Court-hieroglyphics, and all arts afford,
In the mere perspective of an inch-board;
You ask no more than certain politic eyes,
Eyes, that can pierce into the mysteries
Of many colours, read them, and reveal
Mythology, there painted on slit deal.

Or to make boards to speak! there is a task!
Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque.
Pack with your pedling poetry to the stage,
This is the money-got, mechanic age.
To plant the music where no ear can reach,
Attire the persons, as no thought can teach
Sense, what they are; which by a specious, fine
Term of [you] architects, is call'd Design;
But in the practised truth, destruction is
Of any art, beside what he calls his.
Whither, O whither will this tireman grow?
His name is Exnvoжоios, we all know,
The maker of the properties, in sum,
The scene, the engine; but he now is come
To be the music-master; tabler too;
He is, or would be, the main Dominus Do-
All of the work, and so shall still for Ben,

Be Inigo, the whistle, and his men.

He's warm on his feet, now he says; and can
Swim without cork: why, thank the good queen
Anne.5

I am too fat to envy, he too lean

4 He is, or would be, the main Dominus Do

All of the work.] This is no forced description of Inigo's manner. In the Declaration of the Commons, already noticed, in behalf of the parishioners of St. Gregory, they complain that "the said Inigo Jones would not undertake the work (of re-edifying the church) unless he might be, as he termed it, sole monarch, or might have the principality thereof," &c. What follows is still more

offensive.

5 Why, thank the good queen Anne.] appointed Inigo Jones her architect.

Consort to James I., who WHAL.

To be worth envy; henceforth I do mean
To pity him, as smiling at his feat
Of lantern-lerry, with fuliginous heat
Whirling his whimsies, by a subtilty
Suck'd from the veins of shop-philosophy.
What would he do now, giving his mind that way,
In presentation of some puppet-play,
Shou'd but the king his justice-hood employ,
In setting forth of such a solemn toy?
How wou'd he firk, like Adam Overdo,"
Up and about; dive into cellars too,
Disguised, and thence drag forth Enormity,
Discover Vice, commit Absurdity:
Under the moral, shew he had a pate
Moulded or strok'd up to survey a state!
O wise surveyor, wiser architect,
But wisest Inigo; who can reflect

On the new priming of thy old sign-posts,
Reviving with fresh colours the pale ghosts
Of thy dead standards; or with marvel see
Thy twice conceived, thrice paid for imagery;
And not fall down before it, and confess
Almighty Architecture, who no less

A goddess is, than painted cloth, deal board,
Vermillion, lake, or crimson can afford
Expression for; with that unbounded line,
Aim'd at in thy omnipotent design!
What poesy e'er was painted on a wall,

6 How wou'd he firk, like Adam Overdo,

Up and about, &c.] This line is of some importance, inasmuch as it quite destroys the established opinion that Lantern Leatherhead was meant for Inigo Jones. "Old Ben," as Mr. Malone truly observes, "generally spoke out," and he was, here, sufficiently angry to identify him with that character, to which not only his allusion to Bartholomew Fair, but his mention of a puppet play, directly led and we may confidently assure ourselves that he would have done it, had, what he is so often charged with, been ever in his contemplation.

That might compare with thee? what story shall, Of all the worthies, hope t' outlast thy own,

So the materials be of Purbeck stone?

Live long the feasting-room! and ere thou burn
Again, thy architect to ashes turn;

Whom not ten fires, nor a parliament, can
With all remonstrance, make an honest man."

TO A FRIEND.

An Epigram of INIGO JONES.

IR Inigo doth fear it, as I hear,

8

And labours to seem worthy of this fear;
That I should write upon him some sharp

verse,

7 Whom not ten fires, nor a parliament, can

With all remonstrance, make an honest man.] Jones, by some arbitrary proceedings, had subjected himself to the censures of parliament; and this seems to refer to the affair between him and the parishioners of St. Gregory in London. In order to execute his design of repairing St. Paul's cathedral, he demolished part of the church of St. Gregory adjoining to it; upon which the parishioners presented a Remonstrance to the parliament against him: but that affair did not come to an issue, till some time after the writing of this satire. WHAL.

The question is, when it began. The Remonstrance was not even presented to Parliament till three years after Jonson's death, and could scarcely have been in contemplation at the date of this satire, 1635. There are many difficulties in the way of those who make Jonson the author of the whole of this piece.

8 Sir Inigo doth fear it, &c.] This is undoubtedly Jonson's, and this seems to shew that nothing had been hitherto written against Jones. The learned writers of the Biographia Britannica, in their zeal to criminate Jonson, strangely mistake the sense of the ninth line,

"If thou art so desirous to be read,"

"which," they say, "alludes to some attempt of the architect in the poetical way," whereas, it merely means, if you are so desirous to be noticed, hope not for it from me; but, &c.

Able to eat into his bones, and pierce

The marrow. Wretch! I quit thee of thy pain,
Thou'rt too ambitious, and dost fear in vain :
The Lybian lion hunts no butterflies;
He makes the camel and dull ass his prize.
If thou be so desirous to be read,

Seek out some hungry painter, that, for bread,
With rotten chalk or coal, upon the wall,
Will well design thee to be view'd of all,
That sit upon the common draught or strand;
Thy forehead is too narrow for my brand.

B

TO INIGO MARQUIS WOULD-BE.

A Corollary.

UT 'cause thou hear'st the mighty king of Spain
Hath made his Inigo marquis, would'st thou

fain

Our Charles should make thee such? 'twill not be

come

All kings to do the self-same deeds with some :
Besides, his man may merit it, and be

A noble honest soul: what's this to thee?
He may have skill, and judgment to design
Cities and temples, thou a cave for wine,
Or ale; he build a palace, thou the shop,
With sliding windows, and false lights a-top:
He draw a forum with quadrivial streets;

Thou paint a lane where Tom Thumb Jeffrey meets.9
He some Colossus, to bestride the seas,
From the fam'd pillars of old Hercules:
Thy canvas giant at some channel aims,
Or Dowgate torrents falling into Thames;

9 Thou paint a lane, &c.,] i. e. just wide enough to allow of the meeting of Tom Thumb and Jeffrey Hudson.

And stradling shews the boys' brown paper fleet
Yearly set out there, to sail down the street:
Your works thus differing, much less so your style,
Content thee to be Pancridge earl the while,'
An earl of show; for all thy worth is show:
But when thou turn'st a real Inigo,

Or canst of truth the least entrenchment pitch,
We'll have thee styled the Marquis of Towerditch.

1 Content thee to be Pancridge earl the while,] i. e. one of the "Worthies" who annually rode to Mile End, or the Artillery Ground, in the ridiculous procession called Arthur's Shew. There can be no doubt, however, that Inigo Jones really aspired to the elevation mentioned in the first couplet. Sir Francis Kinaston, (the translator of Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, into Latin,) in his Cynthiades, 1642, says:

"Meantime imagine that Newcastle coles,

Which, as sir Inigo saith, have perisht Paules,
And by the skill of Marquis Would-be Jones,

'Tis found the smockes salt did corrupt the stones."

Other notices of this might be produced:-but enough, and more than enough, has been said of this foolish quarrel, little honourable to either party, and which, now that Jonson appears not to have been the aggressor, not to have sought "every occasion of injury," not to have lived in "constant hostility," &c., may be dismissed without much regret to the oblivion from which it was dragged by the misdirected industry of my predecessor.