Chapter I: WAS a scholar: seven useful springs

Did I deflower in quotations
Of cross’d opinions ’bout the soul of man;
The more I learnt, the more I learnt to doubt.
Delight my spaniel slept, whilst I baus’d leaves,
Toss’d o’er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words: and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh,
Shrunk up my veins: and still my spaniel slept.
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of antick Donate: still my spaniel slept.
Still on went I; first, _an sit anima_;
Then, an it were mortal. Oh, hold, hold! at that
They’re at brain buffets, fell by the ears amain
Pell-mell together; still my spaniel slept.
Then, whether ’t were corporeal, local, fixt,
_Ex traduce_, but whether ’t had free will
Or no, hot philosphers
Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt,
I stagger’d, knew not which was firmer part,
But thought, quoted, read, observ’d, and pryed,
Stufft noting-books: and still my spaniel slept.
At length he wak’d, and yawned; and by yon sky,
For aught I know he knew as much as I.
_John Marston._

THE MANLY HEART

SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
Or my cheeks make pale with care
’Cause another’s rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

Shall my foolish heart be pined
’Cause I see a woman kind;
Or a well-disposéd nature
Joinéd with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder, than
Turtle-dove or pelican,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?

Shall a woman’s virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her merit’s value known
Make me quite forget my own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may gain her name of Best,
If she seem not such to me,
What care I how good she be?

’Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do
Who without them dare to woo;
And unless that mind I see,
What care I though great she be?

Great or good, or kind or fair,
I will ne’er the more despair;
If she loves me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go;
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?
_George Wither._

THE CONSTANT LOVER

OUT upon it! I have loved
Three whole days together,
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.

Time shall moult away his wings
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.

But the spite on ’t is, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she,
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.
_Sir John Suckling._

THE REMONSTRANCE

WHY so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
Prithee, why so mute?

Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move,
This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The devil take her!
_Sir John Suckling._

SAINTSHIP VERSUS CONSCIENCE

“WHY didst thou choose that cursed sin,
Hypocrisy, to set up in?”
“Because it is the thriving’st calling,
The only saints’ bell that rings all in;
In which all churches are concern’d,
And is the easiest to be learn’d.”

* * * * *

Quoth he, “I am resolv’d to be
Thy scholar in this mystery;
And therefore first desire to know
Some principles on which you go.
What makes a knave a child of God,
And one of us?” “A livelihood.”
“What renders beating out of brains,
And murder, godliness?” “Great gains.”
“What’s tender conscience?” “’Tis a botch
That will not bear the gentlest touch;
But, breaking out, despatches more
Than th’ epidemical’st plague-sore.”
“What makes y’ encroach upon our trade,
And damn all others?” “To be paid.”
“What’s orthodox and true believing,
Against a conscience?” “A good living.”
“What makes rebelling against kings
A good old cause?” “Administ’rings.”
“What makes all doctrines plain and clear?”
“About two hundred pounds a year.”
“And that which was prov’d true before,
Prov’d false again?” “Two hundred more.”
“What makes the breaking of all oaths
A holy duty?” “Food and clothes.”
“What, laws and freedom, persecution?”
“Being out of power and contribution.”
“What makes a church a den of thieves?”
“A dean and chapter, and white sleeves.”
“And what would serve, if these were gone,
To make it orthodox?” “Our own.”
“What makes morality a crime,
The most notorious of the time;
Morality, which both the saints
And wicked, too, cry out against?”
“’Cause grace and virtue are within
Prohibited degrees of kin;
And therefore no true saint allows
They shall be suffered to espouse.”
_Samuel Butler._

DESCRIPTION OF HOLLAND

A COUNTRY that draws fifty foot of water,
In which men live as in the hold of Nature,
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak;
That always ply the pump, and never think
They can be safe but at the rate they stink;
They live as if they had been run aground,
And, when they die, are cast away and drowned;
That dwell in ships, like swarms of rats, and prey
Upon the goods all nations’ fleets convey;
And when their merchants are blown up and crackt,
Whole towns are cast away in storms, and wreckt;
That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes,
And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes:
A land that rides at anchor, and is moored,
In which they do not live, but go aboard.
_Samuel Butler._

THE RELIGION OF HUDIBRAS

FOR his religion it was fit
To match his learning and his wit:
Twas Presbyterian true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery,
And prove their doctrine orthodox,
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire, and sword, and desolation,
A godly, thorough reformation.
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended;
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distract or monkey sick;
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclin’d to,
By damning those they have no mind to;
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipped God for spite;
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for;
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow;
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin;
Rather than fail, they will defy
That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with minc’d pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend, plum porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.

_Samuel Butler._

SATIRE ON THE SCOTS

A LAND where one may pray with cursed intent,
Oh, may they never suffer banishment!
Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang’d his doom--
Not forc’d him wander, but confin’d him home.
Like Jews they spread and as infection fly,
As if the devil had ubiquity;
Hence ’tis they live as rovers, and defy
This or that place, rags of geography;
They’re citizens o’ th’ world, they’re all in all;
Scotland’s a nation epidemical.
And yet they ramble not to learn the mode
How to be drest, or how to lisp abroad....
No, the Scots errant fight, and fight to eat;
Their ostrich-stomachs make their swords their meat;
Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt,
Who use to string their teeth upon their belt....
Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!
How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts!
They wanted food and raiment; so they took
Religion for their seamstress and their cook.
Unmask them well, their honours and estate,
As well as conscience, are sophisticate.
Shrive but their title and their moneys poize,
A laird and twenty pence pronounc’d with noise,
When constru’d but for a plain yeoman go,
And a good sober twopence, and well so.
Hence, then, you proud impostors! get you gone,
You Picts in gentry and devotion,
You scandal to the stock of verse--a race
Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace!
Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce
The ostracism, and sham’d it out of use.
The Indian that heaven did forswear,
Because he heard some Spaniards were there,
Had he but known what Scots in hell had been,
He would, Erasmus-like, have hung between.
My muse hath done. A voyder for the nonce,
I wrong the devil should I pick their bones;
That dish is his; for when the Scots decease,
Hell, like their nation, feeds on barnacles.
A Scot when from the gallow-tree got loose,
Drops into Styx, and turns a Soland goose.

_John Cleiveland._

SONG

WHY should you swear I am forsworn,
Since thine I vowed to be?
Lady, it is already morn,
And ’twas last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility.

Have I not loved thee much and long,
A tedious twelve hours’ space?
I must all other beauties wrong,
And rob thee of a new embrace,
Could I still dote upon thy face.

Not but all joy in thy brown hair
By others may be found;
But I must search the black and fair,
Like skilful mineralists that sound
For treasure in unploughed-up ground.

Then, if when I have loved my round,
Thou prov’st the pleasant she;
With spoils of meaner beauties crowned,
I laden will return to thee,
Even sated with variety.
_Richard Lovelace._

THE CHARACTER OF HOLLAND

HOLLAND, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead;
Or what by th’ ocean’s slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the mussel-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fished the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth as if ’t had been of ambergreese;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building-swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.
How did they rivet, with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forcéd ground;
Building their watery Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o’er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come
To shew them what’s their _mare liberum_.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest;
And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau;
Or, as they over the new lever ranged,
For pickled herring, pickled heeren changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake,
Therefore necessity, that first make kings,
Something like government among them brings;
For, as with pigmies, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first see the rising sun commands,
But who could first discern the rising lands.
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their Lord and Country’s Father speak.
To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.
Hence some small dike-grave unperceived invades
The power, and grows, as ’twere, a king of spades;
But, for less envy, some joined states endures,
Who look like a commission of the sewers:
For these Half-anders, half wet, and half dry,
Nor bear strict service, nor pure liberty.
’Tis probable religion, after this,
Came next in order, which they could not miss.
How could the Dutch but be converted, when
The apostles were so many fishermen?
Besides, the waters of themselves did rise,
And, as their land, so them did rebaptize.
_Andrew Marvell._

THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM

SOME of their chiefs were princes of the land:
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to shew his judgment, in extremes;
So over-violent, or over-civil,
That every man with him was god or devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert:
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate;
He laughed himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel.
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.
_John Dryden._

ON SHADWELL

ALL human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was called to empire, and had governed long.
In prose and verse was owned, without dispute,
Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute.
This aged prince, now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the state;
And pondering which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with Wit,
Cried: “’Tis resolved; for Nature pleads that he
Should only rule who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone of all my sons is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through, and make a lucid interval,
But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray;
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye,
And seems designed for thoughtless majesty--
Thoughtless as monarch oaks that shade the plain,
And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.
Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,
Thou last great prophet of tautology!
Even I, a dunce of more renown than they,
Was sent before but to prepare thy way.”
_John Dryden._

SATIRE ON EDWARD HOWARD

THEY lie, dear Ned, who say thy brain is barren,
When deep conceits, like maggots, breed in carrion.
Thy stumbling foundered jade can trot as high
As any other Pegasus can fly.
So the dull eel moves nimbler in the mud
Than all the swift-finned racers of the flood.
As skilful divers to the bottom fall
Sooner than those who cannot swim at all,
So in this way of writing, without thinking,
Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking.
_Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset._

ST. ANTHONY’S SERMON TO THE FISHES

SAINT ANTHONY at church
Was left in the lurch,
So he went to the ditches
And preached to the fishes.
They wriggled their tails,
In the sun glanced their scales.

The carps, with their spawn,
Are all thither drawn;
Have opened their jaws,
Eager for each clause.
No sermon beside
Had the carps so edified.

Sharp-snouted pikes,
Who keep fighting like tikes,
Now swam up harmonious
To hear Saint Antonius.
No sermon beside
Had the pikes so edified.

And that very odd fish,
Who loves fast-days, the cod-fish--
The stock-fish, I mean--
At the sermon was seen.
No sermon beside
Had the cods so edified.

Good eels and sturgeon,
Which aldermen gorge on,
Went out of their way
To hear preaching that day.
No sermon beside
Had the eels so edified.

Crabs and turtles also,
Who always move low,
Made haste from the bottom
As if the devil had got ’em.
No sermon beside
The crabs so edified.

Fish great and fish small,
Lords, lackeys, and all,
Each looked at the preacher
Like a reasonable creature.
At God’s word,
They Anthony heard.

The sermon now ended,
Each turned and descended;
The pikes went on stealing,
The eels went on eeling.
Much delighted were they,
But preferred the old way.

The crabs are backsliders,
The stock-fish thick-siders,
The carps are sharp-set--
All the sermon forget.
Much delighted were they,
But preferred the old way.
_Abraham á Sancta-Clara._