Bushell, and are to be solde by Jeffrey Chorlton, at his

Shop at the North doore of Paules._ Mr. J. P. Collier

(_Bridgewater-House Catalogue_, p. 199) mentions it as

the _second_ edition; but a careful examination of both

the impressions has convinced me that it is the _first_.

Taylor, the water-poet, in a “Preamble” to _The Praise

of Hempseed_ (first printed in 1620), thus alludes to

the present piece;

“One wrote the Nightingale and lab’ring Ant.”

P. 62—_Workes_, 1630.

_To the true general patron of all Muses, Musicians,

Poets, and Picture-drawers_, SIR CHRISTOPHER

CLUTCHFIST, _knighted at a very hard pennyworth,

neither for eating musk-melons, anchovies, or

caviare, but for a costlier exploit and a

hundred-pound feat of arms_, OLIVER HUBBURD,

_brother to the nine waiting-gentlewomen the Muses,

wisheth the decrease of his lands and the increase

of his legs, that his calves may hang down like

gamashoes_.[702]

Most guerdonless sir, pinching patron, and the Muses’

bad paymaster, thou that owest for all the pamphlets,

histories, and translations that ever have[703] been

dedicated to thee since thou wert one and twenty, and

couldst make water upon thine own lands: but beware,

sir, you cannot carry it away so, I can tell you, for

all your copper-gilt spurs and your brood of feathers;

for there are certain line-sharkers that have coursed

the countries to seek you out already, and they nothing

doubt but to find you here this Candlemas-term; which,

if it should fall out so—as I hope your worship is wiser

than to venture up so soon to the chambers of London—

they have plotted together with the best common

play-plotter in England to arrest you at the Muses’

suit—though they shoot short of them—and to set one of

the sergeants of poetry, or rather the Poultry,[704] to

claw you by the back, who, with one clap on your

shoulder, will bruise all the taffeta to pieces.

Now what the matter is between you, you know best

yourself, sir; only I hear that they rail against you in

booksellers’ shops very dreadfully, that you have used

them most unknightly, in offering to take their books,

and would never return so much as would pay for the

covers, beside the gilding too, which stands them in

somewhat, you know, and a yard and a quarter of broad

sixpenny ribband; the price of that you are not ignorant

of yourself, because you wear broad shoe-string; and

they cannot be persuaded but that you pull the strings

off from their books, and so maintain your shoes all the

year long; and think, verily, if the book be in folio,

that you take off the parchment, and give it to your

tailor, but save all the gilding together, which may

amount in time to gild you a pair of spurs withal. Such

are the miserable conceits they gather of you, because

you never give the poor Muse-suckers a penny: wherefore,

if I might counsel you, sir, the next time they came

with their gilded dedications, you should take the

books, make your men break their pates, then give them

ten groats a-piece, and so drive them away.

Your worship’s,

If you embrace my counsel,

OLIVER HUBBURD.

TO THE READER.

----------

Shall I tell you what, reader?—but first I should call

you gentle, courteous, and wise; but ’tis no matter,

they’re but foolish words of course, and better left

out than printed; for if you be so, you need not be

called so; and if you be not so, there were law

against me for calling you out of your names:—by John

of Paul’s-churchyard,[705] I swear, and that oath will

be taken at any haberdasher’s, I never wished this

book better fortune than to fall into the hands of a

true-spelling printer, and an honest-minded[706]

bookseller; and if honesty could be sold by the bushel

like oysters, I had rather have one Bushel[707] of

honesty than three of money.

Why I call these _Father Hubburd’s Tales_, is not to

have them called in again, as the _Tale of Mother

Hubburd_:[708] the world would shew little judgment in

that, i’faith; and I should say then, _plena stultorum

omnia_; for I entreat[709] here neither of rugged[710]

bears or apes, no, nor the lamentable downfal of the old

wife’s platters,—I deal with no such metal: what is

mirth in me, is as harmless as the quarter-jacks in

Paul’s, that are up with their elbows[711] four times an

hour, and yet misuse no creature living; the very

bitterest in me is but like a physical frost, that nips

the wicked blood a little, and so makes the whole

body the wholesomer: and none can justly except

at me but some riotous vomiting Kit,[712] or some

gentleman-swallowing malkin. Then, to condemn these

Tales following because Father Hubburd tells them in the

small size of an ant, is even as much as if these two

words, _God_ and _Devil_, were printed both in one line,

to skip it over and say that line were naught, because

the devil were in it. _Sat sapienti_; and I hope[713]

there be many wise men in all the twelve Companies.[714]

Yours,

If you read without spelling or hacking,

T. M.

THE ANT AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

----------

The west-sea’s goddess in a crimson robe,

Her temples circled with a coral wreath,

Waited her love, the lightener of earth’s globe:

The wanton wind did on her bosom breathe;

The nymphs of springs did hallow’d[715] water pour;

Whate’er was cold help’d to make cool her bower.

And now the fiery horses of the Sun

Were from their golden-flaming car untrac’d,

And all the glory of the day was done,

Save here and there some light moon-clouds enchas’d,

A parti-colour’d canopy did spread

Over the Sun and Thetis’ amorous bed.

Now had the shepherds folded in their flocks,

The sweating teams uncoupled from their yokes:

The wolf sought prey, and the sly-murdering fox

Attempts to steal; fearless of rural strokes,

All beasts took rest that liv’d by labouring toil;

Only such rang’d as had delight in spoil.

Now in the pathless region of the air

The wingèd passengers had left to soar,

Except the bat and owl, who bode sad care,

And Philomel, that nightly doth deplore,

In soul-contenting tunes, her change of shape,

Wrought first by perfidy and lustful rape.

This poor musician, sitting all alone

On a green hawthorn from the thunder blest,

Carols in varied notes her antique moan,

Keeping a sharpen’d briar against her breast:

Her innocence this watchful pain doth take,

To shun the adder and the speckled snake.

These two, like her old foe the lord of Thrace,

Regardless of her dulcet-changing song,

To serve their own lust have her life in chase;

Virtue by vice is offer’d endless wrong:

Beasts are not all to blame, for now and then

We see the like attempted amongst men.

Under the tree whereon the poor bird sat,

There was a bed of busy-toiling ants,

That in their summer winter’s comfort gat,

Teaching poor men how to shun after-wants;

Whose rules if sluggards could be learn’d to keep,

They should not starve awake, lie cold asleep.

One of these busy brethren, having done

His day’s true labour, got upon the tree,

And with his little nimble legs did run;

Pleas’d with the hearing, he desir’d to see

What wondrous creature nature had compos’d,

In whom such gracious music was enclos’d.

He got too near; for the mistrustful bird

Guess’d him to be a spy from her known foe:

Suspicion argues not to hear a word:

What wise man fears not that’s inur’d to woe?

Then blame not her she caught him in her beak,

About to kill him ere the worm[716] could speak.

But yet her mercy was above her heat;

She did not, as a many silken men

Call’d by much wealth, small wit, to judgment’s

seat,[717]

Condemn at random; but she pitied then

When she might spoil: would great ones would do so!

Who often kill before the cause they know,

O, if they would, as did this little fowl,

Look on their lesser captives with even ruth,

They should not hear so many sentenc’d howl,

Complaining justice is not friend to truth!

But they would think upon this ancient theme,

Each right extreme is injury extreme.

Pass them to mend, for none can them amend

But heaven’s lieutentant and earth’s justice-king:

Stern will hath will; no great one wants a friend;

Some are ordain’d to sorrow, some to sing;

And with this sentence let thy griefs all close,

Whoe’er are wrong’d are happier than their foes.

So much for such. Now to the little ant

In the bird’s beak and at the point to die:

Alas for woe, friends in distress are scant!

None of his fellows to his help did hie;

They keep them safe; they hear, and are afraid:

’Tis vain to trust in the base number’s aid.

Only himself unto himself is friend:

With a faint voice his foe he thus bespake;

Why seeks your gentleness a poor worm’s end?

O, ere you kill, hear the excuse I make!

I come to wonder, not to work offence:

There is no glory to spoil innocence.

Perchance you take me for a soothing spy,

By the sly snake or envious adder fee’d:

Alas, I know not how to feign and lie,

Or win a base intelligencer’s meed,

That now are Christians, sometimes Turks, then Jews,

Living by leaving heaven for earthly news.

I am[718] a little emmet, born to work,

Oftimes a man, as you were once a maid:

Under the name of man much ill doth lurk,

Yet of poor me you need not be afraid;

Mean men are worms, on whom the mighty tread;

Greatness and strength your virtue injurèd.

With that she open’d wide her horny bill,

The prison where this poor submissant lay;

And seeing the poor ant lie quivering still,

Go, wretch, quoth she, I give thee life and way;

The worthy will not prey on yielding things,

Pity’s infeoffèd to the blood of kings.

For I was once, though now a feather’d veil

Cover my wrongèd body, queen-like clad;

This down about my neck was erst a rail[719]

Of byss[720] embroider’d—fie on that we had!

Unthrifts and fools and wrongèd ones complain

Rich things were theirs must ne’er be theirs again.

I was, thou know’st, the daughter to a king,

Had palaces and pleasures in my time;

Now mine own songs I am enforc’d to sing,

Poets forget me in their pleasing rhyme;

Like chaff they fly, toss’d with each windy breath,

Omitting my forc’d rape by Tereus’ death.

But ’tis no matter; I myself can sing

Sufficient strains to witness mine own worth:

They that forget a queen soothe with a king;[721]

Flattery’s still barren, yet still bringeth forth:

Their works are dews shed when the day is done,

But suck’d up dry by the next morning’s[722], sun.

What more of them? they are like Iris’ throne,

Commix’d with many colours in moist time:

Such lines portend what’s in that circle shewn;

Clear weather follows showers in every clime,

Averring no prognosticator lies,

That says, some great ones fall, their rivals rise.

Pass such for bubbles; let their bladder-praise

Shine and sink with them in a moment’s change:

They think to rise when they the riser raise;

But regal wisdom knows it is not strange

For curs to fawn: base things are ever low;

The vulgar eye feeds only on the show.

Else would not soothing glosers oil the son,

Who, while his father liv’d, his acts did hate:

They know all earthly day with man is done

When he is circled in the night of fate;

So the deceasèd they think on no more,

But whom they injur’d late, they now adore.

But there’s a manly lion now can roar

Thunder more dreaded than the lioness;

Of him let simple beasts his aid implore,

For he conceives more than they can express:

The virtuous politic is truly man,

Devil the atheist politician.

I guess’d thee such a one; but tell thy tale:

If thou be simple, as thou hast exprest,

Do not with coinèd words set wit to sale,

Nor with the flattering world use vain protest:

Sith[723] man thou say’st thou wert, I prithee, tell

While thou wert man what mischiefs thee befell.

Princess, you bid me buried cares revive,

Quoth the poor ant; yet sith by you I live,

So let me in my daily labourings thrive

As I myself do to your service give:

I have been oft a man, and so to be

Is often to be thrall to misery.

But if you will have me my mind disclose,

I must entreat you that I may set down

The tales of my black fortunes in sad[724] prose:

Rhyme is uneven, fashion’d by a clown;

I first was such a one, I till’d the ground;

And amongst rurals verse is scarcely found.

Well, tell thy tales; but see thy prose be good;

For if thou Euphuize, which once was rare,[725]

And of all English phrase the life and blood,

In those times for the fashion past compare,

I’ll say thou borrow’st, and condemn thy style,

As our new fools, that count all following vile.

Or if in bitterness thou rail, like Nash—

Forgive me, honest soul, that term thy phrase

Railing! for in thy works thou wert not rash,

Nor didst affect in youth thy private praise:

Thou hadst a strife with that Trigemini;[726]

Thou hurt’dst not them till they had injur’d thee.

Thou wast indeed too slothful to thyself,

Hiding thy better talent in thy spleen;

True spirits are not covetous in pelf;

Youth’s wit is ever ready, quick, and keen:

Thou didst not live thy ripen’d autumn-day,

But wert cut off in thy best blooming May:

Else hadst thou left, as thou indeed hast left,

Sufficient test, though now in others’ chests,

T’ improve[727] the baseness of that humorous

theft,[728]

Which seems to flow from self-conceiving breasts:

Thy name they bury, having buried thee;

Drones eat thy honey—thou wert the true bee.

Peace keep thy soul! And now to you, sir ant:

On with your prose, be neither rude nor nice;

In your discourse let no decorum want,

See that you be sententious and concise;

And, as I like the matter, I will sing

A canzonet, to close up every thing.

With this, the whole nest of ants hearing their fellow

was free from danger, like comforters when care is

over, came with great thanks to harmless Philomel, and

made a ring about her and their restored friend,

serving instead of a dull audience of stinkards

sitting in the penny-galleries of a theatre, and

yawning upon the players; whilst the ant began to

stalk like a three-quarter sharer,[729] and was not

afraid to tell tales out of the villanous school of

the world, where the devil is the schoolmaster and the

usurer the under-usher, the scholars young dicing

landlords, that pass away three hundred acres with

three dice in a hand, and after the decease of so much

land in money become sons and heirs of bawdy-houses;

for it is an easy labour to find heirs without land,

but a hard thing indeed to find land without heirs.

But for fear I interrupt this small actor in less than

_decimo sexto_,[730] I leave, and give the ant leave

to tell his tale.

_The Ant’s Tale when he was a ploughman._

I was sometimes, most chaste lady Nightingale, or

rather, queen Philomel the ravished, a brow-melting

husbandman: to be man and husband is to be a poor master

of many rich cares, which, if he cannot subject and keep

under, he must look for ever to undergo as many miseries

as the hours of his years contain minutes: such a man I

was, and such a husband, for I was linked in marriage:

my havings were[731] small and my means less, yet charge

came on me ere I knew how to keep it; yet did I all my

endeavours, had a plough and land to employ it, fertile

enough if it were manured, and for tillage I was never

held a truant.

But my destruction, and the ruin of all painful

husbandmen about me, began by the prodigal downfal of

my young landlord, whose father, grandfather, and

great-grandfather, for many generations had been lords

of the town wherein I dwelt, and many other towns near

adjoining: to all which belonged fair commons for the

comfort of the poor, liberty of fishing, help of fuel by

brush and underwood never denied, till the old devourer

of virtue, honesty, and good neighbourhood, death, had

made our landlord dance after his pipe,—which is so

common, that every one knows the way, though they make

small account of it. Well, die he did; and as soon as he

was laid in his grave, the bell might well have tolled

for hospitality and good housekeeping; for whether they

fell sick with him and died, and so were buried, I know

not; but I am sure in our town they were never seen

since, nor, that I can hear of, in any other part;

especially about us they are impossible to be found.

Well, our landlord being dead, we had his heir, gentle

enough and fair-conditioned,[732] rather promising at

first his father’s virtues than the world’s villanies;

but he was so accustomed to wild and unfruitful company

about the court and London (whither he was sent by his

sober father to practise civility and manners), that in

the country he would scarce keep till his father’s body

was laid in the cold earth; but as soon as the hasty

funeral was solemnised, from us he posted, discharging

all his old father’s servants (whose beards were even

frost-bitten with age), and was attended only by a

monkey and a marmoset;[733] the one being an ill-faced

fellow, as variable as New-fangle[734] for fashions; the

other an imitator of any thing, however villanous, but

utterly destitute of all goodness. With this French page

and Italianate serving-man was our young landlord only

waited on, and all to save charges in servingmen, to pay

it out in harlots: and we poor men had news of a far

greater expense within less than a quarter. For we were

sent for to London, and found our great landlord in a

little room about the Strand; who told us, that

whereas we had lived tenants at will, and might in his

forefathers’ days [have] been hourly turned out, he,

putting on a better conscience to usward, intended to

make us leases for years; and for advice ’twixt him and

us he had made choice of a lawyer, a mercer, and a

merchant, to whom he was much beholding,[735] who that

morning were appointed to meet in the Temple-church.

Temple and church, both one in name, made us hope of a

holy meeting; but there is an old proverb, _The nearer

the church, the farther from God_: to approve[736] which

saying, we met the mercer and the merchant, that, loving

our landlord or his land well, held him a great man in

both their books. Some little conference they had; what

the conclusion was, we poor men were not yet acquainted

with; but being called at their leisure, and when they

pleased to think upon us, told us they were to dine

together at the Horn in Fleet-street, being a house

where their lawyer resorted; and if we would there

attend them, we should understand matter much for our

good: and in the meantime, they appointed us near the

old Temple-Garden to attend their counsellor, whose name

was master Prospero, not the great rider of horse[737]—

for I heard there was once such a one,—but a more

cunning rider, who had rid many men till they were more

miserable than beasts, and our ill hap it was to prove

his hackneys. Well, though the issue were ill, on we

went to await his worship, whose chamber we found that

morning fuller of clients than I could ever see

suppliants to heaven in our poor parish-church, and yet

we had in it three hundred households: and I may tell it

with reverence, I never saw more submission done to

God than to that great lawyer; every suitor there

offered gold to this gowned idol, standing bareheaded

in a sharp-set morning, for it was in booted[738]

Michaelmas-term, and not a word spoke to him but it was

with the[739] bowing of the body and the submissive

flexure of the knee. Short tale to make, he was informed

of us what we were, and of our coming up; when with an

iron look and shrill voice, he began to speak to the

richest of our number, ever and anon yerking out the

word _fines_, which served instead of a full-point to

every sentence.

But that word _fines_ was no fine word, methought, to

please poor labouring husbandmen, that can scarce sweat

out so much in a twelvemonth as he would demand in

a twinkling. At last, to close up the lamentable

tragedy of us ploughmen, enters our young landlord, so

metamorphosed into the shape of a French puppet, that at

the first we started, and thought one of the baboons had

marched in in man’s apparel. His head was dressed up in

white feathers like a shuttlecock, which agreed so well

with his brain, being nothing but cork, that two of the

biggest of the guard might very easily have tossed him

with battledores, and made good sport with him in his

majesty’s great hall. His doublet was of a strange cut;

and to shew the fury of his humour, the collar of it

rose up so high and sharp as if it would have cut his

throat by daylight. His wings,[740] according to the

fashion now, were[741] as little and diminutive as a

puritan’s ruff, which shewed he ne’er meant to fly out

of England, nor do any exploit beyond sea, but live and

die about London, though he begged in Finsbury. His

breeches, a wonder to see, were full as deep as the

middle of winter, or the roadway between London and

Winchester, and so large and wide withal, that I think

within a twelvemonth he might very well put all his

lands in them; and then you may imagine they were big

enough, when they would outreach a thousand acres:

moreover, they differed so far from our fashioned

hose[742] in the country, and from his father’s old

gascoynes,[743] that his back-part seemed to us like a

monster; the roll of the breeches standing so low, that

we conjectured his house of office, sir-reverence,[744]

stood in his hams. All this while his French monkey bore

his cloak of three pounds a-yard, lined clean through

with purple velvet, which did so dazzle our coarse eyes,

that we thought we should have been purblind ever after,

what with the prodigal aspect of that and his glorious

rapier and hangers[745] all bost[746] with pillars of

gold, fairer in show than the pillars in Paul’s or the

tombs at Westminster; beside, it drunk up the price of

all my plough-land in very pearl, which stuck as thick

upon those hangers as the white measles upon hog’s

flesh. When I had well viewed that gay gaudy cloak and

those unthrifty wasteful hangers, I muttered thus to

myself: That is no cloak for the rain, sure; nor those

no hangers for Derrick;[747] when of a sudden, casting

mine eyes lower, I beheld a curious pair of boots of

king Philip’s[748] leather, in such artificial wrinkles,

sets, and plaits, as if they had been starched lately

and came new from the laundress’s, such was my ignorance

and simple acquaintance with the fashion, and I dare

swear my fellows and neighbours here are all as

ignorant as myself. But that which struck us most into

admiration, upon those fantastical boots stood such huge

and wide tops, which so swallowed up his thighs, that

had he sworn, as other gallants did, this common oath,

Would I might sink as I stand! all his body might very

well have sunk down and been damned in his boots.

Lastly, he walked the chamber with such a pestilent

gingle,[749] that his spurs over-squeaked the lawyer,

and made him reach his voice three notes above his fee;

but after we had spied the rowels of his spurs, how we

blest ourselves! they did so much and so far exceed the

compass of our fashion, that they looked more like the

forerunners of wheelbarrows. Thus was our young landlord

accoutred in such a strange and prodigal shape,[750]

that it amounted to above two years’ rent in apparel. At

last approached[751] the mercer and the merchant, two

notable arch-tradesmen, who had fitted my young master

in clothes, whilst they had clothed themselves in his

acres, and measured him out velvet by the thumb, whilst

they received his revenues by handfuls; for he had not

so many yards in his suit as they had yards and houses

bound for the payment, which now he was forced to

pass over to them, or else all his lands should

be put to[752] their book and to their forfeiting

neck-verse;[753] so my youngster was now at his

pension, not like a gentleman-pensioner, but like a

gentleman-spender. Whereupon entered master Bursebell,

the royal scrivener, with deeds and writings hanged,

drawn, and quartered, for the purpose: he was a valiant

scribe, I remember; his pen lay mounted between his ear

like a Tower-gun, but not charged yet till our young

master’s patrimony shot off, which was some third part

of an hour after. By this time, the lawyer, the mercer,

and the merchant, were whispering and consulting

together about the writings and passage of the land in

very deep and sober conference; but our wiseacres all

the while, as one regardless of either land or money,

not hearkening or inquisitive after their subtle and

politic devices, held himself very busy about the

burning of his tobacco-pipe (as there is no gallant but

hath a pipe to burn about London), though we poor simple

men never heard of the name till that time; and he might

very fitly take tobacco there, for the lawyer and the

rest made him smoke already. But to have noted the apish

humour of him, and the fantastical faces he coined in

the receiving of the smoke, it would have made your

ladyship have sung nothing but merry jigs[754] for a

twelvemonth after,—one time winding the pipe like a horn

at the Pie-corner of his mouth, which must needs make

him look like a sow-gelder,[755] and another time

screwing his face like one of our country players, which

must needs make him look like a fool; nay, he had at

least his dozen of faces, but never a good one amongst

them all; neither his father’s face, nor the face of his

grandfather, but yet more wicked and riotous faces than

all the generation of him. Now their privy whisperings

and villanous plots began to be drawn to a conclusion,

when presently they called our smoky landlord in the

midst of his draught, who in a valiant humour dashed his

tobacco-pipe into the chimney-corner: whereat I started,

and beckoning his marmoset[756] to me, asked him if

those long white things did cost no money? to which the

slave replied very proudly, Money! yes, sirrah; but I

tell thee, my master scorns to have a thing come twice

to his mouth. Then, quoth I, I think thy master is more

choice in his mouth than in any member else: it were

good if he used that all his body over, he would never

have need, as many gallants have, of any sweating

physic. Sweating physic! replied the marmoset; what may

thy meaning be? why, do not you ploughmen sweat too?

Yes, quoth I, most of any men living; but yet there is a

difference between the sweat of a ploughman and the

sweat of a gentleman, as much as between your master’s

apparel and mine, for when we sweat, the land prospers,

and the harvest comes in; but when a gentleman sweats, I

wot how the gear[757] goes then. No sooner were these

words spoken but the marmoset had drawn out his poniard

half-way to make a show of revenge, but at the smart

voice of the lawyer he suddenly whipt it in again. Now

was our young master with one penful of ink doing a far

greater exploit than all his forefathers; for what they

were a-purchasing all their lifetime, he was now passing

away in the fourth part of a minute; and that which many

thousand drops of his grandfather’s brows did painfully

strive for, one drop now of a scrivener’s inkhorn did

easily pass over: a dash of a pen stood for a thousand

acres: how quickly they were dashed in the mouth by our

young landlord’s prodigal fist! it seemed he made no

more account of acres than of acorns. Then were we

called to set our hands for witnesses of his folly,

which we poor men did witness too much already; and

because we were found ignorant in writing, and never

practised in that black art—which I might very fitly

term so, because it conjured our young master out of

all—we were commanded, as it were, to draw any mark with

a pen, which should signify as much as the best hand

that ever old Peter Bales[758] hung out in the Old

Bailey. To conclude, I took the pen first of the lawyer,

and turning it arsy-versy, like no instrument for a

ploughman, our youngster and the rest of the faction

burst into laughter at the simplicity of my fingering;

but I, not so simple as they laughed me for, drew the

picture of a knavish emblem, which was a plough with the

heels upward, signifying thereby that the world was

turned upside down since the decease of my old landlord,

all hospitality and good housekeeping kicked out of

doors, all thriftiness and good husbandry tossed into

the air, ploughs turned into trunks,[759] and corn into

apparel. Then came another of our husbandmen to set his

mark by mine: he holding the pen clean at the one side

towards the merchant and the mercer, shewing that all

went on their sides, drew the form of an unbridled colt,

so wild and unruly, that he seemed with one foot to kick

up the earth and spoil the labours of many toiling

beasts, which was fitly alluded to our wild and

unbridled landlord, which, like the colt, could stand

upon no ground till he had no ground to stand upon.

These marks, set down under the shape of simplicity,

were the less marked with the eyes of knavery; for they

little dreamed that we ploughmen could have so much

satire in us as to bite our young landlord by the elbow.

Well, this ended, master Bursebell, the calves’-skin

scrivener, was royally handled, that is, he had a

royal[760] put in his hand by the merchant. And now I

talk of calves’-skin, ’tis great pity, lady Nightingale,

that the skins of harmless and innocent beasts should be

as instruments to work villany upon, entangling young

novices and foolish elder brothers, which are caught

like woodcocks in the net of the law; for[761] ’tis

easier for one of the greatest fowls to slide through

the least hole of a net, than one of the least fools to

get from the lappet of a bond. By this time the

squeaking lawyer began to re-iterate that cold word

_fines_, which struck so chill to our hearts, that it

made them as cold as our heels, which were almost frozen

to the floor with standing. Yea, quoth the merchant and

the mercer, you are now tenants of ours; all the right,

title, and interest of this young gentleman, your late

landlord, we are firmly possessed of, as you yourselves

are witnesses: wherefore this is the conclusion of our

meeting; such fines as master Prospero here, by the

valuation of the land, shall, out of his proper

judgment, allot to us, such are we to demand at your

hands; therefore we refer you to him, to wait his answer

at the gentleman’s best time and leisure. With that,

they stiffled two or three angels[762] in the lawyer’s

right hand:—right hand, said I? which hand was that,

trow ye? for it is impossible to know which is the right

hand of a lawyer, because there are but few lawyers that

have right hands, and those few make much of them. So,

taking their leaves of my young landlord that was, and

that never shall be again, away they marched, heavier by

a thousand acres at their parting than they were before

at their meeting. The lawyer then, turning his Irish

face to usward, willed us to attend his worship the next

term, when we should further understand his pleasure.

We, poor souls, thanked his worship, and paid him his

fee out in legs;[763] when, in sight of us, he embraced

our young gentleman (I think, for a fool), and gave him

many riotous instructions how to carry himself, which he

was prompter to take than the other to put into him;

told him he must acquaint himself with many gallants of

the Inns-of-Court, and keep rank with those that spend

most, always wearing a bountiful disposition about him,

lofty and liberal; his lodging must be about the Strand

in any case, being remote from the handicraft scent of

the city; his eating must be in some famous tavern, as

the Horn, the Mitre, or the Mermaid;[764] and then after

dinner he must venture beyond sea, that is, in a choice

pair of noblemen’s oars, to the Bankside,[765] where he

must sit out the breaking-up[766] of a comedy, or the

first cut of a tragedy; or rather, if his humour so

serve him, to call in at the Blackfriars,[767] where he

should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man. This

said, our young goose-cap, who was ready to embrace such

counsel, thanked him for his fatherly admonitions, as he

termed them, and told him again that he should not find

him with the breach of any of them, swearing and

protesting he would keep all those better than the ten

commandments: at which word he buckled on his rapier and

hangers,[768] his monkey-face casting on his cloak by

the book; after an apish congee or two, passed down

stairs, without either word or nod to us his old

father’s tenants. Nevertheless we followed him, like so

many russet servingmen, to see the event of all, and

what the issue would come to; when, of a sudden, he was

encountered by a most glorious-spangled gallant, which

we took at first to have been some upstart tailor,

because he measured all his body with a salutation, from

the flow of the doublet to the fall of the breeches; but

at last we found him to be a very fantastical sponge,

that licked up all humours, the very ape of fashions,

gesture, and compliment,—one of those indeed, as we

learned afterward, that fed upon young landlords,

riotous sons and heirs, till either he or the Counter in

Wood-street had swallowed them up; and would not stick

to be a bawd or pander to such young gallants as our

young gentleman, either to acquaint them with harlots,

or harlots with them; to bring them a whole dozen of

taffeta punks at a supper, and they should be none of

these common Molls neither, but discontented and

unfortunate gentlewomen, whose parents being lately

deceased, the brother ran away with all the land, and

they,[769] poor squalls,[770] with a little money, which

cannot hold out long without some comings in; but they

will rather venture a maidenhead than want a head-tire;

such shuttlecocks as these, which, though they are

tossed and played withal, go still[771] like maids, all

white on the top: or else, decayed gentlemen’s wives,

whose husbands, poor souls, lying for debt in the King’s

Bench, they go about to make monsters in the King’s-Head

tavern; for this is a general axiom, all your

luxurious[772] plots are always begun in taverns, to be

ended in vau[l]ting-houses;[773] and after supper, when

fruit comes in, there is small fruit of honesty to be

looked for,—for you know that the eating of the apple

always betokens the fall of Eve. Our prodigal child,

accompanied with this soaking swaggerer and admirable

cheater, who had supt up most of our heirs about

London like poached eggs, slips into White-Friars’

nunnery,[774] whereas[775] the report went he kept his

most delicate drab of three hundred a-year, some

unthrifty gentleman’s daughter, who had mortgaged his

land to scriveners, sure enough from redeeming again;

for so much she seemed by her bringing up, though less

by her casting down. Endued she was, as we heard, with

some good qualities, though all were converted then but

to flattering villanies: she could run upon the lute

very well, which in others would have appeared virtuous,

but in her lascivious, for her running was rather jested

at, because she was a light runner besides: she had

likewise the gift of singing very deliciously, able to

charm the hearer; which so bewitched away our young

master’s money, that he might have kept seven noise[776]

of musicians for less charges, and yet they would have

stood for servingmen too, having blue coats[777] of

their own. She had a humour to lisp often, like a

flattering wanton, and talk childish, like a parson’s

daughter; which so pleased and rapt our old landlord’s

lickerish son, that he would swear she spake nothing but

sweetmeats, and her breath then sent forth such a

delicious odour, that it perfumed his white-satin

doublet better than sixteen milliners. Well, there we

left him, with his devouring cheater and his glorious

cockatrice;[778] and being almost upon dinner-time, we

hied us and took our repast at thrifty mother Walker’s,

where we found a whole nest of pinching bachelors,

crowded together upon forms and benches, in that most

worshipful three-halfpenny ordinary,[779] where

presently they were boarded[780] with hot monsieur

Mutton-and-porridge (a Frenchman by his blowing); and

next to them we were served in order, every one taking

their degree: and I tell you true, lady, I have known

the time when our young landlord’s father hath been a

three-halfpenny eater there,—nay more, was the first

that acquainted us with that sparing and thrifty

ordinary, when his riotous son hath since spent his five

pound at a sitting. Well, having discharged our small

shot (which was like hail-shot in respect of our young

master’s cannon-reckonings in taverns), we plodded home

to our ploughs, carrying these heavy news to our wives

both of the prodigality of our old landlord’s son, as

also of our oppressions to come by the burden of

uncharitable fines. And, most musical madam Nightingale,

do but imagine now what a sad Christmas we all kept in

the country, without either carols, wassail-bowls,[781]

dancing of Sellenger’s round[782] in moonshine nights

about May-poles, shoeing the mare, hoodman-blind,

hot-cockles, or any of our old Christmas gambols; no,

not so much as choosing king and queen on twelfth night:

such was the dulness of our pleasures,—for that one word

_fines_ robbed us of all our fine pastimes.

This sour-faced Christmas thus unpleasantly past over,

up again we trotted to London, in a great frost, I

remember, for the ground was as hard as the lawyer’s

conscience; and arriving at the luxurious Strand some

three days before the term, we inquired for our

bountiful landlord, or the fool in the full, at his neat

and curious lodging; but answer was made us by an old

chamber-maid, that our gentleman slept not there all the

Christmas time, but had been at court, and at least in

five masques; marry, now, as she thought, we might find

him at master Poops his ordinary, with half-a-dozen of

gallants more at dice. At dice? at the devil! quoth I,

for that is a dicer’s last throw. Here I began to rail,

like Thomas Nash[783] against Gabriel Harvey, if you

call that railing; yet I think it was but the running a

tilt of wits in booksellers’ shops on both sides of John

of Paul’s[784] churchyard; and I wonder how John scaped

unhorsing. But when we were entered the door of the

ordinary, we might hear our lusty gentleman shoot off a

volley of oaths some three rooms over us, cursing the

dice, and wishing the pox were in their bones, crying

out for a new pair of square ones, for the other belike

had cogged[785] with him and made a gull of him. When

the host of the ordinary coming down stairs met us with

this report, after we had named him, Troth, good

fellows, you have named now the most unfortunatest

gentleman living, at passage[786] I mean; for I protest

I have stood by myself as a heavy eye-witness, and seen

the beheading of five hundred crowns, and what pitiful

end they all made. With that he shewed us his embost

girdle and hangers[787] new-pawned for more money, and

told us beside, not without tears, his glorious cloak

was cast away three hours before overboard, which was,

off the table. At which lamentable hearing, we stood

still in the lower room, and durst not venture up

stairs, for fear he would have laid all us ploughmen to

pawn too; and yet I think all we could scarce have made

up one throw. But to draw to an end, as his patrimony

did, we had not lingered the better part of an hour, but

down came fencing[788] his glittering rapier and

dagger, as if he had been newly shoulder-clapt by a

pewter-buttoned sergeant and his weapons seized upon. At

last, after a great peal of oaths on all sides, the

court broke up, and the worshipful bench of dicers came

thundering down stairs, some singing, with such a

confusion of humours, that had we not[789] known before

what rank of gallants they were, we should have thought

the devils had been at dice in an ordinary. The first

that appeared to us was our most lamentable landlord,

dressed up in his monkey’s livery-cloak, that he seemed

now rather to wait upon his monkey than his monkey upon

him, which did set forth his satin suit so excellent

scurvily, that he looked for all the world like a French

lord in dirty boots. When casting his eye upon us, being

desirous, as it seemed, to remember us now if we had any

money, brake into these fantastical speeches: What, my

whole warren of tenants?—thinking indeed to make

conies[790] of us,—my honest nest of ploughmen, the only

kings of Kent! More dice, ho! i’faith,[791] let’s have

another career, and vomit three dice in a hand again.

With that I plucked his humour at one side, and told him

we were indeed his father’s tenants, but his we were

sorry we were not; and as for money to maintain his

dice, we had not sufficient to stuff out the lawyer.

Then replied our gallant in a rage, tossing out two or

three new-minted oaths, These ploughmen are politicians,

I think; they have wit, the whorsons; they will be

tenants, I perceive, longer than we shall be landlords.

And fain he would have swaggered with us, but that his

weapons were at pawn: so, marching out like a turned

gentleman, the rest of the gallants seemed to cashier

him, and throw him out of their company like a blank

die—the one having no black peeps[792], nor he no white

pieces. Now was our gallant the true picture of the

prodigal; and having no rents to gather now, he gathered

his wits about him, making his brain pay him revenues in

villany; for it is a general observation, that your sons

and heirs prove seldom wise men till they have no more

land than the compass of their noddles. To conclude,

within few days’ practice he was grown as[793] absolute

in cheating, and as exquisite in pandarism, that he

outstripped all Greene’s books[794] _Of the Art of

Cony-catching_; and where[795] before he maintained his

drab, he made his drab now maintain him; proved the only

true captain of vaulting-houses,[796] and the valiant

champion against constables and searchers; feeding upon

the sin of White-Friars, Pict-hatch, and Turnboll

Street.[797] Nay, there was no landed novice now but he

could melt him away into nothing, and in one twelvemonth

make him hold all his land between his legs, and yet but

straddle easily neither; no wealthy son of the city but

within less than a quarter he could make all his stock

not worth a Jersey stocking: he was all that might be in

dissolute villany, and nothing that should be in his

forefathers’ honesty. To speak troth, we did so much

blush at his life, and were so ashamed of his base

courses, that ever after we loathed to look after them.

But returning to our stubble-haired lawyer, who reaped

his beard every term-time (the lawyer’s harvest), we

found the mercer and the merchant crowdd in his study

amongst a company of law-books, which they justled so

often with their coxcombs, that they were almost

together by the ears with them; when at the sight of us

they took an _habeas corpus_, and removed their bodies

into a bigger room. But there we lingered not long for

our torments; for the mercer and the merchant gave fire

to the lawyer’s tongue with a rope of angels,[798] and

the word _fines_ went off with such a powder, that the

force of it blew us all into the country, quite changed

our ploughmen’s shapes, and so we became little ants

again.

This, madam Nightingale, is the true discourse of our

rural fortunes, which, how miserable, wretched, and full

of oppression they were, all husbandmen’s brows can

witness, that are fined with more sweat still year by

year; and I hope a canzonet of your sweet singing will

set them forth to the world in satirical harmony.

The remorseful[799] nightingale, delighted with the

ant’s quaint discourse, began to tune the instrument of

her voice, breathing forth these lines in sweet and

delicious airs.

_The Nightingale’s Canzonet._

Poor little ant,

Thou shalt not want

The ravish’d music of my voice!

Thy shape is best,

Now thou art least,

For great ones fall with greater noise:

And this shall be the marriage of my song,

Small bodies can have but a little wrong.

Now thou art securer,

And thy days far surer;

Thou pay’st no rent upon the rack,

To daub a prodigal landlord’s back,

Or to maintain the subtle running

Of dice and drabs, both one in cunning;

Both pass from hand to hand to many,

Flattering all, yet false to any;

Both are well link’d, for, throw dice how you can,

They will turn up their peeps[800] to every man.

Happy art thou, and all thy brothers,

That never feel’st the hell of others!

The torment to a luxur[801] due,

Who never thinks his harlot true;

Although upon her heels he stick his eyes,

Yet still he fears that though she stands she lies.

Now are thy labours easy,

Thy state not sick or queasy;

All drops thou sweat’st are now thine own;

Great subsidies be as unknown

To thee and to thy little fellow-ants,

Now none of you under that burden pants.

Lo, for example, I myself, poor worms,[802]

That have outworn the rage of Tereus’ storms,

Am ever blest now, in this downy shape,

From all men’s treachery or soul-melting rape;

And when I sing _Tereu_, _Tereu_,

Through every town, and so renew

The name of Tereus, slaves, through fears,

With guilty fingers bolt their ears,

All[803] ravishers do rave and e’en fall mad,

And then such wrong’d souls as myself are glad.

So thou, small wretch, and all thy nest,

Are in those little bodies blest,

Not tax’d beyond your poor degree

With landlord’s fine and lawyer’s fee:

But tell me, pretty toiling worm,

Did that same ploughman’s weary form

Discourage thee so much from others,

That neither thou nor those thy brothers,

In borrow’d shapes, durst once agen[804]

Venture amongst perfidious men?

ANT.

Yes, lady, the poor ant replied,

I left not so; but then I tried

War’s sweating fortunes; not alone

Condemning rash all states for one,

Until I found by proof, and knew by course,

That one was bad, but all the rest were worse.

NIGHTINGALE.

Didst thou put on a rugged soldier then?

A happy state, because thou fought’st ’gainst men.

Prithee, discourse thy fortunes, state, and harms;

Thou wast, no doubt, a mighty man-at-arms.

_The Ant’s Tale when he was a soldier._

Then thus, most musical and prickle-singing[805] madam

(for, if I err not, your ladyship was the first that

brought up prick-song,[806] being nothing else but the

fatal notes of your pitiful ravishment), I, not

contented long, a vice cleaving to all worldlings, with

this little estate of an ant, but stuffed with envy and

ambition, as small as I was, desired to venture into the

world again, which I may rather term the upper hell or

_frigida gehenna_, the cold-charitable hell, wherein are

all kind of devils too; as your gentle devil, your

ordinary devil, and your gallant devil; and all these

can change their shapes too, as to-day in cowardly

white, to-morrow in politic black, a third day in

jealous yellow; for believe it, sweet lady, there are

devils of all colours. Nevertheless, I, covetous of more

change, leapt out of this little skin of an ant, and

hung my skin on the hedge, taking upon me the grisly

shape of a dusty soldier. Well made I was, and my

limbs valiantly hewn out for the purpose: I had a

mazzard,[807] I remember, so well lined in the inside

with my brain, it stood me in better stead than a double

headpiece; for the brain of a soldier, differing from

all other sciences, converts itself to no other[808] use

but to line, fur, and even quilt the coxcomb, and so

makes a pate of proof: my face was well leavened, which

made my looks taste sour, the true relish of a man of

war; my cheeks dough-baked, pale, wan, and therefore

argued valour and resolution; but my nose somewhat

hard-baked, and a little burnt in the oven, a property

not amiss in a soldier’s visage, who should scorn to

blush but in his nose; my chin was well thatched with a

beard, which was a necessary shelter in winter, and a

fly-flap in summer, so brushy and spreading, that my

lips could scarce be seen to walk abroad, but played at

all-hid, and durst not peep forth for starting a hair.

To conclude, my arms, thighs, and legs, were so sound,

stout, and weighty, as if they had come all out of the

timber-yard, that my very presence only was able to

still the bawlingest infant in Europe. And I think,

madam, this was no unlikely shape for a soldier to prove

well; here was mettle enough for four shillings a-week

to do valiant service till it was bored as full of holes

as a skimmer. Well, to the wars I betook me, ranked

myself amongst desperate hot shots,—only my carriage put

on more civility, for I seemed more like a spy than a

follower, an observer rather than a committer of

villany. And little thought I, madam, that the camp

had been supplied with harlots too as well as the

Curtain,[809] and the guarded tents as wicked as garden

tenements;[810] trulls passing to and fro in the washed

shape of laundresses, as your bawds about London in the

manner of starchwomen, which is the most unsuspected

habit that can be to train out a mistress. And if your

ladyship will not think me much out of the way though I

take a running leap from the camp to the Strand again, I

will discover a pretty knavery of the same breeding

between such a starchwoman and a kind wanton mistress;

as there are few of those balassed vessels now-a-days

but will have a love and a husband.

The woman crying her ware by the door (a most pitiful

cry, and a[811] lamentable hearing that such a stiff

thing as starch should want customers), passing

cunningly and slily by the stall,[812] not once taking

notice of the party you wot on, but being by this some

three or four shops off, Mass, quoth my young mistress

to the weathercock her husband, such a thing I want, you

know: then she named how many puffs and purls[813] lay

in a miserable case for want of stiffening. The honest

plain-dealing jewel her husband sent out a boy to call

her (not bawd by her right name, but starchwoman): into

the shop she came, making a low counterfeit curtsey, of

whom the mistress demanded if the starch were pure

gear,[814] and would be stiff in her ruff, saying she

had often been deceived before, when the things about

her have stood as limber as eelskins. The woman replied

as subtilely, Mistress, quoth she, take this paper of

starch of my hand; and if it prove not to your mind,

never bestow penny with me,—which paper, indeed, was a

letter sent to her from the gentleman her exceeding

favourite. Say you so? quoth the young dame, and I’ll

try it, i’faith. With that she ran up stairs like a

spinner upon small cobweb ropes, not to try or arraign

the starch, but to conster[815] and parse the letter

(whilst her husband sat below by the counter, like one

of these brow-bitten catchpolls that wait for one man

all day, when his wife can put five in the counter

before him), wherein she found many words that pleased

her. Withal the gentleman writ unto her for a certain

sum of money, which no sooner was read, but was ready to

be sent: wherefore, laying up the starch and that, and

taking another sheet of clean paper in her hand, wanting

time and opportunity to write at large, with a penful of

ink, in the very middle of the sheet, writ these few

quaint monosyllables, _Coin, Cares, and Cures, and all

C’s else are yours_. Then rolling up the white money

like the starch in that paper very subtilely and

artificially, came tripping down stairs with these

colourable words, Here’s goodly starch indeed! fie,

fie!—trust me, husband, as yellow as the jaundice; I

would not have betrayed my puffs with it for a million:—

here, here, here (giving her the paper of money). With

that the subtle starchwoman, seeming sorry that it

pleased her not, told her, within few days she would fit

her turn with that which should like[816] her; meaning

indeed more such sweet news from her lover. These and

such like, madam, are the cunning conveyances[817] of

secret, privy, and therefore unnoted harlots, that so

avoid the common finger of the world, when less

committers than they are publicly pointed at.

So likewise in the camp, whither now I return, borne on

the swift wings of apprehension, the habit of a

laundress shadows the abomination of a strumpet; and our

soldiers are like glovers, for the one cannot work well,

nor the other fight well, without their wenches. This

was the first mark of villany that I found sticking upon

the brow of war; but after the hot and fiery copulation

of a skirmish or two, the ordnance playing like so many

Tamburlaines,[818] the muskets and calivers answering

like drawers, Anon, anon, sir,[819] I cannot be here and

there too,—that is, in the soldier’s hand and in the

enemy’s belly, I grew more acquainted, and, as it were,

entered into the entrails of black-livered policy.

Methought, indeed, at first, those great pieces

of ordnance should speak English, though now by

transportation turned rebels: and what a miserable and

pitiful plight it was, lady, to have so many thousands

of our men slain by their own countrymen the cannons,—I

mean not the harmless canons of Paul’s, but those

cannons that have a great singing in their heads! Well,

in this onset I remember I was well smoke-dried, but

neither arm nor leg perished, not so much as the loss of

a petty finger; for when I counted them all over, I

missed not one of them; and yet sometimes the bullets

came within a hair of my coxcomb, even like a barber

scratching my pate, and perhaps took away the left limb

of a vermin, and so departed; another time shouldering

me like a bailiff against Michaelmas-term, and then

shaking me by the sleeve as familiarly as if we had

been acquainted seven years together. To conclude,

they used me very courteously and gentlemanlike

awhile; like an old cunning bowler to fetch in a young

ketling[820] gamester, who will suffer him to win one

sixpenny-game at the first, and then lurch him in six

pounds afterward: and so they played with me, still

training me, with their fair promises, into far deeper

and deadlier battles, where, like villanous cheating

bowlers, they lurched me of two of my best limbs, viz.

my right arm and right leg, that so, of a man of war, I

became in shew a monster of war; yet comforted in this,

because I knew war begot many such monsters as myself in

less than a twelvemonth. Now I could discharge no more,

having paid the shot dear enough, I think, but rather

desired to be discharged, to have pay and begone:

whereupon I appeared to my captain and other commanders,

kissing my left hand, which then stood for both (like

one actor that plays two parts), who seemed to pity my

unjointed fortunes and plaster my wounds up with words,

told me I had done valiant service in their knowledge;

marry, as for pay, they must go on the score with me,

for all their money was thumped out in powder: and this

was no pleasing salve for a green sore, madam; ’twas too

much for me, lady, to trust calivers with my limbs, and

then cavaliers with my money. Nevertheless, for all

my lamentable action of one arm, like old Titus

Andronicus,[821] I could purchase no more than one

month’s pay for a ten months’ pain and peril, nor that

neither, but to convey away my miserable clamours, that

lay roaring against the arches of their ears, marry,

their bountiful favours were extended thus far,—I had a

passport to beg in all countries.

Well, away I was packed; and after a few miseries by

the way, at last I set one foot into England again

(for I had no more then to set), being my native

though unnatural country, for whose dear good I pawned

my limbs to bullets, those merciless brokers, that

will take the vantage of a minute; and so they were

quite forfeited, lost, and unrecoverable. When I was

on shore, the people gathered,—which word _gathering_

put me in hope of good comfort, that afterward I

failed of; for I thought at first they had gathered

something for me, but I found at last they did only

but gather about me; some wondering at me, as if I had

been some sea-monster cast ashore, some jesting at my

deformity, whilst others laughed at the jests: one

amongst them, I remember, likened me to a sea-crab,

because I went all of one side; another fellow vied

it,[822] and said I looked like a rabbit cut up and

half-eaten, because my wing and leg, as they termed

it, were departed. Some began to pity me, but those

were few in number, or at least their pity was as

pennyless as Pierce,[823] who writ to the devil for

maintenance. Thus passing from place to place, like

the motion[824] of Julius Cæsar or the City Nineveh,

though not altogether in so good clothes, I overtook

the city from whence I borrowed my first breath, and

in whose defence I spent and laid out my limbs by

whole sums to purchase her peace and happiness,

nothing doubting but to be well entreated[825] there,

my grievous maims tenderly regarded, my poor broken

estate carefully repaired, the ruins of my blood built

up again with redress and comfort: but woe the while,

madam! I was not only unpitied, succourless, and

rejected, but threatened with the public stocks,

loathsome jails, and common whipping-posts, there to

receive my pay—a goodly reward for my[826] bleeding

service—if I were once found in the city again.

Wherefore I was forced to retire towards the Spital and

Shoreditch, which, as it appeared, was the only

Cole-harbor[827] and sanctuary for wenches and soldiers;

where I took up a poor lodging a’ trust till the Sunday,

hoping that then master Alms and mistress Charity would

walk abroad and take the air in Finsbury. At which time

I came hopping out from my lodging, like old lame Giles

of Cripplegate; but when I came there, the wind blew so

bleak and cold, that I began to be quite out of hope of

charity; yet, like a torn map of misery, I waited my

single halfpenny fortunes; when, of a sudden, turning

myself about, and looking down the Windmill-hill, I

might espy afar off a fine-fashioned dame of the city,

with her man bound by indenture before her; whom no

sooner I caught in mine eyelids, but I made to with all

possible speed, and with a premeditated speech for the

nonce,[828] thus, most soldier-like, I accosted her:

Sweet lady, I beseech your beauty to weigh the estate of

a poor unjointed soldier, that hath consumed the moiety,

or the one-half of his limbs, in the dismembering and

devouring wars, that have[829] cheated me of my flesh so

notoriously, I protest I am not worth at this instant

the small revenue of three farthings, beside my lodging

unpleased[830] and my diet unsatisfied; and had I ten

thousand limbs, I would venture them all in your sweet

quarrel, rather than such a beauty as yourself should

want the least limb of your desire. With that, as one

being rather moved by my last words of promise than my

first words of pity, she drew her white bountiful hand

out of her marry-muff,[831] and quoited a single

halfpenny; whereby I knew her then to be cold mistress

Charity, both by her chill appearance and the hard,

frozen pension she gave me. She was warm[832] lapt, I

remember, from the sharp injury of the biting air; her

visage was benighted with a taffeta-mask, to fray away

the naughty wind from her face, and yet her very nose

seemed so sharp with cold, that it almost bored a hole

quite through: this was frost-bitten Charity; her teeth

chattered in her head, and leaped up and down like

virginal-jacks[833] which betrayed likewise who she was:

and you would have broke into infinite laughter, madam

(though misery made me leaden and pensive), had you been

present, to have seen how quickly the muff swallowed her

hand again; for no sooner was it drawn forth to drop

down her pitiful alms, but, for fear the sun and air

should have ravished it, it was extempore whipt up

again. This is the true picture of Charity, madam, which

is as cold as ice in the middle of July.

Well, still I waited for another fare; but then I

bethought myself again, that all the fares went by water

a’ Sundays to the bear-baiting,[834] and a’ Mondays to

Westminster-hall; and therefore little to be looked for

in Moorfields all the week long: wherefore I sat down by

the rails there, and fell into these passionate,[835]

but not railing speeches: Is this the farthest reward

for a soldier? are[836] valour and resolution, the two

champions of the soul, so slightly esteemed and so

basely undervalued? doth reeling Fortune not only rob us

of our limbs, but of our living? are soldiers, then,

both food for cannon and for misery? But then, in the

midst of my passion, calling to memory the peevish

turns[837] of many famous popular gallants, whose names

were writ even upon the heart of the world—it could not

so much as think without them, nor speak but in the

discourse of them—I began to outdare the very worst of

cruel and disaster chances, and determined to be

constant in calamity, and valiant against the battering

siege of misery. But note the cross star that always

dogged my fortunes: I had not long rested there, but I

saw the tweering[838] constable of Finsbury, with his

bench of brown-bill-men,[839] making towards me, meaning

indeed to stop some prison-hole with me, as your

soldiers, when the wars have done with them, are good

for nothing else but to stop holes withal; at which

sight, I scrambled up of[840] all two, took my skin off

the hedge, cozened the constable, and slipt[841] into an

ant again.

NIGHTINGALE.

O, ’twas a pretty, quaint deceit,

(The Nightingale began to sing,)

To slip from those that lie in wait,

Whose touch is like a raven’s wing,

Fatal and ominous, which, being spread

Over a mortal, aims him dead.

Alas, poor emmet! thou wast tost

In thousand miseries by this shape;

Thy colour wasted, thy blood lost,

Thy limbs broke with the violent rape

Of hot impatient cannons, which desire

To ravish lives, spending their lust in fire.

O what a ruthful sight it is to see,

Though in a soldier of the mean’st degree,

That right member perish’d

Which the[842] body cherish’d!

That limb dissever’d, burnt, and gone,

Which the best part was borne upon:

And then, the greatest ruth of all,

Returning home in torn estate,

Where he should rise, there most to fall,

Trod down with envy, bruis’d with hate:

Yet, wretch, let this thy comfort be,

That greater worms[843] have far’d like thee.

So here thou left’st, bloodless and wan,

Thy journeys thorough man and man;

These two cross’d shapes, so much opprest,

Did fray thy weakness from the rest.

ANT.

No, madam, once again my spleen did thirst

To try the third, which makes men blest or curst;

That number three many stars wait upon,

Ushering clear hap or black confusion:

Once more I ventur’d all my hopes to crown,—

But, aye me! leapt into a scholar’s gown.

NIGHTINGALE.

A needy scholar! worse than worst,

Less fate in that than both the first:

I thought thou’dst leapt into a law-gown, then

There had been hope t’ have swept up all agen;[844]

But a lank scholar! study how you can,

No academe makes a rich alderman.

Well, with this comfort yet thou may’st discourse,

When fates are worst, then they can be no worse.

_The Ant’s Tale when he was a scholar._