LXXII. EPISTLE TO MASTER ARTHUR SQUIB. AM to dine, friend, where I must be weigh'd A merchant's wife is regent of the scale. It do not come: one piece I have in store, Lend me, dear Arthur, for a week, five more, And you shall make me good in weight and fashion, And then to be return'd; or protestation "An ill commodity, &c.] The lady alludes, I presume, to the decisive depression of the scale, exacted in the weighing of coarse merchandize. But, rather with advantage to be found Full twenty stone; of which I lack two pound : That's six in silver.] The wager, it seems, was that the poet weighed full twenty stone, but he found that he wanted two pounds of that weight. This he artfully turns to a reason for borrowing five pounds in money of his friend Mr. Squib, which added to the pound he had of his own, would make up the deficiency in his weight. Six pounds in silver, he says, will weigh two pounds in weight: it may be so; we will take his word. WHAL. I doubt whether we understand the nature of this wager, which was probably a mere jest. If the sense be as Whalley states it, there is as little of art as of honesty in it. To go out after : -till when take this letter For your security. I can no better. LXXIII. TO MASTER JOHN BURGES. ZOULD God, my Burges, I could think Yet with a dye that fears no moth, But scarlet-like, out-lasts the cloth. 9 To master John Burges.] Burges was probably the deputy paymaster of the household. He had made Jonson a present of some ink, and this little production, which wants neither spirit nor a proper self-confidence, inclosed, perhaps, the return for it. Master Burges might have sent the wine at the same time. Jonson, who lived much about the court while his health permitted him to come abroad, seems to have made friends of most of those who held official situations there, and to have been supplied with stationery, and, perhaps, many other petty articles. The following is transcribed from the blank leaf of a volume of miscellaneous poetry, formerly in the possession of Dr. John Hoadley, son of the bishop of Winchester. He has written over it, “A Relique of Ben Jonson.” "To my worthy and deserving Brother as the Token of my Love, And the perpetuating of our Friendship, LXXV. EPISTLE TO MY LADY COVELL. OU won not verses, madam, you won me, You won them too, your odds did merit it. Laden with belly, and doth hardly approach 1 And that's made up, &c.] Is this too a hint ?—If so, it must have sorely puzzled the lady, unless she had previously seen the Epistle to master Squib. I gain in having leave to keep my day, LXXV. TO MASTER JOHN BURGES. ATHER John Burges, To Sir Robert Pie :2 And that he will venture Knew the time, when Of gambol or sport 2 My woeful cry To sir Robert Pie.] Sir Robert Pie was appointed to the Exchequer about 1618, upon the resignation of sir John Bingley, who was implicated in a charge of peculation with the lord treasurer, the earl of Suffolk. Sir Robert was a retainer of Buckingham's, to whose interest he owed his promotion. He was the ancestor of the late laureat, under whose hands the family estate vanished. Mr. Pye had probably raised his woeful cry to the treasurer of the day as loudly as Jonson, for he was equally clamorous and necessitous. Such are the mutations of time! Will come to the table, The parish will know it. Nor any quick warming-pan help him to bed; LXXVI. EPIGRAM TO MY BOOкseller. HOU, friend, wilt hear all censures; unto thee All mouths are open, and all stomachs free: If they go on, and that thou lov'st a-life 3 A word has been dropt in the folio, and I cannot re-instate it. |