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O, run not proud of this. Yet take thy due.

Thou dost out-zany Cokely, Pod; nay Gue: And thine own Coryat too; but, wouldst thou see,

Men love thee not for this; they laugh at thee.

CXXX.

To ALPHONSO FERRABOSCO, ON HIS Book.!

To urge, my loved ALPHONSO, that bold fame

Of building towns, and making wild beasts tame,

Which Music had; or speak her known effects,

That she removeth cares, sadness ejects,
Declineth anger, persuades clemency,
Doth sweeten mirth, and heighten piety,
And is to a body, often, ill inclined,
No less a sovereign cure, than to the
mind;

T'allege, that greatest men were not ashamed,

Of old, even by her practice to be famed; To say indeed, she were the soul of heaven, That the eighth sphere, no less than planets

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1 To Alphonso Ferrabosco, on his book.] This person, descended of Italian parents, was born at Greenwich, in Kent: he was much admired, both at home and abroad, for his excellent compositions, and fancies, as they were then called, in music; he was principally employed in setting the songs to music in our poet's masques.WHAL.

Jonson appears to have had an extraordinary regard and affection for this excellent composer. He delights to mention him upon all Occasions; and in the Masque of Hymen, hurried away by his feelings, he interrupts the strain of applause in which he was describing Alphonso's exertions with a genuine burst of tenderness, "Virtuous friend! take well this abrupt testimony. It cannot be flattery in me, who never did it to great ones; and less than

VOL. III.

But when I have said, the proofs of all these be

Shed in thy songs; 'tis true: but short of thee.

CXXXI.

TO THE SAME.2

When we do give, ALPHONSO, to the light,

A work of ours, we part with our own right;

For then, all mouths will judge, and their own way:

The learned have no more privilege than the lay.

And though we could all men, all censures hear,

We ought not give them taste we had an

ear.

For if the humorous world will talk at large,

They should be fools, for me, at their own charge.

Say this or that man they to thee prefer; Even those for whom they do this, know

they err :

And would (being asked the truth) ashamed say,

They were not to be named on the same day.

Then stand unto thyself, not seek without

For fame, with breath soon kindled, soon blown out.

love and truth it is not, where it is done out of knowledge!"

The learned reader will observe that Jonson had in view Horace's admirable description of the office of the ancient Chorus, in the opening of this epigram.

2 TO THE SAME.] The "Book" from which the composer probably expected a large harvest of praise seems to have met with some ungentle critic, and Jonson writes this sensible and manly epigram to his friend, to qualify the excess of his disappointment and mortification. I know not the person meant, unless it be Morley, who is mentioned as dissatisfied with some of his compositions by Peacham :-but I will give the passage:

Alphonso Ferrabosco, the father, while he lived, for judgment and depth of skill, as also his son now living, was inferior to none. What he did was most elaborate and profound, and pleasing in aire; though Master Thomas Morley censureth him otherwise. That of his, saw my ladie weeping, and the Nightingale, upon which dittie Master Bird and he in a friendly emulation exercised their invention, cannot be bettered for sweetnesse of aire or depth of judgment."-Compleat Gent. 1622.

S

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"And Silvester, who, from the French more weak,

Made Bartas of his six days' labour speak
In natural English: who, had he there stayed,
He had done well; and never had bewrayed
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 ver

sions.

Ritson appears to have strangely misunderstood the passage in Drummond. He says, it was Ben Jonson's opinion, "that Silvester's

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translation of Du Bartas was not well done, and that he wrote his verses before he understood to confer." Bibliographica Poetica, 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 curled lockes, And clothe yourselves in periwigs of fin!" 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 subject, and shall therefore leave the reader, who will not follow my example, and pass lightly over it, to the annotations of Whalley.

We have a Shelton and a Heyden got.] The names of the persons who embarked in this enterprise. The first, I suppose, is Sir Ralph

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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 bombard 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.

Shelton, to whom the 119th epigram is ad-
dressed. 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.] 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.

Than the ox in Livy.] Fam alia vulgata miracula erant, hastam Martis Præneste sua

259

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Thorough her womb they make their faBetween two walls; where, on one side, to

mous road,

scare men,

Wereseen 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 ;3 And many a sink poured out her rage anenst 'em,

But still their valour and their virtue fenced '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 :3

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And in so shitten sort, so long had used him:
For (where he was the god of eloquence,
And subtilty of metals) they dispense
His spirits now in pills, and eke in potions,
Suppositories, cataplasms, and lotions.-
But many moons there shall not wane,
quoth he,

In the meantime let them inprison me,
But I will speak, and know I shall be heard,
Touching this cause, where they will be
affeard

To answer me and sure, it was the intent
Of the grave fart, late let in parliament,1
Had it been seconded, and not in fume
Vanished away as you must all presume
Their Mercury did now. By this, the stem
Of the hulk touched, and, as by Polypheme
The sly Ulysses stole in a sheep's-skin,
The well-greased wherry now had got be-
tween,

And bade her farewell sough unto the lurden:
Never did bottom more betray her burden;
The meat-boat of Bear's-college, Paris-
garden,

Stunk not so ill; nor, when she kissed, Kate Arden.2

Yet one day in the year for sweet 'tis voiced, And that is when it is the Lord Mayor's foist.

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About the shore, of farts but late departed, White, black, blue, green, and in more forms out started,

Than all those atomi ridiculous
Whereof old Democrite and Hill Nicholas,
One said, the other swore, the world con-
sists.

These be the cause of those thick frequent mists

Arising in that place, through which, who goes,

Must try the unused valour of a nose: And that ours did. For, yet, no nare was tainted,

Nor thumb, nor finger to the stop acquainted,

But open, and unarmed, encountered all : Whether it languishing stuck upon the wall,

Or were precipitated down the jakes,
And after, swam abroad in ample flakes,
Or that it lay heaped like an usurer's mass,
All was to them the same, they were to

pass,

And so they did, from Styx to Acheron, The ever-boiling flood; whose banks upon Your Fleet-lane Furies and hot cooks do dwell,

That with still-scalding steams make the place Hell.

The sinks ran grease, and hair of measled hogs,

The heads, houghs, entrails, and the hides of dogs :

For, to say truth, what scullion is so nasty,
To put the skins and offal in a pasty?
Cats there lay divers had been flayed and
roasted,

And after mouldy grown, again were toasted, Then selling not, a dish was ta'en to mince 'em,

But still, it seemed, the rankness did con

vince 'em.

8 Whereof old Democrite, and Hill Nicholas.] "Nicholas Hill was a fellow of St. John's College, in Oxford: he adopted the notions of Democritus about atoms, and was a great patron of the Corpuscular philosophy. The book he published on this subject is entituled Philosophia Epicurea, Democritana, Theophrastica proposita simpliciter, non edocta. Par. 1601.' -A. WOOD.

For, here they were thrown in with th' melted pewter,

Yet drowned they not: they had five lives in future.

But 'mongst these Tiberts,1 who do you think there was?

Old Banks the juggler, our Pythagoras, Grave tutor to the learned horse; both which,

Being, beyond sea, burned for one witch, Their spirits transmigrated to a cat :

And now, above the pool, a face right fat, With great gray eyes, it lifted up, and mewed;

Thrice did it spit; thrice dived: at last it viewed

Our brave heroes with a milder glare,
And in a piteous tune, began. How dare
Your dainty nostrils, in so hot a season,
When every clerk eats artichokes and
peason,

Laxative lettuce, and such windy meat,
Tempt such a passage? When each privy's

seat

Is filled with buttock, and the walls do sweat Urine and plaisters; when the noise doth beat Upon your ears, of discords so unsweet, And outcries of the damned in the Fleet? Cannot the Plague-bill keep you back, nor bells

Of loud Sepulchre's, with their hourly knells,

1 But'mongst these Tiberts.] I. e. cats. The name given to them in the old story book of Reynard the Fox. Banks, who follows in the next line, was a fellow who shewed a horse about that time, famous for his tricks.-WHAL

But you will visit grisly Pluto's hall?
Behold where Cerberus, reared on the wall
Of Holborn -[bridge] (three serjeants'
heads) looks o'er,

And stays but till you come unto the door!
Tempt not his fury, Pluto is away:
And Madam Cæsar, great Proserpina,
Is now from home; you lose your labours
quite,

Were you Jove's sons, or had Alcides' might.
They cry'd out, Puss. He told them he was
Banks,

That had so often showed them merry pranks.

They laughed at his laugh-worthy fate; and past

The triple-head without a sop. At last,
Calling for Rhadamanthus, that dwelt by,
A soap-boiler; and Æacus him nigh,
Who kept an ale-house; with my little
Minos,

An ancient purblind fletcher, with a high

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