Ears. It was a brave time that!
Eyes. This will be better:

I spy it coming, peace! All the impostures,
The prodigies, diseases, and distempers,

The knaveries of the time, we shall see all now. Ears. And hear the passages, and several humours

Of men, as they are sway'd by their affections: Some grumbling, and some mutining, some scoffing,

Some pleased, some pining; at all these we laughing.

Nose. I have it here, here, strong, the sweat of it,

And the confusion, which I love-I nose it;
It tickles me.

Eyes. My four eyes itch for it.

Ears. And my ears tingle; would it would come forth:

This room will not receive it.

Nose. That's the fear.

Enter CHRONOMASTIX.

Chro. What, what, my friends, will not this room receive?

Eyes. That which the Time is presently to shew us.

Chro. The Time! Lo, I, the man that hate the

time,

That is, that love it not; and (though in rhyme
I here do speak it) with this whip you see,
Do lash the time, and am myself lash free.
Fame. Who's this?

Ears. 'Tis Chronomastix, the brave satyr.
Nose. The gentleman-like satyr, cares for
nobody,

His forehead tipt with bays, do you not know him? Eyes. Yes, Fame must know him, all the town admires him.

Chro. If you would see Time quake and shake, but name us,

It is for that, we are both beloved and famous. Eyes. We know, sir: but the Time's now come about.

Ears. And promiseth all liberty.

Nose. Nay, license.

Eyes. We shall do what we list.

Ears. Talk what we list.

Nose. And censure whom we list, and how we list.

Chro. Then I will look on Time, and love the

same,

And drop my whip: who's this? my mistress,

Fame!

The lady whom I honour, and adore!

What luck had I not to see her before!

Pardon me, madam, more than most accurst,
That did not spy your ladyship at first;
T'have given the stoop, and to salute the skirts
Of her, to whom all ladies else are flirts.
It is for you, I revel so in rhyme,

Dear mistress, not for hope I have, the Time
Will grow the better by it: to serve Fame
Is all my end, and get myself a name.

Fame. Away, I know thee not, wretched impostor,

Creature of glory, mountebank of wit,

Self-loving braggart, Fame doth sound no trumpet
To such vain empty fools: 'tis Infamy

Thou serv'st, and follow'st, scorn of all the Muses!
Go revel with thine ignorant admirers,
Let worthy names alone.

Chro. O, you, the Curious,

Breathe you to see a passage so injurious, Done with despight, and carried with such tumour 'Gainst me, that am so much the friend of rumour? I would say, Fame? whose muse hath rid in rapture On a soft ambling verse, to every capture, From the strong guard, to the weak child that reads me,

And wonder both of him that loves or dreads me;
Who with the lash of my immortal pen

Have scourg'd all sorts of vices, and of men.
Am I rewarded thus? have I, I say,

From Envy's self torn praise and bays away,
With which my glorious front, and word at large,
Triumphs in print at my admirers' charge?

Ears. Rare! how he talks in verse, just as he writes ! 3

3 Rare! how he talks in verse, just as he writes.] From the particular description given us of Chronomastix, it appears that the character was personal; and there is reason for thinking that the author intended was John Marston: who, besides his dramatic writings, was the author of three books of satires, called The Scourge of Villainy. WHAL.

Whalley writes very carelessly. Had he ever looked into Marston, he could not have formed so strange a conjecture. The Scourge of Villainy was written nearly thirty years before this Masque appeared, to which, in fact, it has not the slightest reference. Chronomastix is undoubtedly a generic name for the herd of libellists, which infested those times; but the lines noticed by Whalley bear a particular reference to George Wither the puritan, the author of Abuses stript and whipt, and other satirical poems on the Times: the style and manner of which Jonson has imitated with equal spirit and humour. The allusion to his

66

picture in the front

With bays and wicked rhyme upon't,"

and which was in great request with " the godly," was probably not a little grateful to the courtiers.

In some editions of Abuses stript and whipt, there is a print of a Satyr with a scourge, such as Chronomastix enters with; but Wither had displayed his "glorious front and word at large" (nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo) in the title-page of another poem

Chro. When have I walk'd the streets, but happy he

That had the finger first to point at me,
Prentice, or journeyman! The shop doth know it,
The unletter'd clerk, major and minor poet!
The sempster hath sat still as I pass'd by,
And dropt her needle ! fish-wives stay'd their cry!
The boy with buttons, and the basket-wench,
To vent their wares into my works do trench!
A pudding-wife that would despise the times,
Hath utter'd frequent penn'orths, through my
rhymes,

And, with them, dived into the chambermaid,
And she unto her lady hath convey'd

The season'd morsels, who hath sent me pensions,
To cherish, and to heighten my inventions.
Well, Fame shall know it yet, I have my faction,
And friends about me, though it please detraction,
To do me this affront. Come forth that love me,
And now, or never, spight of Fame, approve me.

not long before the appearance of this Masque, in which he refers, with sufficient confidence, to his former works:

"Had I been now dispos'd to satyrize,

Would I have tamed my numbers in this wise?
No. I have Furies that lye ty'd in chaines,
Bold, English-mastive-like, adventrous straines,
Who fearlesse dare on any monster flye

That weares a body of mortality:

And I had let them loose, if I had list,

To play againe, the sharp-fang'd Satyrist.”

This man, whom nature meant for better things, and who did not always write doggrel verses, once thought more modestly of himself; but popularity gave him assurance. In the introduction to his Abuses Whipt, he tells his readers "not to looke for Spencer's or Daniel's well-composed numbers, or the deep conceits of the now flourishing Jonson; but to say-'tis honest plain matter, and there's as much as he expects."

Enter the Mutes for the ANTIMASQUE.

Fame. How now! what's here! Is hell broke loose?

Eyes. You'll see

That he has favourers, Fame, and great ones too; That unctuous Bounty, is the boss of Billinsgate.* Ears. Who feasts his muse with claret, wine and oysters.

Nose. Grows big with satyr.

Ears. Goes as long as an elephant.

Eyes. She labours, and lies in of his inventions. Nose. Has a male poem in her belly now,

Big as a colt

Ears. That kicks at Time already.

Eyes. And is no sooner foal'd, but will neigh sulphur.

Fame. The next.

peace,

Ears. A quondam justice, that of late Hath been discarded out o' the pack of the For some lewd levity he holds in capite; But constantly loves him. In days of yore, He us❜d to give the charge out of his poems; He carries him about him in his pocket, As Philip's son did Homer, in a casket, And cries, O happy man! to the wrong party, Meaning the poet, where he meant the subject. Fame. What are this pair?

Eyes. The ragged rascals?

Fame. Yes.

Eyes. Mere rogues :-you'd think them rogues, but they are friends;

4 That unctuous Bounty is the boss of Billinsgate.] Boss is an head or reservoir of water. It frequently occurs in Stow, who also mentions that of the text. "The Bosses of water at Belinsgate, by Powles Wharfe, and by St. Giles without Cripplegate, were made about the year 1423." Survey of London. This word has escaped Mr. Todd.