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who have been termed by Johnson the metaphysical poets.-See Johnson's Life of Cowley. His satires have been "translated into numbers" by Pope.

FROM SATIRE IV.
Towards me did run1

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.

*

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His clothes were strange though coarse, and black though bare;
Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been

Velvet, but 'twas now-so much ground was seen-
Become tuff-taffety, and our children shall

See it plain rash a while, then nought at all.

The thing hath travelled, and, faith, speaks all tongues;
And only knoweth what to all states belongs.
Made of the accents and best phrase of these,

He speaks one language. If strange meats displease,
Art can deceive, or hunger force my taste;
But pedants' motley tongue, soldiers' bombast,
Mountebanks' drug-tongue,3 nor the terms of law,
Are strong enough preparatives to draw

Me to bear this. Yet I must be content

With his tongue, in his tongue called compliment.

*

*

He names me, and comes to me; I whisper-" God,
How have I sinned that thy wrath's furious rod-
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.

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Nay, but of men, most sweet Sir."-Beza, then

Some Jesuits, and two reverend men

Of our two academies, I named. Here

He stopped me, and said,-" Nay, your apostles were
Pretty good linguists; so Panurgus was;

Yet a poor gentleman all these may pass

By travel." Then, as if he would have sold

His tongue, he praised it, and such wonders told,

That I was fain to say,-" If you had lived, Sir,

Time enough to have been interpreter

To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood."

He adds, "If of court life you knew the good,

This passage is an imitation of Horace, Sat. I. 9.

Taffeta or Taffata, a thin silk; alleged etymology tapes, Lat. rash; Fr. ras; applied to cloth without the pile; scraped; threadbare.-See Raschit and Rasour.-Jamieson, Scot. Dict. 3 So called from their occupation of selling quack medicines.

The Polyglot Dictionary of Ambrosius Calepinus of seven languages.

The reformer Theodore Beza.

The Panurge of Rabelais' " Gargantua and Pantagruel."

You would leave loneness." I said, "Not alone
My loneness is ;1 but Spartan's fashion,

To teach by painting drunkards,2 doth not last
Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste;
No more can princes' courts, tho' there be few
Better pictures of vice, teach me virtue."

He, like a high stretched lute-string, squeak'd—“ Oh, Sir,
'Tis sweet to talk of kings."-" At Westminster,"

Said I, "the man that keeps the abbey-tombs,
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 Street."4

He smack'd and cried,-" He's base, mechanic, coarse,
So 're all your Englishmen in their discourse;

Are not your Frenchmen neat? Mine ?5-as you see,

I have but one, Sir-look, he follows me.

Are they not neatly clothed? I of this mind am.

Your only wearing is your grogaram."6

"Not so, Sir. I have more." Under this pitch

He would not fly.7

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To fit my sullenness,

He to another key his style doth dress;8

And asks-" What news?"-I tell him of new plays.
He takes my hand, and, as a still, which stays
A semibreve 'twixt each drop,' he niggardly,
As loth to enrich me, tells me many a lie,
More than ten Hollinsheds, or Halls, or Stows,1

10

Of trivial household trash he knows. He knows

When the queen frowned or smiled; and he knows what
A subtle statesman may gather of that:

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 of old iron, boots, shoes, and egg

Shells to transport.11 Shortly boys shall not play

At span-counter or blow-point, 12 but shall pay

Alluding to a saying of Africanus noticed often by Cicero, e. g. De Repub. v. 17. The Spartans compelled their slaves to intoxicate themselves, to inspire their youth with horror of the vice of drunkenness.

3 Pietro Aretino, the celebrated lampooner, and the illustrator by sonnets of the profligate drawings of Giulio Romano-See Encyclop. Brit. A street in the vicinity of the abbey. 5 My French valet. "Grogram (Fr. gros, grain), stuff made of silk and mohair."-Reid. Wearing or wear used for dress: " Motley's the only wear."-Shakesp. As you like it. my nightly wearing, good Emilia."-Id. Othello.

An expression borrowed from falconry.

8 For address.

One of the similes characteristic of the metaphysical" poets.

10 Chroniclers of the period.

11 Export.

"Give me

12 Span-counter, a game in which counters were used, as marbles are in Hit-or-span. Blow-point, blowing an arrow through a trunk or tube at certain numbers, by way of lottery. Strut's Sports.

Toll to some courtier.1 And wiser than all us,
He knows what lady is not painted.

Thus

He with home-meats cloys me. I belch, spue, spit,
Look pale and sickly, like a patient, yet

He thrusts on more.

*

He, like a privileged spy whom nothing can
Discredit, libels now 'gainst each great man.
He names a price for every office paid.

He saith-"Our wars thrive ill, because delayed;
That offices are entailed, and that there are
Perpetuities of them, lasting as far

As the last day; and that great officers

Do with the pirates share and Dunkirkers."3

*

4

I, more amazed than Circe's prisoners, when
They felt themselves turn beasts, felt myself then
Becoming traitor; and, methought, I saw
One of our giant statues ope his jaw

To suck me in for hearing him.

*

Of mercy now was come.

But the hour

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,
Tho' they be paid to be gone, yet needs will
Thrust one more jig upon you; so did he
With his long complimented thanks vex me.
But he is gone, thanks to his needy want,
And the prerogative of my crown.

HYMN TO CHRIST.

"At the Author's last going into Germany."

In what torn ship soever I embark,

That ship shall be my emblem of thy ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood

Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood.

Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise

Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,

They never will despise.

A great abuse of the reigns of Elizabeth and James was the granting of licences or monopolies to favourites.

2 Spies formed an important portion of the machinery of Elizabeth's government.-See the narrative of the "Babington Conspiracy," in Hume and Robert on. Dunkirk was a nest of smugglers and privateers.

Sec Odyssey, x. 136.

The Guildhall Gog and Magog.-See Hone on Mysteries and Religious Shows, pp. 262-275. An English edition of—“ Sic me servavit Apollo."-Hor. Unnecessary, after which.

I sacrifice this island unto thee,

And all, whom I love here, and who love me;
When I have put this flood 'twixt them and me,
Put thou thy blood betwixt my sins and thee.
As the tree's sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go,

Where none but thee, th' eternal root
Of true love, I may know.

THE WILL.

Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies; I here bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; t' ambassadors mine ears;
To women, or the sea, my tears.

Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore,
By making me love her who'd twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such as had too much before.

My constancy I to the planets give;

My truth to them who at the court do live;
Mine ingenuity and openness

To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness;
My silence t' any one who abroad have been;
My money to a Capuchin.1

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love receiv'd can be,
Only to give to such as have no good capacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics;
All my good works unto the schismatics
Of Amsterdam; my best civility

And courtship to an university;

My modesty I give to soldiers bare;

My patience let gamesters share.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her, that holds my love disparity,

Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputation to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;

To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;

My sickness to physicians, or excess;

To nature all that I in rhyme have writ;
And to my company my wit.
Thou, Love, by making me adore
Her, who begot this love in me before,

Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but restore.

1 The vow of a Capuchin monk prevents him from possessing money.

M

To him, for whom the passing bell next tolls,
I give my physic books; my written rolls
Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give;
My brazen medals, unto them which live
In want of bread; to them, which pass among
All foreigners, mine English tongue.

Thou, Love, by making me love one,
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying; because Love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth;
And all your graces no more use shall have,
Than a sun-dial in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her, who doth neglect both me and thee,
T'invent and practise this one way t' annihilate all three.

BEN JONSON.
(1574-1637.)

BENJAMIN, or, according to his own abbreviation of signature, Ben Jonson, was born in Westminster. His family is said to have been originally from Annandale. Losing his father before his birth, the benevolence of a friend placed him at Westminster School, where he attracted the notice of the celebrated Camden, at that period second master in that establishment. An exhibition, which the same friend's kindness subsequently procured for him at Cambridge, being inadequate to his support, he was compelled, after a short residence in the university, to return to his friends, and to adopt his stepfather's trade of a bricklayer. Discontented with his position in life, he joined as a volunteer the English army in Flanders. After the service of a single campaign, he returned to London, and determined to devote himself to dramatic authorship. During an imprisonment at this period, in consequence of a duel in which he had killed his antagonist, he became a convert to the Roman Catholic religion, which he professed for a number of years afterwards.

On his relcase he resumed his efforts to procure a subsistence from a connection with the theatres. Slender as were his resources and prospects, at the age of twenty he married; and pursued with indomitable perseverance, under great disadvantages, those studies which ultimately rendered him one of the most learned men of his time. Although his talents procured him notice and distinction, his circumstances continued still straitened. Gifford disproves satisfactorily the frequently alleged generous patronage of Jonson, in his necessity, by Shakespeare, and, equally satisfactorily, the alleged ingratitude and malignity of Jonson. His early efforts, as was the custom of the time, were made in joint works with Marston, Decker, and others. His first acknowledged piece that has descended to us is "Every Man in his Humour." Its success, if not materially improving his finances, prodigiously in

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