Is a cipher, that has no value himself but from the place he stands in. All his happiness consists in the opinion he believes others have of it. This is his faith, but as it is heretical and erroneous, though he suffer much tribulation for it, he continues obstinate, and not to be convinced. He flutters up and down like a butterfly in a garden, and while he is pruning of his peruke takes occasion to contemplate his legs and the symmetry of his breeches. He is part of the furniture of the rooms, and serves for a walking picture, a moving piece of arras. His business is only to be seen, and he performs it with admirable industry, placing himself always in the best light, looking wonderfully politic, and cautious whom he mixes withal. His occupation is to show his clothes, and if they could but walk themselves they would save him the labour and do his work as well as himself. His immunity from varlets is his freehold, and he were a lost man without it. His clothes are but his tailor's livery, which he gives him, for 'tis ten to one he never pays for them. He is very careful to discover the lining of his coat, that you may not suspect any want of integrity or flaw in him from the skin outwards. His tailor is his creator, and makes him of nothing; and though he lives by faith in him, he is perpetually committing iniquities against him. His soul dwells in the outside of him, like that of a hollow tree, and if you do but peel the bark off him he deceases immediately. His carriage of himself is the wearing of his clothes, and, like the cinnamon tree, his bark is better than his body. His looking big is rather a tumour than greatness. He is an idol that has just so much value as other men give him that believe in him, but none of his own. He makes his ignorance pass for reserve, and, like a hunting-nag, leaps over what he cannot get through. He has just so much of politics as hostlers in the university have Latin. He is as humble as a Jesuit to his superior, but repays himself again in insolence over those that are below him, and with a generous scorn despises those that can neither do him good nor hurt. He adores those that may do him good, though he knows they never will, and despises those that would not hurt him if they could. The court is his church, and he believes as that believes, and cries up and down everything as he finds it pass there. It is a great comfort to him to think that some who do not know him may perhaps take him for a lord, and while that thought lasts he looks bigger than usual and forgets his acquaintance, and that's the reason why he will sometimes know you and sometimes not. Nothing but want of money or credit puts him in mind that he is mortal, but then he trusts Providence that somebody will trust him, and in expectation of that hopes for a better life, and that his debts will never rise up in judgment against him. To get in debt is to labour in his vocation, but to pay is to forfeit his protection, for what's that worth to one that owes nothing? His employment being only to wear his clothes, the whole account of his life and actions is recorded in shopkeepers' books, that are his faithful historiographers to their own posterity; and he believes he loses so much reputation as he pays off his debts, and that no man wears his clothes in fashion that pays for them, for nothing is further from the mode. He believes that he that runs in debt is beforehand with those that trust him, and only those that pay are behind. His brains are turned giddy, like one that walks on the top of a house, and that's the reason it is so troublesome to him to look downwards. He is a kind of spectrum, and his clothes are the shape he takes to appear and walk in, and when he puts them off he vanishes. He runs as busily out of one room into another as a great practiser does in Westminster Hall from one court to another. When he accosts a lady he puts both ends of his microcosm in motion, by making legs at one end and combing his peruke at the other. His garniture is the sauce to his clothes, and he walks in his portcannons like one that stalks in long grass. Every motion of him cries "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, quoth the preacher." He rides himself like a well-managed horse, reins in his neck, and walksterra-terra. He carries his elbows backward, as if he were pinioned like a trussed-up fowl, and moves as stiff as if he was upon the spit. His legs are stuck in his great voluminous breeches like the whistles in a bagpipe, those abundant breeches in which his nether parts are not clothed but packed up. His hat has been long in a consumption of the fashion, and is now almost worn to nothing; if it do not recover quickly it will grow too little for a head of garlic. He wears garniture on the toes of his shoes to justify his pretensions to the gout, or such other malady that for the time being is most in fashion or request. When he salutes a friend he pulls off his hat, as women do their vizard-masks. His ribbons are of the true complexion of his mind, a kind of painted cloud or gaudy rainbow, that has no colour of itself but what it borrows from reflection. He is as tender of his clothes as a coward is of his flesh, and as loth to have them disordered. His bravery is all his happiness, and, like Atlas, he carries his heaven on his back. He is like the golden fleece, a fine outside on a sheep's back. He is a monster or an Indian creature, that is good for nothing in the world but to be seen. He puts himself up into a sedan, like a fiddle in a case, and is taken out again for the ladies to play upon, who, when they have done with him, let down his treble-string till they are in the humour again. His cook andvalet de chambreconspire to dress dinner and him so punctually together that the one may not be ready before the other. As peacocks and ostriches have the gaudiest and finest feathers, yet cannot fly, so all his bravery is to flutter only. The beggars call him "my lord," and he takes them at their words and pays them for it. If you praise him, he is so true and faithful to the mode that he never fails to make you a present of himself, and will not be refused, though you know not what to do with him when you have him.
Waits at Court, as a dog does under a table, to catch what falls, or force it from his fellows if he can. When a man is in a fair way to be hanged that is richly worth it, or has hanged himself, he puts in to be his heir and succeed him, and pretends as much merit as another, as no doubt he has great reason to do if all things were rightly considered. He thinks it vain to deserve well of his Prince as long as he can do his business more easily by begging, for the same idle laziness possesses him that does the rest of his fraternity, that had rather take an alms than work for their livings, and therefore he accounts merit a more uncertain and tedious way of rising, and sometimes dangerous. He values himself and his place not upon the honour or allowances of it, but the convenient opportunity of begging, as King Clause's courtiers do when they have obtained of the superior powers a good station where three ways meet to exercise the function in. The more ignorant, foolish, and undeserving he is, provided he be but impudent enough, which all such seldom fail to be, the better he thrives in his calling, as others in the same way gain more by their sores and broken limbs than those that are sound and in health. He always undervalues what he gains, because he comes easily by it; and, how rich soever he proves, is resolved never to be satisfied, as being, like a Friar Minor, bound by his order to be always a beggar. He is, like King Agrippa, almost a Christian; for though he never begs anything of God, yet he does very much of his vicegerent the King, that is next Him. He spends lavishly what he gets, because it costs him so little pains to get more, but pays nothing; for if he should, his privilege would be of no use at all to him, and he does not care to part with anything of his right. He finds it his best way to be always craving, because he lights many times upon things that are disposed of or not beggable; but if one hit, it pays for twenty that miscarry; even as those virtuosos of his profession at large ask as well of those that give them nothing as those few that, out of charity, give them something. When he has passed almost all offices, as other beggars do from constable to constable, and after meets with a stop, it does but encourage him to be more industrious in watching the next opportunity, to repair the charge he has been at to no purpose. He has his emissaries, that are always hunting out for discoveries, and when they bring him in anything that he judges too heavy far his own interest to carry, he takes in others to join with him (like blind men and cripples that beg in consort), and if they prosper they share, and give the jackal some small snip for his pains in questing; that is, if he has any further use of him; otherwise he leaves him, like virtue, to reward himself; and because he deserves well, which he does by no means approve of, gives him, that which he believes to be the fittest recompense of all merit, just nothing. He believes that the King's restoration being upon his birthday, he is bound to observe it all the days of his life, and grant, as some other kings have done upon the same occasion, whatever is demanded of him, though it were the one-half of his kingdom.
Is a clown of rank and degree. He is the growth of his own land, a kind of Autocthonus, like the Athenians that sprang out of their own ground, or barnacles that grow upon trees in Scotland. His homely education has rendered him a native only of his own soil and a foreigner to all other places, from which he differs in language, manner of living, and behaviour, which are as rugged as the coat of a colt that has been bred upon a common. The custom of being the best man in his own territories has made him the worst everywhere else. He assumes the upper end of the table at an ale-house as his birthright, receives the homage of his company, which are always subordinate, and dispenses ale and communication like a self-conforming teacher in a conventicle. The chief points he treats on are the memoirs of his dogs and horses, which he repeats as often as a holder-forth that has but two sermons, to which if he adds the history of his hawks and fishing he is very painful and laborious. He does his endeavour to appear a droll, but his wit being, like his estate, within the compass of a hedge, is so profound and obscure to a stranger that it requires a commentary, and is not to be understood without a perfect knowledge of all circumstances of persons and the particular idiom of the place. He has no ambition to appear a person of civil prudence or understanding more than in putting off a lame, infirm jade for sound wind and limb, to which purpose he brings his squirehood and groom to vouch, and, rather than fail, will outswear an affidavit-man. The top of his entertainment is horrible strong beer, which he pours into his guests (as the Dutch did water into our merchants when they tortured them at Amboyna) till they confess they can drink no more, and then he triumphs over them as subdued and vanquished, no less by the strength of his brain than his drink. When he salutes a man he lays violent hands upon him, and grips and shakes him like a fit of an ague; and when he accosts a lady he stamps with his foot, like a French fencer, and makes a lunge at her, in which he always misses his aim, too high or too low, and hits her on the nose or chin. He is never without some rough-handed flatterer, that rubs him, like a horse, with a curry-comb till he kicks and grunts with the pleasure of it. He has old family stories and jests, that fell to him with the estate, and have been left from heir to heir time out of mind. With these he entertains all comers over and over, and has added some of his own times, which he intends to transmit over to posterity. He has but one way of making all men welcome that come to his house, and that is by making himself and them drunk; while his servants take the same course with theirs, which he approves of as good and faithful service, and the rather because, if he has occasion to tell a strange, improbable story, they may be in a readiness to vouch with the more impudence, and make it a case of conscience to lie as well as drink for his credit. All the heroical glory he aspires to is but to be reputed a most potent and victorious stealer of deer and beater-up of parks, to which purpose he has compiled commentaries of his own great actions that treat of his dreadful adventures in the night, of giving battle in the dark, discomfiting of keepers, horsing the deer on his own back, and making off with equal resolution and success.
Is one that has his being in this age, but his life and conversation is in the days of old. He despises the present age as an innovation and slights the future, but has a great value for that which is past and gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra. He is an old frippery-philosopher, that has so strange a natural affection to worm-eaten speculation that it is apparent he has a worm in his skull. He honours his forefathers and foremothers, but condemns his parents as too modern and no better than upstarts. He neglects himself because he was born in his own time and so far off antiquity, which he so much admires, and repines, like a younger brother, because he came so late into the world. He spends the one-half of his time in collecting old insignificant trifles, and the other in showing them, which he takes singular delight in, because the oftener he does it the farther they are from being new to him. All his curiosities take place of one another according to their seniority, and he values them not by their abilities, but their standing. He has a great veneration for words that are stricken in years, and are grown so aged that they have outlived their employments. These he uses with a respect agreeable to their antiquity and the good services they have done. He throws away his time in inquiring after that which is past and gone so many ages since, like one that shoots away an arrow to find out another that was lost before. He fetches things out of dust and ruins, like the fable of the chemical plant raised out of its own ashes. He values one old invention, that is lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the world, though never so useful. The whole business of his life is the same with his that shows the tombs at Westminster, only the one does it for his pleasure, and the other for money. As every man has but one father, but two grandfathers and a world of ancestors, so he has a proportional value for things that are ancient, and the farther off the greater.
He is a great time-server, but it is of time out of mind to which he conforms exactly, but is wholly retired from the present. His days were spent and gone long before he came into the world, and since his only business is to collect what he can out of the ruins of them. He has so strong a natural affection to anything that is old, that he may truly say to dust and worms, "You are my father;" and to rottenness, "Thou art my mother." He has no providence nor foresight, for all his contemplations look backward upon the days of old; and his brains are turned with them, as if he walked backwards. He had rather interpret one obscure word in any old senseless discourse than be author of the most ingenious new one, and, with Scaliger, would sell the Empire of Germany (if it were in his power) for an old song. He devours an old manuscript with greater relish than worms and moths do, and, though there be nothing in it, values it above anything printed, which he accounts but a novelty. When he happens to cure a small botch in an old author, he is as proud of it as if he had got the philosopher's stone and could cure all the diseases of mankind. He values things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting that the most modern are really the most ancient of all things in the world, like those that reckon their pounds before their shillings and pence of which they are made up. He esteems no customs but such as have outlived themselves and are long since out of use, as the Catholics allow of no saints but such as are dead, and the fanatics, in opposition, of none but the living.
Is a fool in fermentation, that swells and boils over like a porridge-pot. He sets out his feathers like an owl, to swell and seem bigger than he is. He is troubled with a tumour and inflammation of self-conceit, that renders every part of him stiff and uneasy. He has given himself sympathetic love-powder, that works upon him to dotage and has transformed him into his own mistress. He is his own gallant, and makes most passionate addresses to his own dear perfections. He commits idolatry to himself, and worships his own image; though there is no soul living of his Church but himself, yet he believes as the Church believes, and maintains his faith with the obstinacy of a fanatic. He is his own favourite, and advances himself not only above his merit, but all mankind; is both Damon and Pythias to his own dear self, and values his crony above his soul. He gives place to no man but himself, and that with very great distance to all others, whom he esteems not worthy to approach him. He believes whatsoever he has receives a value in being his, as a horse in a nobleman's stable will bear a greater price than in a common market. He is so proud that he is as hard to be acquainted with himself as with others, for he is very apt to forget who he is, and knows himself only superficially; therefore he treats himself civilly as a stranger with ceremony and compliment, but admits of no privacy. He strives to look bigger than himself as well as others, and is no better than his own parasite and flatterer. A little flood will make a shallow torrent swell above its banks, and rage and foam and yield a roaring noise, while a deep, silent stream glides quietly on. So a vain-glorious, insolent, proud man swells with a little frail prosperity, grows big and loud, and overflows his bounds, and when he sinks, leaves mud and dirt behind him. His carriage is as glorious and haughty as if he were advanced upon men's shoulders or tumbled over their heads like knipperdolling. He fancies himself a Colosse, and so he is, for his head holds no proportion to his body, and his foundation is lesser than his upper storeys. We can naturally take no view of ourselves unless we look downwards, to teach us how humble admirers we ought to be of our own values. The slighter and less solid his materials are the more room they take up and make him swell the bigger, as feathers and cotton will stuff cushions better than things of more close and solid parts.
Is one that would fain make himself that which Nature never meant him, like a fanatic that inspires himself with his own whimsies. He sets up haberdasher of small poetry, with a very small stock and no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find out other men's wit, and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit has the rickets by the swelling disproportion of the joints. Imitation is the whole sum of him, and his vein is but an itch that he has catched of others, and his flame like that of charcoals that were burnt before. But as he wants judgment to understand what is best, he naturally takes the worst, as being most agreeable to his own talent. You may know his wit not to be natural, 'tis so unquiet and troublesome in him; for as those that have money but seldom are always shaking their pockets when they have it, so does he when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear. He is a perpetual talker, and you may know by the freedom of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely what they get. He measures other men's wit by their modesty, and his own by his confidence. He makes nothing of writing plays, because he has not wit enough to understand the difficulty. This makes him venture to talk and scribble, as chouses do to play with cunning gamesters until they are cheated and laughed at. He is always talking of wit, as those that have bad voices are always singing out of tune, and those that cannot play delight to fumble on instruments. He grows the unwiser by other men's harms, for the worse others write, he finds the more encouragement to do so too. His greediness of praise is so eager that he swallows anything that comes in the likeness of it, how notorious and palpable soever, and is as shot-free against anything that may lessen his good opinion of himself. This renders him incurable, like diseases that grow insensible.
If you dislike him, it is at your own peril; he is sure to put in a caveat beforehand against your understanding, and, like a malefactor in wit, is always furnished with exceptions against his judges. This puts him upon perpetual apologies, excuses, and defences, but still by way of defiance, in a kind of whiffling strain, without regard of any man that stands in the way of his pageant. Where he thinks he may do it safely, he will confidently own other men's writings; and where he fears the truth may be discovered, he will, by feeble denials and feigned insinuations, give men occasion to suppose it.
If he understands Latin or Greek he ranks himself among the learned, despises the ignorant, talks criticisms out of Scaliger, and repeats Martial's bawdy epigrams, and sets up his rest wholly upon pedantry. But if he be not so well qualified, he cries down all learning as pedantic, disclaims study, and professes to write with as great facility as if his Muse was sliding down Parnassus. Whatsoever he hears well said he seizes upon by poetical license, and one way makes it his own; that is, by ill-repeating of it. This he believes to be no more theft than it is to take that which others throw away. By this means his writings are, like a tailor's cushion of mosaic work, made up of several scraps sewed together. He calls a slovenly, nasty description great Nature, and dull flatness strange easiness. He writes down all that comes in his head, and makes no choice, because he has nothing to do it with that is judgment. He is always repealing the old laws of comedy, and, like the Long Parliament, making ordinances in their stead, although they are perpetually thrown out of coffee-houses and come to nothing. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He is but a copier at best, and will never arrive to practise by the life; for bar him the imitation of something he has read, and he has no image in his thoughts. Observation and fancy, the matter and form of just wit, are above his philosophy. He appears so over-concerned in all men's wits as if they were but disparagements of his own, and cries down all they do as if they were encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as justices do false weights and pots that want measure. When he meets with anything that is very good he changes it into small money, like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. He disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true by his often missing of his mark. His wit is much troubled with obstructions, and he has fits as painful as those of the spleen. He fancies himself a dainty, spruce shepherd, with a flock and a fine silken shepherdess, that follow his pipe as rats did the conjurers in Germany.
As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful, and not fit to be made by a Christian poet, and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two; and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation.
For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did, for contraries are best set off with contraries.
He has found out a way to save the expense of much wit and sense; for he will make less than some have prodigally laid out upon five or six words serve forty or fifty lines. This is a thrifty invention, and very easy, and, if it were commonly known, would much increase the trade of wit and maintain a multitude of small poets in constant employment. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics, a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit like the elixir, and projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished; the whole world has kept holiday; there have been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses; trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge.
We read that Virgil used to make fifty or sixty verses in a morning, and afterwards reduce them to ten. This was an unthrifty vanity, and argues him as well ignorant in the husbandry of his own poetry as Seneca says he was in that of a farm; for, in plain English, it was no better than bringing a noble to nine-pence. And as such courses brought the prodigal son to eat with hogs, so they did him to feed with horses, which were not much better company, and may teach us to avoid doing the like. For certainly it is more noble to take four or five grains of sense, and, like a gold-beater, hammer them into so many leaves as will fill a whole book, than to write nothing but epitomes, which many wise men believe will be the bane and calamity of learning. When he writes he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases.
There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them, for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryads, hamadryads, Aonides, fauni, nymphae, sylvani, &c., that signify nothing at all, and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and thorough reformations that can happen between this and Plato's great year.
When he writes he never proposes any scope or purpose to himself, but gives his genius all freedom; for as he that rides abroad for his pleasure can hardly be out of his way, so he that writes for his pleasure can seldom be beside his subject. It is an ungrateful thing to a noble wit to be confined to anything. To what purpose did the ancients feign Pegasus to have wings if he must be confined to the road and stages like a pack-horse, or be forced to be obedient to hedges and ditches? Therefore he has no respect to decorum and propriety of circumstance, for the regard of persons, times, and places is a restraint too servile to be imposed upon poetical license, like him that made Plato confess Juvenal to be a philosopher, or Persius, that calls the Athenians Quirites.
For metaphors, he uses to choose the hardest and most far-set that he can light upon. These are the jewels of eloquence, and therefore the harder they are the more precious they must be.
He'll take a scant piece of coarse sense and stretch it on the tenterhooks of half-a-score rhymes, until it crack that you may see through it and it rattle like a drumhead. When you see his verses hanged up in tobacco-shops, you may say, in defiance of the proverb, "that the weakest does not always go to the wall;" for 'tis well known the lines are strong enough, and in that sense may justly take the wall of any that have been written in our language. He seldom makes a conscience of his rhymes, but will often take the liberty to make "preach" rhyme with "cheat," "vote" with "rogue," and "committee-man" with "hang."
He'll make one word of as many joints as the tin-pudding that a juggler pulls out of his throat and chops in again. What think you ofglud-fum-flam-hasta-minantes?Some of the old Latin poets bragged that their verses were tougher than brass and harder than marble; what would they have done if they had seen these? Verily they would have had more reason to wish themselves an hundred throats than they then had to pronounce them.
There are some that drive a trade in writing in praise of other writers (like rooks, that bet on gamesters' hands), not at all to celebrate the learned author's merits, as they would show but their own wits, of which he is but the subject. The lechery of this vanity has spawned more writers than the civil law. For those whose modesty must not endure to hear their own praises spoken may yet publish of themselves the most notorious vapours imaginable. For if the privilege of love be allowed--Dicere quiz puduit, scribere jussit amor--why should it not be so in self-love too? For if it be wisdom to conceal our imperfections, what is it to discover our virtues? It is not likely that Nature gave men great parts upon such terms as the fairies used to give money, to pinch and leave them if they speak of it. They say--Praise is but the shadow of virtue, and sure that virtue is very foolish that is afraid of its own shadow.
When he writes anagrams he uses to lay the outsides of his verses even (like a bricklayer) by a line of rhyme and acrostic, and fill the middle with rubbish. In this he imitates Ben Jonson, but in nothing else.
There was one that lined a hatcase with a paper of Benlowes' poetry; Prynne bought it by chance and put a new demi-castor into it. The first time he wore it he felt only a singing in his head, which within two days turned to a vertigo. He was let blood in the ear by one of the State physicians, and recovered; but before he went abroad he wrote a poem of rocks and seas, in a style so proper and natural that it was hard to determine which was ruggeder.
There is no feat of activity nor gambol of wit that ever was performed by man, from him that vaults on Pegasus to him that tumbles through the hoop of an anagram, but Benlowes has got the mastery in it, whether it be high-rope wit or low-rope wit. He has all sorts of echoes, rebuses, chronograms, &c., besides carwitchets, clenches, and quibbles. As for altars and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for he has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, that, beside the likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise that is made by those utensils, such as the old poet calledsartago loquendi. When he was a captain he made all the furniture of his horse, from the bit to the crupper, in beaten poetry, every verse being fitted to the proportion of the thing, with a moral allusion of the sense to the thing; as the bridle of moderation, the saddle of content, and the crupper of constancy; so that the same thing was both epigram and emblem, even as a mule is both horse and ass.
Some critics are of opinion that poets ought to apply themselves to the imitation of Nature, and make a conscience of digressing from her; but he is none of these. The ancient magicians could charm down the moon and force rivers back to their springs by the power of poetry only, and the moderns will undertake to turn the inside of the earth outward (like a juggler's pocket) and shake the chaos out of it, make Nature show tricks like an ape, and the stars run on errands; but still it is by dint of poetry. And if poets can do such noble feats, they were unwise to descend to mean and vulgar. For where the rarest and most common things are of a price (as they are all one to poets), it argues disease in judgment not to choose the most curious. Hence some infer that the account they give of things deserves no regard, because they never receive anything as they find it into their compositions, unless it agree both with the measure of their own fancies and the measure of their lines, which can very seldom happen. And therefore, when they give a character of any thing or person, it does commonly bear no more proportion to the subject than the fishes and ships in a map do to the scale. But let such know that poets as well as kings ought rather to consider what is fit for them to give than others to receive; that they are fain to have regard to the exchange of language, and write high or low according as that runs. For in this age, when the smallest poet seldom goes below more the most, it were a shame for a greater and more noble poet not to outthrow that cut a bar.
There was a tobacco-man that wrapped Spanish tobacco in a paper of verses which Benlowes had written against the Pope, which, by a natural antipathy that his wit has to anything that's Catholic, spoiled the tobacco, for it presently turned mundungus. This author will take an English word, and, like the Frenchman that swallowed water and spit it out wine, with a little heaving and straining would turn it immediately into Latin, asplunderat ilie domos, mille hocopokiana, and a thousand such.
There was a young practitioner in poetry that found there was no good to be done without a mistress; for he that writes of love before he hath tried it doth but travel by the map, and he that makes love without a dame does like a gamester that plays for nothing. He thought it convenient, therefore, first to furnish himself with a name for his mistress beforehand, that he might not be to seek when his merit or good fortune should bestow her upon him; for every poet is his mistress's godfather, and gives her a new name, like a nun that takes orders. He was very curious to fit himself with a handsome word of a tunable sound, but could light upon none that some poet or other had not made use of before. He was therefore forced to fall to coining, and was several months before he could light on one that pleased him perfectly. But after he had overcome that difficulty he found a greater remaining, to get a lady to own him. He accosted some of all sorts, and gave them to understand, both in prose and verse, how incomparably happy it was in his power to make his mistress, but could never convert any of them. At length he was fain to make his laundress supply that place as a proxy until his good fortune or somebody of better quality would be more kind to him, which after a while he neither hoped nor cared for; for how mean soever her condition was before, when he had once pretended to her she was sure to be a nymph and a goddess. For what greater honour can a woman be capable of than to be translated into precious stones and stars? No herald in the world can go higher. Besides, he found no man can use that freedom of hyperbole in the character of a person commonly known (as great ladies are) which we can in describing one so obscure and unknown that nobody can disprove him. For he that writes but one sonnet upon any of the public persons shall be sure to have his reader at every third word cry out, "What an ass is this to call Spanish paper and ceruse lilies and roses, or claps influences; to say the Graces are her waiting-women, when they are known to be no better than her bawds; that day breaks from her eyes when she looks asquint; or that her breath perfumes the Arabian winds when she puffs tobacco!"
It is no mean art to improve a language, and find out words that are not only removed from common use, but rich in consonants, the nerves and sinews of speech; to raise a soft and feeble language like ours to the pitch of High-Dutch, as he did that writ--
"Arts rattling foreskins shrilling bagpipes quell."
This is not only the most elegant but most politic way of writing that a poet can use, for I know no defence like it to preserve a poem from the torture of those that lisp and stammer. He that wants teeth may as well venture upon a piece of tough horny brawn as such a line, for he will look like an ass eating thistles.
He never begins a work without an invocation of his Muse; for it is not fit that she should appear in public to show her skill before she is entreated, as gentlewomen do not use to sing until they are applied to and often desired.
I shall not need to say anything of the excellence of poetry, since it has been already performed by many excellent persons, among whom some have lately undertaken to prove that the civil government cannot possibly subsist without it, which, for my part, I believe to be true in a poetical sense, and more probable to be received of it than those strange feats of building walls and making trees dance which antiquity ascribes to verse. And though philosophers are of a contrary opinion and will not allow poets fit to live in a commonwealth, their partiality is plainer than their reasons, for they have no other way to pretend to this prerogative themselves, as they do, but by removing poets whom they know to have a fairer title; and this they do so unjustly that Plato, who first banished poets his republic, forgot that that very commonwealth was poetical. I shall say nothing to them, but only desire the world to consider how happily it is like to be governed by those that are at so perpetual a civil war among themselves, that if we should submit ourselves to their own resolution of this question, and be content to allow them only fit to rule if they could but conclude it so themselves, they would never agree upon it. Meanwhile there is no less certainty and agreement in poetry than the mathematics, for they all submit to the same rules without dispute or controversy. But whosoever shall please to look into the records of antiquity shall find their title so unquestioned that the greatest princes in the whole world have been glad to derive their pedigrees, and their power too, from poets. Alexander the Great had no wiser a way to secure that Empire to himself by right which he had gotten by force than by declaring himself the son of Jupiter; and who was Jupiter but the son of a poet? So Caesar and all Rome was transported with joy when a poet made Jupiter his colleague in the Empire; and when Jupiter governed, what did the poets that governed Jupiter?
Seats himself as spectator and critic on the great theatre of the world, and gives sentence on the plots, language, and action of whatsoever he sees represented, according to his own fancy. He will pretend to know what is done behind the scene, but so seldom is in the right that he discovers nothing more than his own mistakes. When his profession was in credit in the world, and money was to be gotten by it, it divided itself into multitudes of sects, that maintained themselves and their opinions by fierce and hot contests with one another; but since the trade decayed and would not turn to account, they all fell of themselves, and now the world is so unconcerned in their controversies, that three Reformado sects joined in one, like Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, will not serve to maintain one pedant. He makes his hypotheses himself, as a tailor does a doublet without measure; no matter whether they fit Nature, he can make Nature fit them, and, whether they are too straight or wide, pinch or stuff out the body accordingly. He judges of the works of Nature just as the rabble do of State affairs; they see things done, and every man according to his capacity guesses at the reasons of them, but knowing nothing of the arcana or secret movements of either, they seldom or never are in the right. Howsoever, they please themselves and some others with their fancies, and the farther they are off truth, the more confident they are they are near it, as those that are out of their way believe the farther they have gone they are the nearer their journey's end, when they are farthest of all from it. He is confident of immaterial substances, and his reasons are very pertinent; that is, substantial as he thinks, and immaterial as others do. Heretofore his beard was the badge of his profession, and the length of that in all his polemics was ever accounted the length of his weapon; but when the trade fell, that fell too. In Lucius's time they were commonly called beard-wearers, for all the strength of their wits lay in their beards, as Samson's did in his locks; but since the world began to see the vanity of that hare-brained cheat, they left it off to save their credit.
Is one that keeps the worst company in the world; that is, his own; and though he be always falling out and quarrelling with himself, yet he has not power to endure any other conversation. His head is haunted, like a house, with evil spirits and apparitions, that terrify and fright him out of himself, till he stands empty and forsaken. His sleeps and his wakings are so much the same that he knows not how to distinguish them, and many times when he dreams he believes he is broad awake and sees visions. The fumes and vapours that rise from his spleen and hypochondrias have so smutched and sullied his brain (like a room that smokes) that his understanding is blear-eyed and has no right perception of anything. His soul lives in his body, like a mole in the earth that labours in the dark, and casts up doubts and scruples of his own imaginations, to make that rugged and uneasy that was plain and open before. His brain is so cracked that he fancies himself to be glass, and is afraid that everything he comes near should break him in pieces. Whatsoever makes an impression in his imagination works itself in like a screw, and the more he turns and winds it the deeper it sticks, till it is never to be got out again. The temper of his brain, being earthy, cold, and dry, is apt to breed worms, that sink so deep into it no medicine in art or nature is able to reach them. He leads his life as one leads a dog in a slip that will not follow, but is dragged along until he is almost hanged, as he has it often under consideration to treat himself in convenient time and place, if he can but catch himself alone. After a long and mortal feud between his inward and his outward man, they at length agree to meet without seconds and decide the quarrel, in which the one drops and the other slinks out of the way and makes his escape into some foreign world, from whence it is never after heard of. He converses with nothing so much as his own imagination, which, being apt to misrepresent things to him, makes him believe that it is something else than it is, and that he holds intelligence with spirits that reveal whatsoever he fancies to him, as the ancient rude people that first heard their own voices repeated by echoes in the woods concluded it must proceed from some invisible inhabitants of those solitary places, which they after believed to be gods, and called them sylvans, fauns, and dryads. He makes the infirmity of his temper pass for revelations, as Mahomet did by his falling sickness, and inspires himself with the wind of his own hypochondrias. He laments, like Heraclitus, the maudlin philosopher, at other men's mirth, and takes pleasure in nothing but his own unsober sadness. His mind is full of thoughts, but they are all empty, like a nest of boxes. He sleeps little, but dreams much, and soundest when he is waking. He sees visions farther off than a second-sighted man in Scotland, and dreams upon a hard point with admirable judgment. He is just so much worse than a madman as he is below him in degree of frenzy, for among madmen the most mad govern all the rest, and receive a natural obedience from their inferiors.
Is a native of all countries and an alien at home. He flies from the place where he was hatched, like a wild goose, and prefers all others before it. He has no quarrel to it but because he was born in it, and, like a bastard, he is ashamed of his mother, because she is of him. He is a merchant that makes voyages into foreign nations to drive a trade in wisdom and politics, and it is not for his credit to have it thought he has made an ill return, which must be if he should allow of any of the growth of his own country. This makes him quack and blow up himself with admiration of foreign parts and a generous contempt of home, that all men may admire at least the means he has had of improvement and deplore their own defects. His observations are like a sieve, that lets the finer flour pass and retains only the bran of things, for his whole return of wisdom proves to be but affectation, a perishable commodity, which he will never be able to put off. He believes all men's wits are at a stand that stay at home, and only those advanced that travel, as if change of pasture did make great politicians as well as fat calves. He pities the little knowledge of truth which those have that have not seen the world abroad, forgetting that at the same time he tells us how little credit is to be given to his own relations and those of others that speak and write of their travels. He has worn his own language to rags, and patched it up with scraps and ends of foreign. This serves him for wit; for when he meets with any of his foreign acquaintances, all they smatter passes for wit, and they applaud one another accordingly. He believes this raggedness of his discourse a great demonstration of the improvement of his knowledge, as Inns-of-Court men intimate their proficiency in the law by the tatters of their gowns. All the wit he brought home with him is like foreign coin, of a baser alloy than our own, and so will not pass here without great loss. All noble creatures that are famous in any one country degenerate by being transplanted, and those of mean value only improve. If it hold with men, he falls among the number of the latter, and his improvements are little to his credit. All he can say for himself is, his mind was sick of a consumption, and change of air has cured him; for all his other improvements have only been to eat in ... and talk with those he did not understand, to hold intelligence with allGazettes, and from the sight of statesmen in the street unriddle the intrigues of all their Councils, to make a wondrous progress into knowledge by riding with a messenger, and advance in politics by mounting of a mule, run through all sorts of learning in a waggon, and sound all depths of arts in a felucca, ride post into the secrets of all states, and grow acquainted with their close designs in inns and hostelries; for certainly there is great virtue in highways and hedges to make an able man, and a good prospect cannot but let him see far into things.