Too good (if ill) to be expos'd to blame:

SATIRES.

BOOK L

Too good, if worse, to shadow shamelesse vice. Ill, if too good, not answering their name: So good and ill in fickle censure lies. Since in our satire lies both good and ill, And they and it in varying readers will.

Witnesse, ye Musés, how I wilful sung

These heady rhimes, withouten second care;
And wish'd them worse, my guilty thoughts among;
The ruder satire should go ragg'd and bare,
And show his rougher and his hairy hide, [pride.
Though mine be smooth, and deck'd in carelesse

Would we but breathe within a wax-bound quill,
Pan's seven-fold pipe, some plaintive pastoral;
To teach each hollow grove, and shrubby hill,
Each murmuring brook, each solitary vale
To sound our love, and to our song accord,
Wearying Echo with one changelesse word.

Or list us make two striving shepherds sing,
With costly wagers for the victory,
Under Menalcas judge; while one doth bring
A carven bowl well wrought of beechen tree,
Praising it by the story, or the frame,
Or want of use, or skilful maker's name.

Another layeth a well-marked lamb,

Or spotted kid, or some more forward steere,
And from the paile doth praise their fertile dam;
So do they strive in doubt, in hope, in feare,
Awaiting for their trusty umpire's doome,
Faulted as false by him that 's overcome.

Whether so me list my lovely thought to sing,
Come dance, ye nimble Dryads, by my side,
Ye gentle wood-nymphs, come; and with you bring
The willing fawns that mought your music guide.
Come nymphs and fawns, that haunt those shady
While I report my fortunes or my loves. [groves,

Or whether list me sing so personate,

My striving selfe to conquer with my verse,
Speake, ye attentive swains that heard me late,
Needs me give grasse unto the conquerors.
At Colin's feet I throw my yielding reed,
But let the rest win homage by their deed.

But now (ye Muses) sith your sacred hests
Profaned are by each presuming tongue;
In scornful rage I vow this silent rest,

That never field nor grove shall heare my song.
Only these refuse rhimes I here mis-spend
To chide the world, that did my thoughts offend.

DE SUIS SATIRIS.

DUм satyræ dixi, videor dixisse sat iræ
Corripio; aut istæc non satis est satyra.

Ira facit satyram, reliquum sat temperat iram;
Pinge tuo satyram sanguine, tum satyra est.
Ecce novam satyram: satyrum sine cornibus! Euge
Monstra novi monstri hæc, et satyri et satyræ.

PROLOGUE.

I FIRST adventure, with fool-hardy might,
To tread the steps of perilous despite.
I first adventure, follow me who list,
And be the second English satirist.
Envy waits on my back, Truth on my side;
Envy will be my page, and Truth my guide.
Envy the margent holds, and Truth the line:
Truth doth approve, but Envy doth repine.
For in this smoothing age who durst indite
Hath made his pen an hired parasite,

To claw the back of him that beastly lives,
And pranck base men in proud superlatives.
Whence damned Vice is shrouded quite from shame,
And crown'd with Virtue's meed, immortal name!
Infamy dispossess'd of native due,
Ordain'd of old on looser life to sue;

The world's eye-bleared with those shameless lyes,
Mask'd in the show of meal-mouth'd poesies.
Go, daring Muse, on with thy thanklesse task,
And do the ugly face of Vice unmask:
And if thou canst not thine high flight remit,
So as it mought a lowly satire fit,

Let lowly satires rise aloft to thee:

Truth be thy speed, and Truth thy patron be.

SATIRE I.

Nor ladie's wanton love, nor wandring knight,
Legend I out in rhimes all richly dight.
Nor fright the reader with the pagan vaunt
Of mightie Mahound, and great Termagaunt.
Nor list I sonnet of my mistress' face,
To paint some Blowesse with a borrowed grace;
Nor can I bide to pen some hungrie scene
For thick-skin ears, and undiscerning eyne.
Nor ever could my scornful Muse abide
With tragic shoes her ankles for to hide.
Nor can I crouch, and writhe my fawning tayle
To some great patron, for my best avayle.
Such hunger-starven trencher-poetrie,
Or let it never live, or timely die:
Nor under every bank and every tree,
Speak rhymes unto my oaten minstralsie:
Nor carol out so pleasing lively laies,
As mought the Graces move my mirth to praise.
Trumpet, and reeds, and socks, and buskins fine,
I them bequeath: whose statues wandring twine
Of ivy mix'd with bays, circling around -
Their living temples likewise laurel-bound.
Rather had I, albe in careless rhymes,
Check the mis-order'd world, and lawless times.
Nor need I crave the Muse's midwifry,
To bring to light so worthless poetry:
Or if we list, what baser Muse can bide,
To sit and sing by Granta's naked side?

Earl of Surrey, Wyat, Sidney, Dyer, &c.

They haunt the tided Thames and salt Medway, E'er since the fame of their late bridal day 2. Nought have we here but willow-shaded shore, To tell our Grant his banks are left for lore.

SATIRE II.

WHILOM the sisters nine were vestal maides,
And held their temple in the secret shades
Of fair Parnassus, that two-headed hill,
Whose auncient fame the southern world did fill;
And in the stead of their eternal fame,
Was the cool stream that took his endless name,
From out the fertile hoof of winged steed:
There did they sit and do their holy deed,
That pleas'd both Heav'n and Earth-till that of late
Whom should I fault? or the most righteous fate,
Or Heav'n, or men, or feinds, or ought beside,
That ever made that foul mischance betide?
Some of the sisters in securer shades
Defloured were......

And ever since, disdaining sacred shame,

Done ought that might their heav'nly stock defame.
Now is Parnassus turned to a stewes,
And on bay stocks the wanton myrtle grewes;
Cytheron hill's become a brothrel-bed,
And Pyrene sweet turn'd to a poison'd head
Of coal-black puddle, whose infectious stain
Corrupteth all the lowly fruitful plain.
Their modest stole, to garish looser weed,
Deck'd with love-favours, their late whoredoms meed:
And where they wont sip of the simple flood,
Now toss they bowls of Bacchus' boiling blood.
I marvell'd much, with doubtful jealousie,
Whence came such litters of new poetrie:
Methought I fear'd, lest the horse-hoofed well
His native banks did proudly over-swell
In some late discontent, thence to ensue
Such wondrous rabblements of rhymesters new:
But since I saw it painted on Fame's wings,
The Muses to be woxen wantonings.
Each bush, each bank, and each base apple-squire
Can serve to sate their beastly lewd desire.
Ye bastard poets, see your pedigree,

From common trulls and loathsome brothelry!

SATIRE III.

WITH some pot-fury, ravish'd from their wit,
They sit and muse on some no-vulgar writ:
As frozen dung-hills in a winter's morn,
That void of vapour seemed all beforn,
Soon as the Sun sends out his piercing beams
Exhale out filthy smoak and stinking steams.
So doth the base and the fore-barren brain,
Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.
One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought
On crowned kings, that Fortune hath low brought:
Or some upreared, high-aspiring swaine,
As it might be the Turkish Tamberlaine:
Then weeneth he his base drink-drowned spright,
Rapt to the threefold loft of Heaven hight,

? See Spenser.

When he conceives upon his faigned stage
The stalking steps of his great personage,
Graced with huff-cap terms and thundring threats,
That his poor hearers' hair quite upright sets.
Such soon as some brave-minded hungry youth
Sees fitly frame to his wide-strained mouth,
He vaunts his voyce upon an hired stage,
With high-set steps, and princely carriage;
Now soouping in side robes of royalty,
That erst did skrub in lowsy brokery,
There if he can with terms Italianate
Big-sounding sentences, and words of state,
Fair patch me up his pure iambic verse,
He ravishes the gazing scaffolders:
Then certes was the famous Corduban 3
Never but half so high tragedian.

Now, lest such frightful shows of Fortune's fall,
And bloody tyrant's rage, should chance apall
The dead-struck audience, 'midst the silent rout,
Comes leaping in a self-misformed lout,
And laughs, and grins, and frames his mimic face,
And justles straight into the prince's place;
Then doth the theatre echo all aloud,
With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd.
A goodly hotch-potch! when vile russetings
Are match'd with monarchs, and with mighty kings.
A goodly grace to sober tragic Muse,

When each base clown his clumbsy fist doth bruise,
And show his teeth in double rotten row,
For laughter at his self-resembled show.
Meanwhile our poets in high parliament
Sit watching every word and gesturement,
Like curious censors of some doughty gear,
Whispering their verdict in their fellow's ear.
Woe to the word whose margent in their scrole
Is noted with a black condemning coal.
But if each period might the synod please,
Ho!-bring the ivy boughs, and bands of bays.
Now when they part and leave the naked stage,
Gins the bare hearer, in a guilty rage,

To curse and ban, and blame his likerous eye,
That thus hath lavish'd his late half-penny.
Shame that the Muses should be bought and sold,
For every peasant's brass, on each scaffold.

SATIRE IV.

Too popular is tragic poesie,
Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee,
And doth beside on rhymeless numbers tread,
Unbid iambics flow from careless head.
Some braver brain in high heroic rhymes
Compileth worm-eat stories of old times:
And he like some imperious Maronist,
Conjures the Muses that they him assist.
Then strives he to bombast his feeble lines
With far-fetch'd phrase;
And maketh up his hard-betaken tale
With strange enchantments, fetch'd from darksom
Of some Melissa 4, that by magic doom
To Tuscans soil transporteth Merlin's tomb.
Painters and poets hold your auncient right:
Write what you will, and write not what you might:
Their limits be their list, their reason will.
But if some painter, in presuming skill,

[vale,

ANOTHER, whose more heavy hearted saint
Delights in nought but notes of rueful plaint,
Urgeth his melting Muse with solemn tears
Rhyme of some dreary fates of luckless peers.
Then brings he up some branded whining ghost,
To tell how old misfortunes had him toss'd.
Then must he ban the guiltless fates above,
Or fortune frail, or unrewarded love.
And when he hath parbrak'd his grieved mind,
He sends him down where erst he did him find,
Without one penny to pay Charon's hire,
That waiteth for the wand'ring ghosts retire.

SATIRE VI.

ANOTHER Scorns the home-spun thread of rhymes,
Match'd with the lofty feet of elder times:
Give me the numbred verse that Virgil sung,
And Virgil's self shall speak the English tongue:
Manhood and garboiles shall he chaunt with chaung-
ed feet

And head-strong dactyls making music meet.
The nimble dactyl striving to out-go,
The drawling spondees pacing it below.
The lingring spondees, labouring to delay,
The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay.
Whoever saw a colt wanton and wild,
Yok'd with a slow-foot ox on fallow field,
Can right areed how handsomely besets
Dull spondees with the English dactylets.
If Jove speak English in a thundring cloud,
"Thwick thwack," and "riff raff," roars heout aloud.
Fie on the forged mint that did create
New coin of words never articulate.

SATIRE VII.

GREAT is the folly of a feeble brain,
O'er-rul'd with love, and tyrammous disdain :
For love, however in the basest breast,
It breeds high thoughts that feed the fancy best.
Yet is he blind, and leads poor fools awry,
While they hang gazing on their mistress'-eye.
The love-sick poet, whose importune prayer
Repulsed is with resolute despair,
Hopeth to conquer his disdainful dame,
With public plaints of his conceived flame.

" Dubartas.

Then pours he forth in patched sonettings,
His love, his lust, and loathsome flatterings:
As though the staring world hang'd on his sleeve,
When once he smiles, to laugh: and when he sighs,
to grieve.

Careth the world, thou love, thou live, or die?
Careth the world how fair thy fair-one be?
Fond wit-wal that wouldst load thy witless head
With timely horns, before thy bridal bed.
Then can he term his dirty ill-fac'd bride
Lady and queen, and virgin deify'd :
Be she all sooty black, or berry brown,

She's white as morrow's milk, or flakes new blown.
And though she be some dunghill drudge at home,
Yet can he her resign some refuse room
Amidst the well known stars: or if not there,
Sure will be saint her in his Kalendere.

SATIRE VIIL

HENCE, ye profane! mell not with holy things
That Sion's Muse from Palestina brings.
Parnassus is transform'd to Sion Hill,
And iv'ry palms her steep ascents done fill.
Now good St. Peter' weeps pure Helicon,
And both the Maries make a music moan:
Yea, and the prophet of the heav'nly lyre,
Great Solomon, sings in the English quire;
And is become a new-found sonnetist,
Singing his love, the holy spouse of Christ:
Like as she were some light-skirts of the rest,
In mightiest inkhornisms he can thither wrest.
Ye Sion Muses shall by my dear will,
For this your zeal and far-admired skill,
Be straight transported from Jerusalem,
Unto the holy house of Bethlehem.

SATIRE IX.

ENVY, ye Muses, at your thriving mate,
Cupid hath crowned a new laureat:
I saw his statue gayly 'tir'd in green,
As if he had some second Phoebus been.
His statue trimm'd with the venerean tree,
And shrined fair within your sanctuary.
What, he, that erst to gain the rhyming goal,
The worn recital-post of capitol,
Rhymed in rules of stewish ribaldry,
Teaching experimental bawdery!

Whiles th' itching vulgar, tickled with the song,
Hanged on their unready poet's tongue.
Take this, ye patient Muses; and foul shame
Shall wait upon your once profaned name:
Take this, ye Muses, this so high despite,
And let all hateful luckless birds of night;
Let screeching owls nest in your razed roofs,
And let your floor with horned satyres' hoofs
Be dinted, and defiled every moru:
And let your walls be an eternal scorn.
What if some Shoreditch fury should incite
Some lust-stung lecher: must he needs indite
The beastly rites of hired venery,
The whole world's universal bawd to be?
Did never yet no damned libertine,
Nor elder heathen, nor new Florentine",

Robert Southwell's St. Peter's Complaint. 7 Peter Aretine.

Though they were famons for lewd liberty,
Venture upon so shameful villany;
Our epigrammatarians, old and late,
Were wont be blam'd for too licentiate.

Chaste men, they did but glance at Lesbia's deed,
And handsomely leave off with cleanly speed.
But arts of whoring, stories of the stews,
Ye Muses will ye bear, and may refuse?
Nay, let the Devil and St. Valentine

Be gossips to those ribald rhymes of thine.

SATIRES.

BOOK II.

PROLOGUE.

Or been the manes of that Cynic spright,
Cloath'd with some stubborn clay, and led to light?
Or do the relic ashes of his grave
Revive and rise from their forsaken cave?
That so with gall-wet words and speeches rude
Controuls the manners of the multitude.
Envy belike incites his pining heart,
And bids it sate itself with others smart.
Nay, no despight: but angry Nemesis,
Whose scourge doth follow all that done amiss:
That scourge I bear, albe in ruder fist,
And wound, and strike, and pardon whom she list.

Reade in each schoole; in everie margent quoted,
In everie catalogue for an authour noted.
There's happinesse well given and well got,
Lesse gifts, and lesser gaines, I weigh them not.
So may the giant roam and write on high,
Be he a dwarfe that writes not their as I.
But well fare Strabo, which, as stories tell,
Contriv'd all Troy within one walnut shell.
His curious ghost now lately hither came;
Arriving neere the mouth of luckie Tame,
I saw a pismire struggling with the load,
Dragging all Troy home towards her abode,
Now dare we hither, if we durst appeare,
The subtile stithy-man that liv'd while ere:
Such one was once, or once I was mistaught,
A smith at Vulcan's owne forge up brought,
That made an iron chariot so light,
The coach-horse was a flea in trappings dight.
The tamelesse steed could well his waggon wield,
Through downes and dales of the uneven field.
Strive they, laugh we: meane while the black storie
Passes new Strabo, and new Strabo's Troy.
Little for great; and great for good; all one:
For shame! or better write, or Labeo write none.
But who conjur'd this bawdie Poggie's ghost,
From out the stewes of his lewde home-bred coast:
Or wicked Rablais dronken revellings,
To grace the mis-rule of our tavernings?
Or who put bayes into blind Cupid's fist,
That he should crown what laureats him list?
Whose words are those, to remedie the deed,
That cause men stop their noses when they read?
Both good things ill, and ill things well; all one?
For shame! write cleanly, Labeo, or write none.

SATIRE I.

FOR Shame! write better, Labeo, or write none; Or better write, or Labeo write alone: Nay, call the Cynic but a wittie foole, Thence to abjure his handsome drinking bowl; Because the thirstie swaine with hollow hand, Conveied the streame to weet his drie weasand. Write they that can, though they that cannot doe: But who knowes that, but they that do not know. Lo! what it is that makes white rags so deare, That men must give a teston for a queare. Lo! what it is that makes goose wings so scant, That the distressed sempster did them want: So lavish ope-tyde causeth fasting lents, And starveling famine comes of large expense. Might not (so they were pleas'd that beene above) Long paper-abstinence our death remove? Then manie a Lollerd would in forfaitment, Beare paper-faggots o'er the pavement. But now men wager who shall blot the most, And each man writes. There's so much labour lost, That's good, that's great: nay much is seldome well, Of what is bad, a little's a greate deale. Better is more: but best is nought at all. Lesse is the next, and lesser criminall. Little and good, is greatest good save one, Then, Labeo, or write little, or write none. Tush, but small paines can be but little art, Or lode full drie-fats fro the forren mart, With folio volumes, two to an oxe hide, Or else ye pamphleteer go stand aside;

SATIRE II.

To what end did our lavish auncestours
Erect of old these stately piles of ours?

For thread-bare clerks, and for the ragged Muse,
Whom better fit some cotes of sad secluse ?
Blush, niggard Ago, and be asham'd to see
These monuments of wiser ancestrie.
And ye faire heapes, the Muses sacred shrines,
(In spite of time and envious repines)
Stand still and flourish till the world's last day,
Upbraiding it with former love's decay.
Here may you, Muses, our deare soveraignes,
Scorne each base lordling ever you disdaines;
And every peasant churle, whose smokie roofe
Scorne ye the world before it do complaine,
Denied harbour for your deare behoofe.
And scorne the world that scorneth you againe.
And scorne contempt itselfe that doth incite
Each single-sold 'squire to set you at so light.
What needes me care for anie bookish skill,
To blot white papers with my restlesse quill:
Or pore on painted leaves, or beat my braine
With far-fetch thought; or to consume in vaine
In latter even, or midst of winter nights,
Ill smelling oyles, or some still watching lights?
Let them that meane by bookish businesse
To earne their bread, or hopen to professe
Their hard got skill, let them alone for me,
Busie their braines with deeper brokerie.
Great gaines shall bide you sure, when ye have spent
A thousand lamps, and thousand reames have rent