| |
| WELL; I may now receive, and die. My sin | |
| Indeed is great, but yet 1 I have been in | |
| A purgatory, such as fear’d hell is | |
| A recreation and scant map of this. | |
| My mind, nor with 2 pride’s itch, nor yet hath been | 5 |
| Poison’d with love to see, or to be seen. | |
| I had no suit there, nor new suit to show, | |
| Yet went to court; but as Glaze 3 which did go | |
| To mass in jest, catch’d, was fain to disburse | |
| The hundred marks, which is the statute’s curse, | 10 |
| Before he ’scaped; so ’t pleased my destiny— | |
| Guilty of my sin in going—to think me | |
| As prone to all ill, and of good as forget- | |
| Full, as proud, lustful, and as much in debt, | |
| As vain, as witless, and as false as they | 15 |
| Which dwell in court, for once going that way. | |
| Therefore I suffer’d this; towards me did run | |
| A thing more strange, than on Nile’s slime the sun | |
| E’er bred, or all which into Noah’s ark came; | |
| A thing which would have posed Adam to name; | 20 |
| Stranger than seven antiquaries’ studies, | |
| Than Afric’s monsters, Guiana’s rarities; | |
| Stranger than strangers; one, who for a Dane, | |
| In the Danes’ massacre had sure been slain, | |
| If he had lived then; and without help dies, | 25 |
| When next the ’prentices ’gainst strangers rise; | |
| One, whom the watch, at noon, lets scarce go by; | |
| One, to whom th’ examining justice sure would cry, | |
| ‘Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what you are.’ | |
| His clothes were strange, though coarse, and black, though bare; | 30 |
| Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been | |
| Velvet, but ’twas now—so much ground was seen— | |
| Become tufftaffaty; and our children shall | |
| See it plain rash awhile, then nought at all. | |
| The thing hath travell’d, and, faith, speaks all tongues, | 35 |
| And only knoweth what to all states belongs. | |
| Made of th’ accents and best phrase of all these, | |
| He speaks one language. If strange meats displease, | |
| Art can deceive, or hunger force my taste, | |
| But pedants’ motley tongue, soldiers’ bombast, | 40 |
| Mountebanks’ drug-tongue, nor the terms of law | |
| Are strong enough preparatives, to draw | |
| Me to bear this, 4 yet I must be content | |
| With his tongue, in his tongue, called compliment; | |
| In which he can win widows, and pay scores, | 45 |
| Make men speak treason, cozen subtlest whores, | |
| Outflatter favourites, or outlie either | |
| Jovius, or Surius, or both together. | |
| He names me, and comes to me; I whisper, ‘God! | |
| How have I sinn’d, that Thy wrath’s furious rod, | 50 |
| This fellow, chooseth me?’ He saith, ‘Sir, | |
| I love your judgment; whom do you prefer, | |
| For the best linguist?’ And I sillily | |
| Said, that I thought Calepine’s dictionary. | |
| ‘Nay, but of men, most sweet Sir;’ Beza then, | 55 |
| Some Jesuits, and two reverend men | |
| Of our two Academies I named. Here | |
| He stopped me, and said; ‘Nay, your apostles were | |
| Good pretty linguists, and so Panurge was; 5 | |
| Yet a poor gentleman all these may pass | 60 |
| By travel.’ 6 Then, as if he would have sold | |
| His tongue, he praised it, and such wonders 7 told, | |
| That I was fain to say, ‘If you’d lived, sir, | |
| Time enough to have been interpreter | |
| To Babel’s bricklayers, sure the tower had stood.’ | 65 |
| He adds, ‘If of court life you knew the good, | |
| You would leave loneness.’ I said, ‘Not alone | |
| My loneness 8 is; but Spartan’s fashion, | |
| To teach by painting drunkards, doth not taste | |
| Now; Aretine’s pictures have made few chaste; | 70 |
| No more can princes’ courts—though there be few | |
| Better pictures of vice—teach me virtue.’ | |
| He, like to a high-stretched lute-string, squeak’d, ‘O sir, | |
| ’Tis sweet to talk of kings.’ ‘At Westminster,’ | |
| Said I, ‘the man that keeps the abbey tombs, | 75 |
| And for his price doth with whoever comes | |
| Of all our Harrys and our Edwards talk, | |
| From king to king, and all their kin can walk. | |
| Your ears shall hear nought but kings; your eyes meet | |
| Kings only; the way to it is King’s street.’ | 80 |
| He smack’d and cried, ‘He’s base, mechanic, coarse, | |
| So are all your Englishmen in their discourse. | |
| Are not your Frenchmen neat? Mine, as you see, | |
| I have but one, sir, look—he follows me.’ 9 | |
| ‘Certes they’re neatly clothed. I of this mind am, | 85 |
| Your only wearing is your grogaram.’ | |
| ‘Not so, sir, I have more.’ Under this pitch | |
| He would not fly; I chafed 10 him. But as itch | |
| Scratched into smart, and as blunt iron ground | |
| Into an edge, hurts worse; so I, fool, found | 90 |
| Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullenness, | |
| He to another key his style doth dress, 11 | |
| And asks, ‘What news?’ I tell him of new plays. | |
| He takes my hand, and as a still which stays | |
| A semi-breve, ’twixt each drop, he niggardly, | 95 |
| As loth to enrich me, so tells many a lie, | |
| More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stows, | |
| Of trivial household trash. He knows; he knows | |
| When the Queen frown’d, or smiled, and he knows what | |
| A subtle statesman may gather of that; | 100 |
| He knows who loves whom; and who by poison | |
| Hastes to an office’s reversion; | |
| He knows who hath sold his land, and now doth beg | |
| A licence, old iron, boots, shoes, and egg- | |
| Shells to transport; shortly boys shall not play | 105 |
| At span-counter, or blow-point, but shall pay | |
| Toll to some courtier; and wiser than all us, | |
| He knows what lady is not painted. Thus | |
| He with home meats cloys me. 12 I belch, spew, spit, | |
| Look pale and sickly, like a patient, yet | 110 |
| He thrusts on more; and as he’d undertook 13 | |
| To say Gallo-Belgicus without book, | |
| Speaks of all states and deeds that have been since | |
| The Spaniards came, to the loss of Amiens. | |
| Like a big wife, at sight of loathèd meat, | 115 |
| Ready to travail, so I sigh and sweat | |
| To hear this Macaron talk. In vain; for yet, | |
| Either my humour, or his own to fit, | |
| He, like a privileged spy, whom nothing can | |
| Discredit, libels now ’gainst each great man. | 120 |
| He names a price for every office paid; | |
| He saith, our wars thrive ill, because delay’d; | |
| That offices are entail’d, and that there are | |
| Perpetuities of them, lasting as far | |
| As the last day; and that great officers | 125 |
| Do with the pirates share, and Dunkirkers. | |
| Who wastes in meat, in clothes, in horse, he notes; | |
| Who loves whores, who boys, and who goats. | |
| I more amazed than Circe’s prisoners, when | |
| They felt themselves turn beasts, felt myself then | 130 |
| Becoming traitor, and methought I saw | |
| One of our giant statutes ope his jaw | |
| To suck me in, for hearing him I found | |
| That as burnt venom 14 lechers do grow sound | |
| By giving others their sores, I might grow | 135 |
| Guilty, and he free; 15 therefore I did show | |
| All signs of loathing; but since I am in, | |
| I must pay mine and my forefathers’ sin | |
| To the last farthing. Therefore to my power | |
| Toughly and stubbornly I bear this cross; but th’ hour | 140 |
| Of mercy now was come; he tries to bring | |
| Me to pay a fine to ’scape his torturing, | |
| And says, ‘Sir, can you spare me’—I said, ‘Willingly’; | |
| ‘Nay, sir, can you spare me a crown’? Thankfully I | |
| Gave it, as ransom; but as fiddlers, still, | 145 |
| Though they be paid to be gone, yet needs will | |
| Thrust one more jig upon you; so did he | |
| With his long complimental thanks vex me. | |
| But he is gone, thanks to his needy want, | |
| And the prerogative of my crown; scant | 150 |
| His thanks were ended, when I—which did see | |
| All the court fill’d with more strange things than he— | |
| Ran from thence with such, or more haste than one | |
| Who fears more actions doth haste from prison. | |
| At home, in wholesome solitariness, | 155 |
| My piteous 16 soul began the wretchedness | |
| Of suitors at court to mourn, and a trance | |
| Like his, who dreamt he saw hell, did advance | |
| Itself o’er me; 17 such men as he saw there, | |
| I saw at court, and worse, and more. Low fear | 160 |
| Becomes the guilty, not th’ accuser; then | |
| Shall I, none’s slave, of high-born or raised men | |
| Fear frowns? and, my mistress Truth, betray thee | |
| To huffing, braggart, puffed nobility? 18 | |
| No, no; thou which since yesterday hast been | 165 |
| Almost about the whole world, hast thou seen, | |
| O sun, in all thy journey, vanity | |
| Such as swells the bladder of our court? I | |
| Think he which made your waxen garden, and | |
| Transported it, from Italy, to stand | 170 |
| With us at London, flouts our courtiers, 19 for | |
| Just such gay painted things, which no sap nor | |
| Taste have in them, ours are; and natural | |
| Some of the stocks are, their fruits bastard all. | |
| ’Tis ten a-clock and past; all whom the mews, | 175 |
| Baloun, tennis, diet, or the stews | |
| Had all the morning held, now the second | |
| Time made ready that day, in flocks are found 20 | |
| In the presence, and aye—God pardon me— | |
| As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be | 180 |
| The fields they sold to buy them. ‘For a king | |
| Those hose are,’ cry the flatterers; 21 and bring | |
| Them next week to the theatre to sell. | |
| Wants reach all states. Meseems they do as well | |
| At stage as court; all are players; whoe’er looks | 185 |
| —For themselves dare not go—o’er Cheapside books | |
| Shall find their wardrobe’s inventory. Now, | |
| The ladies come. As pirates, which do know | |
| That there came weak ships fraught with cochineal, | |
| The men board them; and praise, as they think, well | 190 |
| Their beauties; they, the men’s wits; both are bought. | |
| Why good wits ne’er wear scarlet gowns, I thought | |
| This cause; These men men’s wits for speeches buy, | |
| And women buy all reds which scarlets dye. | |
| He called her beauty lime-twigs, her hair net; | 195 |
| She fears her drugs ill laid, her hair loose set. | |
| Would not Heraclitus laugh to see Macrine | |
| From hat to shoe himself at door refine, | |
| As if the presence were a mosque; and lift | |
| His skirts and hose, and call his clothes to shrift, | 200 |
| Making them confess, not only mortal | |
| Great stains and holes in them, but venial | |
| Feathers and dust, wherewith they fornicate; | |
| And then by Durer’s rules survey the state | |
| Of his each limb, and with strings the odds tries | 205 |
| Of his neck to his leg, and waist to thighs? | |
| So in immaculate clothes, and symmetry | |
| Perfect as circles, with such nicety | |
| As a young preacher at his first time goes | |
| To preach, he enters, and a lady which owes | 210 |
| Him not so much as good will, he arrests, | |
| And unto her protests, protests, protests, | |
| So much as at Rome would serve to have thrown | |
| Ten cardinals into th’ Inquisition; | |
| And whispers 22 ‘By Jesu!’ so often, that a | 215 |
| Pursuivant would have ravish’d him away | |
| For saying of our Lady’s psalter. But ’tis fit | |
| That they each other plague; they merit it. | |
| But here comes Glorius, that will plague them both, | |
| Who in the other extreme, only doth | 220 |
| Call a rough carelessness good fashion; | |
| Whose cloak his spurs tear, or 23 whom he spits on, | |
| He cares not, he. 24 His ill words do no harm | |
| To him, he rusheth 25 in, as if ‘Arm, arm!’ | |
| He came to cry; and though his face be as ill | 225 |
| As theirs, which in old hangings whip Christ, still | |
| He strives to look worse; he keeps all in awe, | |
| Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law. | |
| Tired now I leave this place, and, but pleased so | |
| As men from gaols to execution go, | 230 |
| Go through the great chamber—why is it hung | |
| With the seven deadly sins?—being among | |
| Those Ascaparts, men big enough to throw | |
| Charing Cross for a bar, men that do know | |
| No token of worth but ‘Queen’s man,’ and fine | 235 |
| Living, barrels of beef, flagons of wine, 26 | |
| I shook like a spied spy. Preachers, which are | |
| Seas of wits and arts, you can, then dare | |
| Drown the sins of this place, for, for me, | |
| Which am but a scant brook, 27 it enough shall be | 240 |
| To wash the stains away. Although 28 I yet | |
| With Machabee’s modesty the known merit | |
| Of my work lessen; yet some wise man shall, | |
| I hope, esteem my writs canonical. | |
