Let the poor fools enjoy their follies, love
A goat in velvet; or some block could move
Under that cover, an old midwife's hat!
Or a close-stool so cased; or any fat
Bawd, in a velvet scabbard! I envy

None of their pleasures; nor will ask thee why
Thou art jealous of thy wife's or daughter's case;
More than of either's manners, wit, or face!

LXI.

AN EXECRATION UPON VULCAN.

ND why to me this? thou lame Lord of
Fire!1

What had I done that might call on thine
ire?

Or urge thy greedy flames thus to devour
So many my years' labours in an hour?
I ne'er attempted aught against thy life;
Nor made least line of love to thy loose wife;
Or in remembrance of thy affront and scorn,

With clowns and tradesmen, kept thee clos'd in horn.2.

1 And why to me, &c.] This poem has no date affixed to it: it was printed in 4to. and 12mo. 1640, and again in the folio of that year; the present text has been formed from a careful collation of all the copies.

There is a degree of wit and vivacity in these verses which does no little credit to the equanimity of the poet, who speaks of a loss so irreparable to him, not only with forbearance, but with pleasantry and good humour. The lame lord is from Catullus :

Scripta tardipedi deo daturum

Infelicibus ustulanda flammis.

2 With clowns and tradesmen kept thee clos'd in horn.] This is a joke of very ancient standing: Heus tu, qui Vulcanum conclusum in cornu geris! Plaut. Amphytr. WHAL.

'Twas Jupiter that hurl'd thee headlong down,
And Mars that gave thee a lantern for a crown.
Was it because thou wert of old denied,
By Jove, to have Minerva for thy bride;
That since, thou tak'st all envious care and pain
To ruin every issue of the brain?

Had I wrote treason here, or heresy,
Imposture, witchcraft, charms, or blasphemy;
I had deserv'd then thy consuming looks,
Perhaps to have been burned with my books.
But, on thy malice, tell me, Didst thou spy
Any least loose or scurril paper lie

Conceal'd, or kept there, that was fit to be,
By thy own vote, a sacrifice to thee?
Did I there wound the honour of the crown,
Or tax the glory of the church, or gown?
Itch to defame the state, or brand the times,
And myself most, in lewd self-boasting rhymes ?
If none of these, then why this fire? Or find
A cause before, or leave me one behind.

Had I compiled from Amadis de Gaul,
The Esplandians, Arthurs, Palmerins, and all
The learned library of Don Quixote,
And so some goodlier monster had begot;
Or spun out riddles, or weav'd fifty tomes
Of Logographes, or curious Palindromes,
Or pump'd for those hard trifles, Anagrams,
Or Eteostics, or your finer flams

Of eggs, and halberds, cradles, and a herse,
A pair of scissars, and a comb in verse;
Acrostichs, and telestichs on jump names,
Thou then hadst had some colour for thy flames,

3

3 Acrostichs, and telestichs, &c.] All these fooleries in verse were practised ages ago, by writers who atoned for want of genius by the labour of their compositions. This is Whalley's remark, and it was undoubtedly so; but the folly was again become epidemic, in consequence of the publication of Puttenham's Arte of English

On such my serious follies: but, thou'lt say,
There were some pieces of as base allay,
And as false stamp there; parcels of a play,
Fitter to see the fire-light, than the day;
Adulterate monies, such as would not go :-
Thou shouldst have staid, till public Fame said so;
She is the judge, thou executioner :

Or, if thou needs would'st trench upon her power,
Thou might'st have yet enjoy'd thy cruelty
With some more thrift, and more variety :
Thou might'st have had me perish piece by piece,
To light tobacco, or save roasted geese,

Singe capons, or crisp pigs, dropping their eyes;
Condemn'd me to the ovens with the pies;"
And so have kept me dying a whole age,
Not ravish'd all hence in a minute's rage.-
But that's a mark whereof thy rites do boast,
To make consumption ever where thou go'st.
Had I foreknown of this thy least desire
To have held a triumph, or a feast of fire,
Especially in paper; that that steam

Had tickled thy large nostrils; many a ream,
To redeem mine, I had sent in: Enough!

Thou shouldst have cried, and all been proper stuff
The Talmud and the Alcoran had come,

With pieces of the Legend; the whole sum
Of errant knighthood, with the dames and dwarfs ;
The charmed boats, and the inchanted wharfs,

Poetrie, in which "these prettie conceits, eggs, altars, wings, lozenges, rondels, and piramids" are recommended to the poet's imitation. "At the beginning" (he says)" they will seeme nothing pleasant to the English eare; but time and usage will make them acceptable inough.'

The MS. of this piece in the British Museum reads, with more variety,

"Clothe spices, or guard sweet-meats from the flies."

With pieces of the Legend.] The Lives of the Saints: these are well coupled with the Jewish and Mahomedan dreams.

The Tristrams, Lancelots, Turpins, and the Peers,
All the mad Rolands, and sweet Olivers;

To Merlin's marvels, and his Cabal's loss,
With the chimera of the Rosie-cross,

Their seals, their characters, hermetic rings,
Their jem of riches, and bright stone that brings
Invisibility, and strength, and tongues;
The art of kindling the true coal by Lungs;
With Nicolas' Pasquils, Meddle with your match,
And the strong lines that do the times so catch;
Or captain Pamphlet's horse and foot, that sally
Upon the Exchange still, out of Pope's-head alley;
The weekly courants, with Paul's seal; and all
The admired discourses of the prophet
Ball.

These, hadst thou pleas'd either to dine or sup,
Had made a meal for Vulcan to lick up.

8

But, in my desk, what was there to accite
So ravenous and vast an appetite?

I dare not say a body, but some parts

There were of search, and mastery in the arts.

6 The art of kindling the true coal by Lungs;

With Nicolas' Pasquils, Meddle with your match,

And the strong lines that do the times so catch.] Lungs (see vol. iv. p. 45) were the unhappy drudges kept by the alchemists to blow their true (i. e. their beechen) coal; for bellows were not used by

them.

Nicolas is probably Nic. Breton, a voluminous publisher, who has many little pieces under the name of Pasquil: such as Pasquil's Passion, Pasquil's Mad-cap, &c. In the pointing this line, the MS. in the British Museum has been followed. The strong lines, &c., are the political satires which were now dispersed in great numbers, and caught the times but too successfully.

The weekly courants, with Paul's seal, &c.] A sarcastical allusion to the stories fabricated by the idle walkers in St. Paul's, and weekly detailed by Butter and others as authentic intelligence. For the prophet Ball, see vol. v. p. 227.

8

a meal for Vulcan to lick up.] Thus Pope :

"From shelf to shelf see greedy Vulcan roll,
And lick up all the physic of the soul."

All the old Venusine, in poetry,

And lighted by the Stagerite, could spy,

Was there made English; with a grammar too,
To teach some that their nurses could not do,
The purity of Language; and, among
The rest, my journey into Scotland sung,
With all the adventures: three books, not afraid
To speak the fate of the Sicilian maid,
To our own ladies; and in story there
Of our fifth Henry, eight of his nine year;
Wherein was oil, beside the succours spent,
Which noble Carew, Cotton, Selden lent:
And twice twelve years stored up humanity,
With humble gleanings in divinity;
After the fathers, and those wiser guides,
Whom faction had not drawn to study sides.
How in these ruins, Vulcan, dost thou lurk,
All soot and embers! odious as thy work!
I now begin to doubt if ever Grace,

Or goddess, could be patient of thy face.

9 All the old Venusine, &c.] He alludes to his translation of Horace's Art of Poetry, illustrated with notes from Aristotle's Poetics. The translation is preserved; and much of what seemed to have been intended for the notes is likewise to be met with in the Discoveries: the Grammar is also preserved, and printed.

WHAL.

Literature sustained no little loss by the destruction of the Art of Poetry, illustrated, as it appears to have been, by a perpetual commentary from Aristotle. If any part of the Discoveries were appended as notes, to the translation, it could not be very considerable. What we have now, forms, I believe, but a small part of the original matter; consisting of occasional recollections only, set down, as they occurred, and several of them evidently of a late date. The translation itself, perhaps, is not what it was at first; for the two copies of it which have reached us, and which may be only transcripts of transcripts, differ from each other in numberless instances. Whalley is evidently wrong also in what he says of the Grammar. The perfect copy was destroyed; and all that is come down to us are mere fragments; parts, indeed, of the original materials, but dislocated, and imperfect.