Rules to make courtiers, he being understood
May make good courtiers, but who courtiers good?
Frees from the sting of jests, all, who in extreme
Are wretched or wicked, of these two a theme,
Charity and liberty, give me. What is he
Who officer's rage, and suitor's misery
Can write in jest? If all things be in all,

As I think; since all, which were, are, and shall
Be, be made of the same elements:

Each thing each thing implies or represents.
Then, man is a world; in which officers
Are the vast ravishing seas, and suitors
Springs, now full, now shallow, now dry, which to
That, which drowns them, run: these self reasons do
Prove the world a man, in which officers
Are the devouring stomach, and suitors
Th' excrements, which they void. All men are dust,
How much worse are suitors, who to men's lust
Are made preys? O worse than dust or worms'
meat!

For they eat you now, whose selves worms shall eat.
They are the mills which grind you; yet you are
The wind which drives them; a wastful war
Is fought against you, and you fight it; they
Adulterate law, and you prepare the way,
Like wittals, th' issue your own ruin is.
Greatest and fairest empress, know you this?
Alas! no more than Thames' calm head doth know,
Whose meads her arms drown, or whose corn o'er-

flow.

You, sir, whose righteousness she loves, whom I
By having leave to serve, am most richly
For service paid authoriz'd, now begin
To know and weed out this enormous sin.
O age of rusty iron! Some better wit
Call it some worse name, if ought equal it.
Th' iron age was, when justice was sold; now
Injustice is sold dearer far; allow

All claim'd fees and duties, gamesters, anon
The money, which you sweat and swear for, 's gone
Into other hands: so controverted lands
Scape, like Angelica, the striver's hands.

If law be in the judge's heart, and he

Have no heart to resist letter or fee,

Where wilt thou appeal? power of the courts below
Flows from the first main head, and these can throw
Thee, if they suck thee in, to misery,
To fetters, halters. But if th' injury
Steel thee to dare complain, alas! thou go'st
Against the stream upwards, when thou art most
Heavy and most faint; and in these labours they,
'Gainst whom thou should'st complain, will in thy

way

Become great seas, o'er which when thou shalt be
Forc'd to make golden bridges, thou shalt see
That all thy gold was drown'd in them before.
All things follow their like, only who have may have

more.

Judges are gods; and he who made them so,
Meant not men should be forc'd to them to go
By means of angels. When supplications
We send to God, to dominations,

Powers, cherubins, and all Heaven's courts, if we
Should pay fees, as here, daily bread would be
Scarce to kings; so 't is. Would it not anger
A stoic, a coward, yea a martyr,
To see a pursuivant come in, and call
All his clothes, copes, books, primers, and all
His plate, chalices; and mistake them away,
And ask a fee for coming? Oh! ne'er may

Fair Law's white revend name be strumpeted,
To warrant thefts: she is established
Recorder to Destiny on Earth, and she
Speaks Fate's words, and tells who must be
Rich, who poor, who in chains, and who in jails;
She is all fair, but yet hath foul long nails,
With which she scratcheth suitors. i bodies
Of men, so in law, nails are extremities;
So officers stretch to more than law can do,
As our nails reach what no else part comes to.
Why bar'st thou to yon officer? Fool, hath he
Got those goods, for which erst men bar'd to thee?
Fool, twice, thrice, thou hast bought wrong, and now
hungerly

Begg'st right, but that dole comes not till these die.
Thou had'st much, and Law'surim and thummim uy
Thou would'st for more; and for all bast paper
Enough to clothe all the great Charrick's pepper.
Sell that, and by that thou much more shalt leese
Than Hammon, when he sold 's antiquities.
O, wretch! that thy fortunes should moralize
Esop's fables, and make tales prophecies.
Tou art the swimming dog, whom shadows cożened,
Which div'st, near drowning, for what vanished,

SATIRE VID

་་

1

#1 W

SLEEP next, society and true friendship, ******
Man's best contentment, doth securely slip.
His passions and the world's troubles rock me.
O sleep, wean'd from thy dear friend's company,
In a cradle free from dreams or thoughts, there
Where poor men lie, for kings asleep do fear.
Here Sleep's house by famous Ariosto,
By silver-tongu'd Ovid, and many moe,
Perhaps by golden-mouth'd Spencer, too pardy,
(Which builded was some dozen stories high)
I had repair'd, but that it was too rotten,
As Sleep awak'd by rats from thence was gotten:
And I will build no new, for by my will,
Thy father's house shall be the fairest still,
In Excester. Yet, methinks, for all their wit,
Those wits that say nothing, best describe it.
Without it there is no sense, only in this
Sleep is unlike a long parenthesis,
Not to save charges, but would I had slept
The time I spent in London, when I kept
Fighting and untrust gallants' company,
In which Natta, the new knight, seized on me,
And offered me the experience he had bought
With great expense. I found him throughly taught,
In curing burns. His thing had had more scars
Than T........ himself; like Epps it often wars,
And still is hurt. For his body and state
The physic and counsel (which came too late
'Gainst whores and dice) he now on me bestows:
Most superficially he speaks of those.

I found, by him, least sound him who most kuqws.. Į
He swears well, speaks ill, but best of clothes,
What fit summer, what what winter, what the spring.
He had living, but now these ways come in
His whole revenues. Where his whore now dwells,
And hath dwelt, since his father's death, he tells
Yea he tells most cunningly each hid cause
Why whores forsake their bawds, To these some
He knows of the duel, and on his skill [lava
The least jot in that or these he quarrel will,
Though sober, but ne'er fought. I know
What made his valour undubb'd windmill go.

For though thou must ne'er think of other love,
And so wilt advance her as high above
Virtue, as cause above effect can be ;

'Tis virtue to be chaste, which she 'll make thee.

LETTERS

TO SEVERAL PERSONAGES.

TO MR. CHRISTOPHER BROOK, FROM THE ISLAND VOYAGE WITH THE EARL OF ESSEX.

THE STORM.

THOU, which art I, ('t is nothing to be so)
Thou, which art still thyself, by this shaft know
Part of our passage; and a hand, or eye,
By Hilliard drawn, is worth a history

By a worse painter made; and (without pride)
When by thy judgment they are dignify'd,
My lines are such. 'T is the pre-eminence
Of friendship only t' impute excellence.
England, to whom we owe what we be, and have,
Sad that her sons did seek a foreign grave,
(For Fate's or Fortune's drifts none can gainsay,
Honour and misery have one face, one way)
From out her pregnant entrails sigh'd a wind,
Which at th' air's middle marble room did find
Such strong resistance, that itself it threw
Downward again; and so when it did view
How in the port our fleet dear time did leese,
Withering like prisoners, which lie but for fees,
Mildly it kiss'd our sails, and fresh and sweet,
As to a stomach starv'd, whose insides meet,
Meat comes, it came; and swole our sails, when we
So joy'd, as Sarah her swelling joy'd to see:
But 't was but so kind, as our countrymen, [then.
Which bring friends one day's way, and leave them
Then like two mighty kings, which dwelling far
Asunder, meet against a third to war,

The south and west winds join'd, and, as they blew,
Waves like a rolling trench before them threw.
Sooner than you read this line, did the gale,
Like shot not fear'd till felt, our sails assail;
And what at first was call'd a gust, the same
Hath now a storm's, anon a tempest's name.
Jonas, I pity thee, and curse those men,
Who, when the storm rag'd most, did wake thee
Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil [then:
All offices of death, except to kill.

But when I wak'd, I saw that I saw not.

I and the Sun, which should teach thee, had forgot
East, west, day, night; and I could only say,
Had the world lasted, that it had been day.
Thousands our noises were, yet we 'mongst all
Could none by his right name, but thunder call:
Lightning was all our light, and it rain'd more
Than if the Sun had drunk the sea before.
Some coffin'd in their cabins lie, equally
Griev'd that they are not dead, and yet must die:
And as sin-burden'd souls from graves will creep
At the last day, some forth their cabbins peep:
And trembling ask what news, and do hear so
As jealous husbands, what they would not know.
Some, sitting on the hatches, would seem there
With hideous gazing to fear away fear.
There note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast
Shak'd with an ague, and the hold and waste

THE CALM.

OUR storm is past, and that storm's tyrannons rage
A stupid calm, but nothing it doth swage.
The fable is inverted, and far more

A block afflicts now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus
As steady as I could wish my thonghts were,
Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now, and as the isles which west)
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout;
And all our beauty and our trim decays,
Like courts removing, or like ending plays.
The fighting place now seamens' rage supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to day and yesterday.
Earth's hollownesses, which the world's lungs arë,
Have no more wind than th' upper vault of air;
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,A
But, meteor-like, save that we move not, hoveri
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fish's maws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than a brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboyl'd wretches, on the coals to barbe
Like Bajazet encag'd, the shepherd's scoff;
Or like slack-sinew'd Sampson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th' emperor's lov'd snake invade:
The crawling galleys, sea-gulls, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, our bed-rid ships:
Whether a rotten state and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov'd and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push'd me first;
I lose my end: for here as well as I
A desperate may live, and coward die.

Stag, dog, and all, which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies:
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtily lay
A scourge, 'gainst which we all forgot to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in Hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas!
Is man now, than, before he was, he was?
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance or ourselves still disproportion it;
We have no power, no will, no sense: I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

TO SIR HENRY WOOTTON.

Sm, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,
For thus friends absent speak. This ease controls
The tediousness of my life: but for these,
I could invent nothing at all to please;
But I should wither in one day, and pass
To a lock of hay, that am a bottle of grass.
Life is a voyage, and in our life's ways,
Countries, courts, towns, are rocks or remoras;
They break or stop all ships, yet our state's such
That (though than pitch they stain worse) we must
touch.

If in the furnace of the even line,

Or under th' adverse icy pole thou pine,
Thou know'st, two temperate regions girded in
Dwell there: but, oh ! what refuge can'st thou win
Parch'd in the court, and in the country frozen?
Shall cities built of both extremes be chosen?
Can dung or garlic be a perfume? Or can
A scorpion or torpedo cure a man?
Cities are worst of all three: of all three ?
(O knotty riddle!) each is worst equally.
Cities are sepulchres; they who dwell there
Are carcases, as if none such there were.
And courts are theatres, where some men play
Princes, some slaves, and all end in one day.
The country is a desert, where the good
Gain'd inhabits not; born, 's not understood.
There men become beasts, and prone to all evils;
In cities, blocks; and in a lewd court, devils.
As in the first chaos confusedly

Each element's qualities were in th' other three:
So pride, lust, covetize, being several
To these three places, yet all are in all,
And mingled thus, their issue is incestuous:
Falsehood is denizon'd; virtue is barbarous.
Let no man say there, virtue's flinty wall
Shall lock vice in me; I'll do none, but know all.
Men are spunges, which, to pour out, receive:
Who know false play, rather than lose, deceive.
For in best understandings, sin began;
Angels sim'd first, then devils, and then man.
Only perchance beasts sin not; wretched we
Are beasts in all, but white integrity.

I think if men, which in these places live,
Durst look in themselves, and themselves retrieve,
They would like strangers greet themselves, seeing
Utopian youth grown old Italian.
[then

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell;
Inn any where; continuance maketh Hell.
And seeing the snail, which every where doth roam,
Carrying his own house still, still is at home:
Follow (for he's easy pac'd) this snail,
Pe thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

And in the world's sea do not like cork sleep
Upon the water's face, nor in the deep
Sink like a lead without a line: but as
Fishes glide, leaving no print where they pass,
Nor making sound: so closely thy course go,
Let men dispute whether thou breathe or no:
Only in this be no Galenist. To make
Court's hot ambitions wholesome, do not take
A dram of country's dullness; do not add
Correctives, but as chymics purge the bad.
But, sir, I advise not you, I rather do
Say o'er those lessons which I learn'd of you:
Whom, free from Germany's schisms, and lightness
Of France, and fair Italy's faithlessness,

Having from these suck'd all they had of worth,
And brought home that faith which you carry'd

forth,