LXXVIII.

TO HORNET.

ORNET, thou hast thy wife drest for the stall,

To draw thee custom: but herself gets all.

LXXIX.

TO ELIZABETH, COUNTESS OF RUTLAND.

HAT poets are far rarer births than kings,'
Your noblest father proved; like whom,
before,

Or then, or since, about our Muses' springs,
Came not that soul exhausted so their store.
Hence was it, that the Destinies decreed

(Save that most masculine issue of his brain) No male unto him; who could so exceed

Nature, they thought, in all that he would feign. At which, she happily displeased, made you: On whom, if he were living now, to look, He should those rare, and absolute numbers view, As he would burn, or better far his book.

"That poets are far rarer births than kings,

Your noblest father prov'd.] This lady, wife to Roger earl of Rutland, was daughter to sir Philip Sidney, by his wife Frances, only daughter to sir Francis Walsingham, secretary of state to queen Elizabeth. It is necessary to know such trivial circumstances, as, in these smaller poems, their chief merit often consists in the turns of thought which allude to them. WHAL.

It is somewhat singular that Whalley should entertain this opinion, and yet that this should be almost the only person whom he has noticed. This celebrated lady, who was also the patroness of Donne and Daniel, and to whom Jonson wrote other verses, died before these poems were published. The "masculine issue of her father was the Arcadia.

.LXXX.

OF LIFE AND DEATH.

HE ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds;
Through which our merit leads us to our
meeds.

How wilful blind is he, then, that would stray,
And hath it, in his powers, to make his way!
This world death's region is, the other life's;
And here, it should be one of our first strifes,
So to front death, as men might judge us past it:
For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.

LXXXI.

TO PROWLE, THE PLAGIARY.

ORBEAR to tempt me, Prowle, I will not show
A line unto thee, till the world it know;
Or that I've by two good sufficient men,

To be the wealthy witness of my pen:*

For all thou hear'st, thou swear'st thyself didst do.
Thy wit lives by it, Prowle, and belly too.
Which, if thou leave not soon, though I am loth,
I must a libel make, and cozen both.

LXXXII.

ON CASHIERED CAPTAIN SURLY.

URLY'S old whore in her new silks doth swim:
He cast, yet keeps her well! No; she keeps

him.

8 To be the wealthy witness of my pen.] This is a pure Latinism: testis locuples is the phrase for a full and sufficient evidence. WHAL.

LXXXIII.

TO A FRIEND.

O put out the word, whore, thou dost me woo,
Throughout my book. Troth, put out woman.

too.

M

LXXXIV.

TO LUCY COUNTESS OF Bedford.

ADAM, I told you late, how I repented,

I ask'd a lord a buck, and he denied me; And, ere I could ask you, I was prevented: For your most noble offer had supplied me. Straight went I home; and there, most like a poet, I fancied to myself, what wine, what wit

I would have spent ; how every muse should know it, And Phoebus' self should be at eating it.

O, madam, if your grant did thus transfer me, Make it your gift! See whither that will bear me.

LXXXV.

TO SIR HENRY GOODYERE.

GOODYERE, I'm glad,' and grateful to report,
Myself a witness of thy few days sport;
Where I both learn'd, why wise men hawking
follow,

And why that bird was sacred to Apollo:

9 O, madam, if your grant, &c.] She had probably offered him a warrant for one: the object of the epigram seems to be that it should be sent home to him.

1 Goodyere, I'm glad, &c.] Sir Henry Goodyere, to whom this

She doth instruct men by her gallant flight,
That they to knowledge so should tower upright,
And never stoop, but to strike ignorance;
Which if they miss, yet they should re-advance
To former height, and there in circle tarry,
Till they be sure to make the fool their quarry.
Now, in whose pleasures I have this discerned,
What would his serious actions me have learned?

and the following epigram are addressed, was a gentleman of great probity and virtue, and much respected by the men of genius in our author's age. There was great intimacy between him and Dr. Donne, whose letters to sir Henry Goodyere make up the greatest part of the collection published by the Doctor's son. WHAL.

Sir Henry had a fine seat at Polesworth, in Warwickshire, where Jonson, much to his satisfaction, appears to have passed some time with him.

"To the honour of this sir Henry," Camden says, "a knight memorable for his virtues, an affectionate friend of his made this tetrastich." There is certainly more affection than poetry in it:

"An Ill yeare of a Goodyere us bereft

Who, gone to God, much lack of him here left
Full of good gifts of body and of mind,
Wise, comely, learned, eloquent, and kind."

Remains, 341.

Sir Henry joined the band of wits who amused themselves with the simple vanity of Coryat. He was not much of a poet: and I give the following extract merely because it serves to illustrate a passage relating to the "trunk" in the Masque of Love Restored, vol. vii. p. 202.

"If any think Tom dull and heavy, know

The court and city's mirth cannot be so;

Who thinks him light, ask them who had the task,
To beare him in a tronke unto the maske."

In the page just referred to, there is an omission that I now wish to supply. The old copy reads " which made me once think of a trunk, but that I would not imitate so catholic a coxcomb as Coryat, and make a case: uses." The last words appearing unintelligible, were thrown to the bottom of the page. I now think I see the author's meaning, and that the defect may be thus remedied: "I would not imitate so catholic a coxcomb as Coryat, and make a case (i. e. a pair) of asses."

LXXXVI.

TO THE SAME.

HEN I would know thee, Goodyere, my thought looks

Upon thy well-made choice of friends, and books;

Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends

In making thy friends books, and thy books friends: Now I must give thy life and deed, the voice Attending such a study, such a choice;

Where, though 't be love that to thy praise doth move, It was a knowledge that begat that love.

LXXXVII.

ON CAPTAIN HAZARD, THE CHEATER.2

OUCH'D with the sin of false play in his punk,
Hazard a month forswore his, and grew drunk,
Each night, to drown his cares; but when the

gain

Of what she had wrought came in, and waked his brain, Upon the accompt, hers grew the quicker trade: Since when he's sober again, and all play's made.

LXXXVIII.

ON ENGLISH MONSIEUR.

OULD you believe, when you this Monsieur

see,

That his whole body should speak French, not

he?

2 On captain Hazard, the cheater,] i. e. the gamester. The terms