And would (being ask'd the truth) ashamed say,
They were not to be nam'd on the same day.
Then stand unto thyself, nor seek without
For fame, with breath soon kindled, soon blown out.

CXXXII.

TO MR. JOSHUa Silvester.1

F to admire were to commend, my praise
Might then both thee, thy work and merit

raise :

But as it is, (the child of ignorance,
And utter stranger to all air of France,)

To Mr. Joshua Silvester.] His translation of the French poem of Du Bartas on the Creation, was esteemed to be well done; but he had little genius or invention of his own. In a censure of the poets, ascribed to Drayton, we have his character given in the following verses :

"And Silvester, who, from the French more weak,
Made Bartas of his six days labour speak

In natural English: who, had he there stay'd,
He had done well; and never had bewray'd

His own invention to have been so poor,

Who still wrote less, in striving to write more."

WHAL.

This epigram was written some years before the folio 1616 appeared, being prefixed to the 4to. edition of Silvester's Du Bartas, which came out in 1605. Jonson declares his ignorance of French, so that his praise must be confined to the poetical merits of the translator, who was pretty generally supposed to have gone beyond his original. When Jonson became acquainted with the French language, and was able to compare the two works, he then discovered, as he told Drummond, that Silvester had not been sufficiently faithful: this censure, however, must be understood with a reference to his own ideas of translation, and we know what they were, from the majority of his professed versions.

Ritson appears to have strangely misunderstood the passage in Drummond. He says, it was Ben Jonson's opinion, " that Silvester's translation of Du Bartas was not well done, and that he wrote his verses before he understood to confer." Bibliographica Poetica,

How can I speak of thy great pains, but err?
Since they can only judge, that can confer.
Behold the reverend shade of Bartas stands
Before my thought, and, in thy right, commands
That to the world I publish for him, this;
Bartas doth wish thy English now were his.
So well in that are his inventions wrought,
As his will now be the translation thought,
Thine the original; and France shall boast,
No more those maiden glories she hath lost.

CXXXIII.

ON THE FAMOUS VOYAGE."

O more let Greece her bolder fables tell
Of Hercules, or Theseus going to hell,
Orpheus, Ulysses; or the Latin muse,
With tales of Troy's just knight, our faiths abuse.

p. 356. But the HE refers to Jonson not to Silvester, whose knowledge of French was never questioned.

The translation is now little known: an unlucky quotation of Dryden,

Nor, with Du Bartas, "bridle up the floods
And "periwig with wool the baldpate woods,"

serves as an apology for consigning it to ridicule and neglect; Silvester wanted taste rather than poetry, and he has many shining passages. Goffe, who had a marvellous love for uncouth and extravagant phraseology, has imitated the line above, with noble emulation, in his Courageous Turke:

"Who set the world on flame? How now, ye heavens,
Grow you so proud as to put on curl❜d lockes,
And clothe yourselves in periwigs of fire!"

2 Of this "Voyage," undertaken, as I have already observed, in a mad frolic, and celebrated in no very sane one, I shall only say that more humour and poetry are wasted on it than it deserves. As a picture of a populous part of London, it is not without some interest, and might admit of a few remarks; but I dislike the sub

We have a Shelton, and a Heyden got,3
Had power to act, what they to feign had not.
All that they boast of Styx, of Acheron,

Cocytus, Phlegethon, ours have proved in one;
The filth, stench, noise: save only what was there
Subtly distinguish'd, was confused here.

Their wherry had no sail too; ours had ne'er one :
And in it, two more horrid knaves than Charon.
Arses were heard to croak instead of frogs;
And for one Cerberus, the whole coast was dogs.
Furies there wanted not; each scold was ten,
And for the cries of ghosts, women and men,
Laden with plague-sores, and their sins, were heard,
Lash'd by their consciences, to die affeard.
Then let the former age with this content her,
She brought the poets forth, but ours th' adventer.

THE VOYAGE ITSELF.

SING the brave adventure of two wights,
And pity 'tis, I cannot call them knights:
One was; and he for brawn and brain right
able

To have been styled of king Arthur's table.
The other was a squire, of fair degree;
But, in the action, greater man than he,
Who gave, to take at his return from hell,
His three for one. Now, lordlings, listen well.

ject, and shall therefore leave the reader, who will not follow my example, and pass lightly over it, to the annotations of Whalley.

3 We have a Shelton and a Heyden got.] The names of the persons who embarked in this enterprize. The first, I suppose, is sir Ralph Shelton, to whom the 119th epigram is addressed. The latter is probably sir Christopher Heyden, to whom Davis, in his Scourge of Folly, p. 191, addresses an epigram. WHAL.

Yet Jonson says, in the opening of the Voyage, that the "latter" was a squire.

It was the day, what time the powerful moon
Makes the poor Bankside creature wet it's shoon,
In its own hall; when these, (in worthy scorn
Of those, that put out monies, on return
From Venice, Paris, or some inland passage
Of six times to and fro, without embassage,
Or him that backward went to Berwick, or which
Did dance the famous morris unto Norwich)
At Bread-street's Mermaid having dined, and merry,
Proposed to go to Holborn in a wherry:

A harder task, than either his to Bristo',
Or his to Antwerp. Therefore, once more, list ho'.

A dock there is, that called is Avernus,
Of some Bridewell, and may, in time concern us
All, that are readers: but, methinks, 'tis odd,
That all this while I have forgot some god,
Or goddess to invoke, to stuff my verse;

And with both bombast style and phrase, rehearse
The many perils of this port, and how
Sans help of Sibyl, or a golden bough,
Or magic sacrifice, they past along!-
Alcides, be thou succouring to my song.

Thou hast seen hell, some say, and know'st all nooks there,

Canst tell me best, how ever Fury looks there,

And art a god, if fame thee not abuses,

Always at hand, to aid the merry muses.

Great club-fist, though thy back and bones be sore
Still, with thy former labours; yet, once more,
Act a brave work, call it thy last adventry:
But hold my torch, while I describe the entry
To this dire passage. Say, thou stop thy nose;
'Tis but light pains: indeed, this dock's no rose.

It was the day, what time the powerful moon,] i. e. a spring tide, when the river frequently overflows its banks. WHAL.

The persons alluded to in the next lines are William Kempe, Taylor the water-poet, and Coryat.

In the first jaws appear'd that ugly monster, Ycleped mud, which, when their oars did once stir, Belch'd forth an air as hot, as at the muster

Of all your night-tubs, when the carts do cluster,
Who shall discharge first his merd-urinous load :
Thorough her womb they make their famous road,
Between two walls; where, on one side, to scare men,
Were seen your ugly centaurs, ye call carmen,
Gorgonian scolds, and Harpies on the other
Hung stench, diseases, and old filth, their mother,
With famine, wants, and sorrows many a dozen,
The least of which was to the plague a cousin.
But they unfrighted pass, though many a privy
Spake to them louder, than the ox in Livy;5
And many a sink pour'd out her rage anenst 'em,
But still their valour and their virtue fenc'd 'em,
And on they went, like Castor brave and Pollux,
Ploughing the main. When, see (the worst of all
lucks)

They met the second prodigy, would fear a

Man, that had never heard of a Chimæra.

One said, 'twas bold Briareus, or the beadle,

Who hath the hundred hands when he doth meddle,
The other thought it Hydra, or the rock
Made of the trull that cut her father's lock :"
But coming near, they found it but a li'ter,

So huge, it seem'd they could by no means quite her.

5 Than the ox in Livy.] Jam alia vulgata miracula erant, hastam Martis Præneste sua sponte promotam: bovem in Siciliâ locutum, Liv. 1. xxiv. cap. 10. Though I believe the poet here refers to the following passage of the same author; Inter cætera prodigia, quæ plurima fuisse traduntur, bovem Cn. Domitii consulis locutum, Roma, cave tibi, refertur. Epit. lib. xxxv. WHAL.

Made of the trull that cut her father's lock.] He means Scylla, who cut off the hair of her father Nisus: but Ovid tells us she was changed into a bird called Ciris. The old poets seem to have confounded two different stories together. WHAL.