117

118

Some drunken Rimer thinks his time well spent,
If he can live to see his name in print;

118

Who when he is once fleshed" to the presse,
And sees his handsell 8 have such fayre successe,
Sung to the wheele, and sung unto the payle,
He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sale "9.
Nor then can rest, but volumes up bodg'd rimes,
To have his name talk't of in future times.
The brainsicke youth, that feeds his tickled eare
With sweet-sauc'd lies of some false Traveiler,
Which hath the Spanish Decades 120 red awhile,
Or whet-stone leasings of old Maundevile "";
Now with discourses breakes his midnight sleepe,
Of his adventures through the Indian deepe,
Of all their massy heapes of golden mine,
Or of the antique toombs of Palestine ;
Or of Damascus' magicke wall of glasse,
Of Salomon, his sweating piles of brasse,
Of the bird Ruc that beares an elephant 22,
Of mer-maids that the southerne seas do haunt,
Of head-lesse men", of savage Cannibals,
The fashions of their lives and governals 14:
What monstrous cities there erected bee,
Cayro, or the City of the Trinitie.

fleshed-initiated, introduced.
handsell-earnest, first-fruits.

119 He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sale.

Supposed to have been levelled at Elderton, a celebrated drunken balladwriter. W.

An old black-letter quarto, translated from the Spanish into English about 1590: and more than once alluded to in the satirical productions of the time. W.

121 Or WHET-STONE LEASINGS of old Maundevile—

i. e. with his amusing and interesting fabrications.

122 Of the bird Ruc that beares an elephant.

-"in eâdem ipsâ orbis parte, in quâ monstrosissimus ales RUC elephantum integrum unguibus suis rapiens deglutiendum."-Mundus Alter et Idem. See p. 142 of this vol. The author of the English Translation of this piece adds in a note, "This bird's picture is to be seen in the largest Maps of the World, with an Elephant in his pounces." See a large account of this fabulous creature Lib. i. c. 10. of the same work, at p. 153 of this vol. The author mentions it again, p. 238, in his Censure of Travel; where there occurs a similar reprehension of the marvellous stories of travellers with that in this Satire.

123 Of head-lesse men

"We can tell.... of those headless eastern people, that have their eyes in their breast; a mis-conceit arising from their fashion of attire which I have sometimes seen". See Censure of Travel, p. 238 of this vol.

Now are they dung-hill cocks, that have not seene
The bordering Alpes, or else the neighbour Rhene:
And now he plyes the newes-full Grashopper "",
Of voyages and ventures to enquire.

125

His land morgag'd, he sea beat in the way,
Wishes for home a thousand sithes 126 a day.
And now he deemes his home-bred fare as leefe "",
As his parch't bisket, or his barreld beefe.
Mong'st all these sturs of discontented strife,
Oh let me lead an academicke life 128 !

To know much, and to thinke we nothing know;
Nothing to have, yet think we have enow:
In skill to want, and wanting seeke for more;
In weale, nor want nor wish for greater store.
Envy, ye monarchs, with your proud excesse,
At our low sayle 129, and our hye happinesse.

SATIRE VII 130.

POMH PTMH.

WHO says these Romish pageants bene too hy
To be the scorne of sportfull poesy

?

Certes not all the worlde such matter wist 131

As are the Seven Hills, for a Satyrist.

Perdy, I loath a hundreth Mathoes' tongues,

A hundreth gamesters' shifts or landlords' wrongs,

125 And now he plyes the newes-full Grashopper.

The Exchange, having the Grashopper as a vane; the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham, its founder.

Our author appears from his "Specialities" to have been warmly attached to the academic life which he here praises. Speaking of his election as a Fellow of Emanuel College, he says" was with a cheerful unanimity chosen into that Society; which if it had any equals, I dare say had none beyond it for good order, studious carriage, strict government, austere piety: in which I spent six or seven years more with such contentment, as the rest of my life hath in vain striven to yield."

129 At our low sayle

This expression was proverbial. In "The Return from Parnassus", Att iv. Sc. 5. we find Scholars must frame to live at a low sayle. E.

130 Compare this Satire with Mundus Alter et Idem, Lib. iii. c. 8, 9.

wist-knows.

131

1 32

Perdy-Fr, par Dieu, an old oath.

133

133

Or Labeo's poems, or base Lolio's pride,
Or ever what I thought or wrote beside;
When once I thinke if carping Aquine's spright ***
To see now 134 Rome were licenc'd to the light,
How his enraged ghost would stampe and stare,
That Cæsar's throne is turn'd to Peter's chayre.
To see an olde shorne Lozell " perched hy,
Crossing beneath a golden Canopy;

The whiles a thousand hairelesse crownes crouch low,
To kisse the precious case of his proude toe :
And, for the lordly Fasces borne of olde,

To see two quiet crossed keyes of golde;

Or Cybele's shrine, the famous Pantheon's frame,
Turn'd to the honour of our Ladie's name.
But that he most would gaze and wonder at,
Is th' horned miter, and the bloudy hat,

The crooked staffe, their coule's strange form and store,
Save that he saw the same in hell before:

137

To see the broken nuns, with new-shorne heads,
In a blinde 13 cloyster tosse their idle beades;
Or louzy coules come smoking from the stewes,
To raise the leud rent to their lord accrewes "",
(Who, with ranke Venice, doth his pompe advance
By trading of ten thousand curtezans 139)
Yet backward must absolve a female's sin;
Like to a false dissembling Theatine,

carping Aquine's spright.

Meaning Juvenal, who was born at Aquinum, a town in Campania. EDITOR. The thought of Juvenal's rising from the tomb to survey Papal Rome, might perhaps originate with Spenser's lines when figuring the Ruins of Rome;—

134

135

Words.

136

"O that I had the Thracian Poet's harp

For to awake out of th' infernal shade

Those antique Cæsars, sleeping long in dark,
The which this antient city whilome made.”
St. 25. E.

now-present.

Lozell" A lazy lubber, a slothfull booby". Phillips's New World of

blinde-dark.

137 To raise the leud rent to their lord accrewes.

The relative is omitted.

138 Who, with ranke Venice, doth his pompe advance By trading of ten thousand curtezans.

"Scorta Romæ Julium nummum solvunt Pontifici: exhinc census illius annuus excedit 40,000 Ducatos. Paul iii. in Tabellis suis habuit Meretrices 45,000". See Note at p. 201 of this volume.

19" Like to a false dissembling Theatine.

Friars thus named, from Teate in the kingdom of Naples. Their history may be found in the Dictionaries of the French Academy and of Moreri. E.

140

Who, when is skine is red with shirts of male
And rugged haire-cloth, scoures his greazy nayle;
Or wedding garment tames his stubburne backe,
Which his hempe girdle dyes all blew and blacke:
Or, of his almes-boule three dayes sup'd and din'd,
Trudges to open stewes of either kinde:

Or takes some Cardinal's stable in the way,
And with some pamper'd mule doth weare the day,
Kept for his lord's own sadle when him list.
Come, Valentine, and play the satyrist,
To see poor sucklings welcom'd to the light
With searing yrons of some sowre Jacobite 1o,
Or golden offers of an aged foole,

To make his coffin some Franciscan's coule 11 :
To see the Pope's blacke knight, a cloked Frere,
Sweating in the channell like a Scavengere;
Whom earst thy bowed hamme did lowly greete,
When at the corner-crosse thou did'st him meete,
Tumbling his Rosaries hanging at his belt,
Or his Barretta, or his towred felt 142

To see a lasie dumb Acholithite 143,

142:

Armed against a devout flye's despight,
Which at th' hy alter doth the Chalice vaile
With a broad flie-flappe of a Peacocke's tayle;
The whiles the likerous priest spits every tryce
With longing for his morning sacrifice,

some sowre Jacobite.

A Jacobite, or Jacobin, was a Grey Friar. E.

141 Or golden offers of an aged foole,

To make his coffin some Franciscan's coule.

144

How highly a cowl was prized to keep away Demons, may be seen in Pennant's London, under Christ Church, Newgate Street. E.

142 Or his BARRETTA, or his TOWRED FELT.

The Bireta was a covering for the head; the birela coccinea was a Cardinal's Hat; and the birrotum album the covering worne by Serjeants at Law: See Spelman under the word Birrus.-The towred felt must mean a high crowned

hat.

143 To see a lasie dumb Acholithile,

&c. &c.

This was an inferior part of the Acholite's office; whose chief business was to deli ver the water vessels and candlesticks to the Priest. The Form of the Peacock Fan may be seen in Bp. Carleton's Remembrance, p. 37, where it occurs in the head-piece to chap. iv. £.

Weever says, "The Acolites or Acoluthites were to follow and serve the Bishop or chief Priest, to provide and kindle the lights and lamps of the Church, and to register the names of such as were catechized". See Mason's Supplement to Johnson.

144 The whiles the likerous priest spits every trice,

&c. &c.

"This sort of ridicule is improper and dangerous. It has a tendency, even with

Which he reres up quite perpendiculare,

That the mid-church doth spite the Chancel's fare,
Beating their emptie mawes that would be fed
With the scant morsels of the Sacrist's bread.
Would he not laugh to death, when he should heare
The shamelesse legends of S. Christopher,
S. George, the Sleepers, or S. Peter's well,
Or of his daughter good S. Petronell 45?
But had he heard the female father's grone,
Yeaning in mids of her procession 446;
Or now should see the needlesse tryall-chayre,
(When ech is proved by his bastard heyre)
Or saw the churches, and new calendere
Pestred with mungrell saints and reliques dere,

Should hee cry out on Codro's tedious tomesTM

When his new rage would aske no narrower rooms ?

out an entire parity of circumstances, to burlesque the celebration of this awfal solemnity in the Reformed Church. In laughing at false religion, we may some; times hurt the true. Though the rites of the Papistic Eucharist are erroneous and absurd, yet great part of the ceremony, and above all the radical idea, being also to the Protestant Communion". This is Mr. Warton's Note on the passage: which I wished not to suppress, though I think his censure of the Satirist, in great part at least, misplaced. The satire is directed, not against any circumstance to be found in the simple and dignified celebration of the Protestant Communion, but singly against the unscriptural and ridiculous custom of the priest appropriating all the wine to himself and distributing wafers only to the other communicants, EDITOR.

145 Would he not laugh to death, when he should heare
The shamelesse legends of S. Christopher,

S. George, the Sleepers, or S. Peter's well,
Or of his daughter good S. Petronell?

Among the MSS. which Bishop Fell presented to the Bodleian are four volumes of great antiquity, entitled "Vitæ et Passiones Sanctorum." In these may be found the legends here alluded to. E.

The story of Petronella, the daughter of St. Peter, seems, in part at least, to have been believed by our author. See Works, vol. ix. pp. 137, 143.

But had he heard the Female Father's grone, "Yeaning in mids of her procession.

Alluding to the story of Pope Joan.

147 Should he cry out on Codro's tedious tomes

The edition of 1599, followed by the Oxford, reads toombes; with manifest impropriety, as the Satirist alludes to the opening lines of his favourite Juvenal;Semper ego auditor tantùm? nunquámne reponam,

Vexatus toties rauci Theseide CODKI?
Impunè ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas,
Hic elegos? impunè diem consumserit ingens
Telephus? aut summi plenä jam margine libri
Scriptus, et in tergo, nec dum finitus Orestes?