Chapter XIX: Epilogue: To the (3)

Then thus, most musical and prickle-singing[805] madam
(for, if I err not, your ladyship was the first that
brought up prick-song,[806] being nothing else but the
fatal notes of your pitiful ravishment), I, not
contented long, a vice cleaving to all worldlings, with
this little estate of an ant, but stuffed with envy and
ambition, as small as I was, desired to venture into the
world again, which I may rather term the upper hell or
_frigida gehenna_, the cold-charitable hell, wherein are
all kind of devils too; as your gentle devil, your
ordinary devil, and your gallant devil; and all these
can change their shapes too, as to-day in cowardly
white, to-morrow in politic black, a third day in
jealous yellow; for believe it, sweet lady, there are
devils of all colours. Nevertheless, I, covetous of more
change, leapt out of this little skin of an ant, and
hung my skin on the hedge, taking upon me the grisly
shape of a dusty soldier. Well made I was, and my
limbs valiantly hewn out for the purpose: I had a
mazzard,[807] I remember, so well lined in the inside
with my brain, it stood me in better stead than a double
headpiece; for the brain of a soldier, differing from
all other sciences, converts itself to no other[808] use
but to line, fur, and even quilt the coxcomb, and so
makes a pate of proof: my face was well leavened, which
made my looks taste sour, the true relish of a man of
war; my cheeks dough-baked, pale, wan, and therefore
argued valour and resolution; but my nose somewhat
hard-baked, and a little burnt in the oven, a property
not amiss in a soldier’s visage, who should scorn to
blush but in his nose; my chin was well thatched with a
beard, which was a necessary shelter in winter, and a
fly-flap in summer, so brushy and spreading, that my
lips could scarce be seen to walk abroad, but played at
all-hid, and durst not peep forth for starting a hair.
To conclude, my arms, thighs, and legs, were so sound,
stout, and weighty, as if they had come all out of the
timber-yard, that my very presence only was able to
still the bawlingest infant in Europe. And I think,
madam, this was no unlikely shape for a soldier to prove
well; here was mettle enough for four shillings a-week
to do valiant service till it was bored as full of holes
as a skimmer. Well, to the wars I betook me, ranked
myself amongst desperate hot shots,—only my carriage put
on more civility, for I seemed more like a spy than a
follower, an observer rather than a committer of
villany. And little thought I, madam, that the camp
had been supplied with harlots too as well as the
Curtain,[809] and the guarded tents as wicked as garden
tenements;[810] trulls passing to and fro in the washed
shape of laundresses, as your bawds about London in the
manner of starchwomen, which is the most unsuspected
habit that can be to train out a mistress. And if your
ladyship will not think me much out of the way though I
take a running leap from the camp to the Strand again, I
will discover a pretty knavery of the same breeding
between such a starchwoman and a kind wanton mistress;
as there are few of those balassed vessels now-a-days
but will have a love and a husband.

The woman crying her ware by the door (a most pitiful
cry, and a[811] lamentable hearing that such a stiff
thing as starch should want customers), passing
cunningly and slily by the stall,[812] not once taking
notice of the party you wot on, but being by this some
three or four shops off, Mass, quoth my young mistress
to the weathercock her husband, such a thing I want, you
know: then she named how many puffs and purls[813] lay
in a miserable case for want of stiffening. The honest
plain-dealing jewel her husband sent out a boy to call
her (not bawd by her right name, but starchwoman): into
the shop she came, making a low counterfeit curtsey, of
whom the mistress demanded if the starch were pure
gear,[814] and would be stiff in her ruff, saying she
had often been deceived before, when the things about
her have stood as limber as eelskins. The woman replied
as subtilely, Mistress, quoth she, take this paper of
starch of my hand; and if it prove not to your mind,
never bestow penny with me,—which paper, indeed, was a
letter sent to her from the gentleman her exceeding
favourite. Say you so? quoth the young dame, and I’ll
try it, i’faith. With that she ran up stairs like a
spinner upon small cobweb ropes, not to try or arraign
the starch, but to conster[815] and parse the letter
(whilst her husband sat below by the counter, like one
of these brow-bitten catchpolls that wait for one man
all day, when his wife can put five in the counter
before him), wherein she found many words that pleased
her. Withal the gentleman writ unto her for a certain
sum of money, which no sooner was read, but was ready to
be sent: wherefore, laying up the starch and that, and
taking another sheet of clean paper in her hand, wanting
time and opportunity to write at large, with a penful of
ink, in the very middle of the sheet, writ these few
quaint monosyllables, _Coin, Cares, and Cures, and all
C’s else are yours_. Then rolling up the white money
like the starch in that paper very subtilely and
artificially, came tripping down stairs with these
colourable words, Here’s goodly starch indeed! fie,
fie!—trust me, husband, as yellow as the jaundice; I
would not have betrayed my puffs with it for a million:—
here, here, here (giving her the paper of money). With
that the subtle starchwoman, seeming sorry that it
pleased her not, told her, within few days she would fit
her turn with that which should like[816] her; meaning
indeed more such sweet news from her lover. These and
such like, madam, are the cunning conveyances[817] of
secret, privy, and therefore unnoted harlots, that so
avoid the common finger of the world, when less
committers than they are publicly pointed at.

So likewise in the camp, whither now I return, borne on
the swift wings of apprehension, the habit of a
laundress shadows the abomination of a strumpet; and our
soldiers are like glovers, for the one cannot work well,
nor the other fight well, without their wenches. This
was the first mark of villany that I found sticking upon
the brow of war; but after the hot and fiery copulation
of a skirmish or two, the ordnance playing like so many
Tamburlaines,[818] the muskets and calivers answering
like drawers, Anon, anon, sir,[819] I cannot be here and
there too,—that is, in the soldier’s hand and in the
enemy’s belly, I grew more acquainted, and, as it were,
entered into the entrails of black-livered policy.
Methought, indeed, at first, those great pieces
of ordnance should speak English, though now by
transportation turned rebels: and what a miserable and
pitiful plight it was, lady, to have so many thousands
of our men slain by their own countrymen the cannons,—I
mean not the harmless canons of Paul’s, but those
cannons that have a great singing in their heads! Well,
in this onset I remember I was well smoke-dried, but
neither arm nor leg perished, not so much as the loss of
a petty finger; for when I counted them all over, I
missed not one of them; and yet sometimes the bullets
came within a hair of my coxcomb, even like a barber
scratching my pate, and perhaps took away the left limb
of a vermin, and so departed; another time shouldering
me like a bailiff against Michaelmas-term, and then
shaking me by the sleeve as familiarly as if we had
been acquainted seven years together. To conclude,
they used me very courteously and gentlemanlike
awhile; like an old cunning bowler to fetch in a young
ketling[820] gamester, who will suffer him to win one
sixpenny-game at the first, and then lurch him in six
pounds afterward: and so they played with me, still
training me, with their fair promises, into far deeper
and deadlier battles, where, like villanous cheating
bowlers, they lurched me of two of my best limbs, viz.
my right arm and right leg, that so, of a man of war, I
became in shew a monster of war; yet comforted in this,
because I knew war begot many such monsters as myself in
less than a twelvemonth. Now I could discharge no more,
having paid the shot dear enough, I think, but rather
desired to be discharged, to have pay and begone:
whereupon I appeared to my captain and other commanders,
kissing my left hand, which then stood for both (like
one actor that plays two parts), who seemed to pity my
unjointed fortunes and plaster my wounds up with words,
told me I had done valiant service in their knowledge;
marry, as for pay, they must go on the score with me,
for all their money was thumped out in powder: and this
was no pleasing salve for a green sore, madam; ’twas too
much for me, lady, to trust calivers with my limbs, and
then cavaliers with my money. Nevertheless, for all
my lamentable action of one arm, like old Titus
Andronicus,[821] I could purchase no more than one
month’s pay for a ten months’ pain and peril, nor that
neither, but to convey away my miserable clamours, that
lay roaring against the arches of their ears, marry,
their bountiful favours were extended thus far,—I had a
passport to beg in all countries.

Well, away I was packed; and after a few miseries by
the way, at last I set one foot into England again
(for I had no more then to set), being my native
though unnatural country, for whose dear good I pawned
my limbs to bullets, those merciless brokers, that
will take the vantage of a minute; and so they were
quite forfeited, lost, and unrecoverable. When I was
on shore, the people gathered,—which word _gathering_
put me in hope of good comfort, that afterward I
failed of; for I thought at first they had gathered
something for me, but I found at last they did only
but gather about me; some wondering at me, as if I had
been some sea-monster cast ashore, some jesting at my
deformity, whilst others laughed at the jests: one
amongst them, I remember, likened me to a sea-crab,
because I went all of one side; another fellow vied
it,[822] and said I looked like a rabbit cut up and
half-eaten, because my wing and leg, as they termed
it, were departed. Some began to pity me, but those
were few in number, or at least their pity was as
pennyless as Pierce,[823] who writ to the devil for
maintenance. Thus passing from place to place, like
the motion[824] of Julius Cæsar or the City Nineveh,
though not altogether in so good clothes, I overtook
the city from whence I borrowed my first breath, and
in whose defence I spent and laid out my limbs by
whole sums to purchase her peace and happiness,
nothing doubting but to be well entreated[825] there,
my grievous maims tenderly regarded, my poor broken
estate carefully repaired, the ruins of my blood built
up again with redress and comfort: but woe the while,
madam! I was not only unpitied, succourless, and
rejected, but threatened with the public stocks,
loathsome jails, and common whipping-posts, there to
receive my pay—a goodly reward for my[826] bleeding
service—if I were once found in the city again.

Wherefore I was forced to retire towards the Spital and
Shoreditch, which, as it appeared, was the only
Cole-harbor[827] and sanctuary for wenches and soldiers;
where I took up a poor lodging a’ trust till the Sunday,
hoping that then master Alms and mistress Charity would
walk abroad and take the air in Finsbury. At which time
I came hopping out from my lodging, like old lame Giles
of Cripplegate; but when I came there, the wind blew so
bleak and cold, that I began to be quite out of hope of
charity; yet, like a torn map of misery, I waited my
single halfpenny fortunes; when, of a sudden, turning
myself about, and looking down the Windmill-hill, I
might espy afar off a fine-fashioned dame of the city,
with her man bound by indenture before her; whom no
sooner I caught in mine eyelids, but I made to with all
possible speed, and with a premeditated speech for the
nonce,[828] thus, most soldier-like, I accosted her:
Sweet lady, I beseech your beauty to weigh the estate of
a poor unjointed soldier, that hath consumed the moiety,
or the one-half of his limbs, in the dismembering and
devouring wars, that have[829] cheated me of my flesh so
notoriously, I protest I am not worth at this instant
the small revenue of three farthings, beside my lodging
unpleased[830] and my diet unsatisfied; and had I ten
thousand limbs, I would venture them all in your sweet
quarrel, rather than such a beauty as yourself should
want the least limb of your desire. With that, as one
being rather moved by my last words of promise than my
first words of pity, she drew her white bountiful hand
out of her marry-muff,[831] and quoited a single
halfpenny; whereby I knew her then to be cold mistress
Charity, both by her chill appearance and the hard,
frozen pension she gave me. She was warm[832] lapt, I
remember, from the sharp injury of the biting air; her
visage was benighted with a taffeta-mask, to fray away
the naughty wind from her face, and yet her very nose
seemed so sharp with cold, that it almost bored a hole
quite through: this was frost-bitten Charity; her teeth
chattered in her head, and leaped up and down like
virginal-jacks[833] which betrayed likewise who she was:
and you would have broke into infinite laughter, madam
(though misery made me leaden and pensive), had you been
present, to have seen how quickly the muff swallowed her
hand again; for no sooner was it drawn forth to drop
down her pitiful alms, but, for fear the sun and air
should have ravished it, it was extempore whipt up
again. This is the true picture of Charity, madam, which
is as cold as ice in the middle of July.

Well, still I waited for another fare; but then I
bethought myself again, that all the fares went by water
a’ Sundays to the bear-baiting,[834] and a’ Mondays to
Westminster-hall; and therefore little to be looked for
in Moorfields all the week long: wherefore I sat down by
the rails there, and fell into these passionate,[835]
but not railing speeches: Is this the farthest reward
for a soldier? are[836] valour and resolution, the two
champions of the soul, so slightly esteemed and so
basely undervalued? doth reeling Fortune not only rob us
of our limbs, but of our living? are soldiers, then,
both food for cannon and for misery? But then, in the
midst of my passion, calling to memory the peevish
turns[837] of many famous popular gallants, whose names
were writ even upon the heart of the world—it could not
so much as think without them, nor speak but in the
discourse of them—I began to outdare the very worst of
cruel and disaster chances, and determined to be
constant in calamity, and valiant against the battering
siege of misery. But note the cross star that always
dogged my fortunes: I had not long rested there, but I
saw the tweering[838] constable of Finsbury, with his
bench of brown-bill-men,[839] making towards me, meaning
indeed to stop some prison-hole with me, as your
soldiers, when the wars have done with them, are good
for nothing else but to stop holes withal; at which
sight, I scrambled up of[840] all two, took my skin off
the hedge, cozened the constable, and slipt[841] into an
ant again.

NIGHTINGALE.

O, ’twas a pretty, quaint deceit,
(The Nightingale began to sing,)
To slip from those that lie in wait,
Whose touch is like a raven’s wing,
Fatal and ominous, which, being spread
Over a mortal, aims him dead.

Alas, poor emmet! thou wast tost
In thousand miseries by this shape;
Thy colour wasted, thy blood lost,
Thy limbs broke with the violent rape
Of hot impatient cannons, which desire
To ravish lives, spending their lust in fire.

O what a ruthful sight it is to see,
Though in a soldier of the mean’st degree,
That right member perish’d
Which the[842] body cherish’d!
That limb dissever’d, burnt, and gone,
Which the best part was borne upon:
And then, the greatest ruth of all,
Returning home in torn estate,
Where he should rise, there most to fall,
Trod down with envy, bruis’d with hate:
Yet, wretch, let this thy comfort be,
That greater worms[843] have far’d like thee.

So here thou left’st, bloodless and wan,
Thy journeys thorough man and man;
These two cross’d shapes, so much opprest,
Did fray thy weakness from the rest.

ANT.

No, madam, once again my spleen did thirst
To try the third, which makes men blest or curst;
That number three many stars wait upon,
Ushering clear hap or black confusion:
Once more I ventur’d all my hopes to crown,—
But, aye me! leapt into a scholar’s gown.

NIGHTINGALE.

A needy scholar! worse than worst,
Less fate in that than both the first:
I thought thou’dst leapt into a law-gown, then
There had been hope t’ have swept up all agen;[844]
But a lank scholar! study how you can,
No academe makes a rich alderman.
Well, with this comfort yet thou may’st discourse,
When fates are worst, then they can be no worse.

_The Ant’s Tale when he was a scholar._

You speak oracle, madam; and now suppose, sweet
lady, you see me set forth, like a poor scholar, to
the university, not on horseback, but in Hobson’s
waggon,[845] and all my pack contained in less than a
little hood-box, my books not above four in number, and
those four were very needful ones too, or else they had
never been bought; and yet I was the valiant captain of
a grammar-school before I went, endured the assault and
battery of many unclean lashes, and all the battles I
was in stood upon points[846] much, which, once let
down, the enemy the schoolmaster would come rearward,
and do such an exploit ’tis a shame to be talked of. By
this time, madam, imagine me slightly entertained to be
a poor scholar and servitor to some Londoner’s son, a
pure cockney, that must hear twice a-week from his
mother, or else he will be sick ere the Sunday of a
university-mulligrub. Such a one, I remember, was my
first puling master, by whose peevish service I crept
into an old battler’s[847] gown, and so began to be a
jolly fellow. There was the first point of wit I shewed
in learning to keep myself warm; to the confirming of
which, you shall never take your true philosophers
without two nightcaps at once and better, a gown of rug
with the like appurtenances; and who be your wise men, I
pray, but they? Now, as for study and books, I had the
use of my young master’s; for he was all day a courtier
in the tennis-court, tossing of balls instead of books,
and only holding disputation with the court-keeper how
many dozen he was in; and when any friend of his would
remember him to his book with this old moth-eaten
sentence, _nulla dies sine linea_, True, he would say, I
observe it well, for I am no day from the line of the
racket-court. Well, in the meantime, I kept his study
warm, and sucked the honey of wit from the flowers of
Aristotle—steeped my brain in the smart juice of logic,
that subtle virtue,—and yet, for all my weighty and
substantial arguments, being able indeed to prove any
thing by logic, I could prove myself never the richer,
make the best syllogism I could: no, although I daily
rose before the sun, talked and conversed with midnight,
killing many a poor farthing candle, that sometimes was
ungently put to death when it might have lived longer,
but most times living out the full course and hour, and
the snuff dying naturally in his bed. Nevertheless, I
had entered as yet but the suburbs of a scholar, and sat
but upon the skirts of learning: full often I have
sighed when others have snorted; and when baser trades
have securely rested in their linens, I have forced mine
eyes open, and even gagged them with capital letters,
stretching them upon the tenters of a broad text-line
when night and sleep have hung pound weights of lead
upon my eyelids.

How many such black and ghastly seasons have I passed
over, accompanied only with a demure watching-candle,
that blinked upon Aristotle’s works, and gave even
sufficient glimmering to read by, but none to spare!
Hitherto my hopes grew comfortable upon the spreading
branches of art and learning, rather promising future
advancement than empty days and penurious scarcity. But
shall I tell you, lady? O, here let me sigh out a full
point, and take my leave of all plenteous hours and
wealthy hopes! for in the spring of all my perfections,
in the very pride and glory of all my labours, I was
unfruitfully led to the lickerish study of poetry, that
sweet honey-poison, that swells a supple scholar with
unprofitable sweetness and delicious false conceits,
until he burst into extremities and become a poetical
almsman, or at the most, one of the Poor Knights of
Poetry, worse by odds than one of the Poor Knights of
Windsor. Marry, there was an age once, but, alas, long
since dead and rotten, whose dust lies now in lawyers’
sand-boxes! in those golden days, a virtuous writer
might have lived, maintained himself better upon poems
than many upon ploughs, and might have expended more by
the year by the revenue of his verse than any riotous
elder brother upon the wealthy quartridges of three
times three hundred acres, according to the excellent
report of these lines:

There was a golden age—who murder’d it?
How died that age, or what became of it?
Then poets, by divinest alchemy,
Did turn their ink to gold; kings in that time
Hung jewels at the ear of every rhyme.

But O, those days are wasted! and behold
The golden age that was is coin’d to gold:
And why Time now is call’d an iron man,
Or this an iron-age, ’tis thus exprest,—
The golden age lies in an iron chest:

Or,

Gold lies now as prisoner in an usurer’s great
iron-barred chest, where the prison-grates are the locks
and the key-holes, but so closely mewed, or rather
dammed up, that it never looks to walk abroad again,
unless there chance to come a speedy rot among usurers,—
for I fear me the piddling gout will never make them
away soon enough; for your rank money-masters live their
threescore and ten years as orderly as many honester
men: and it is great pity, lady Philomel, that the gout
should be such a long courtier in a usurer’s great toe,
revelling and domineering above thirty years together in
his rammish blood and his fusty flesh; and I wonder
much, madam, that gold, being the spirit of the Indies,
can couch so basely under wood and iron, two dull
slaves, and not muster up his legion of angels,[848]
burst through the wide bulk of a coffer, and so
march into bountiful and liberal bosoms, shake hands
with virtuous gentlemen, industrious spirits, and
true-deserving worthies, detesting the covetous clutches
and loathsome fangs of a goat-bearded usurer, a
sable-soul[ed] broker, and an infectious law-fogger.

O, but I chide in vain! for gold wants eyes,
And, like a whore, cares not with whom it lies.

Yet that which makes me most admire his baseness are
these verses following, wherein he proudly sets forth
his own glory, which he vaunts so much of, that I shame
to think any ignoble spirit or copper disposition should
fetter his smooth golden limbs in boisterous and sullen
iron, but rather be let free to every virtuous, and
therefore poor scholar (for poverty is niece to virtue);
so should each elegant poem be truly valued, and divine
Poesy sit crowned in gold, as she ought, where[849] now
she only sits with a paper on her head, as if she had
committed some notorious trespass, either for railing
against some brawling lawyer, or calling some justice of
peace a wise man; and how magnificently Gold sings of
his own fame and glory, these his own verses shall stand
for witnesses:—

Know, I am Gold,
The richest spirit that breathes in earth or hell,
The soul of kingdoms, and the stamp of souls;
Bright angels[850] wear my livery, sovereign kings
Christen their names in gold, and call themselves
Royal[851] and sovereign[852] after my gilt name;
All offices are mine and in my gift;
I have a hand in all; the statist’s veins
Flow in the blood of gold; the courtier bathes
His supple and lascivious limbs in oil
Which my brow sweats: what lady brightly spher’d
But takes delight to kiss a golden beard?
Those pleaders, forenoon players, act my parts
With liberal[853] tongues and desperate-fighting
spirits,
That wrestle with the arms of voice and air;
And lest they should be out, or faint, or cold,
Their innocent clients hist them on with gold:
What holy churchman’s not accounted even,
That prays three times to me ere once to heaven?
Then to let shine the radiance of my birth,
I am th’ enchantment both in hell and earth.

Here’s golden majesty enough, I trow! and, Gold, art
thou so powerful, so mighty, and yet snaffled with a
poor padlock? O base drudge, and too unworthy of such an
angel-like form! much like a fair sleek-faced courtier,
without either wit or virtue; thou that throwest the
earthen bowl of the world, with the bias the wrong way,
to peasantry, baseness, ingentility, and never givest
desert his due, or shakest thy yellow wings in a
scholar’s study! But why do I lose myself in seeking
thee, when thou art found of few but illiterate hinds,
rude boors, and hoary penny-fathers,[854] that keep thee
in perpetual durance, in vaults under false boards,
subtle-contrived walls, and in horrible dark dungeons
bury thee most unchristian-like, without amen, or the
least noise of a priest or clerk, and make thee rise
again at their pleasures many a thousand time before
doomsday; and yet will not all this move thee once to
forsake them, and keep company with a scholar that truly
knows how to use thee?

By this time I had framed an elaborate poetical
building—a neat, choice, and curious poem,—the
first-fruits of my musical-rhyming study, which was
dispersed into a quaint volume fairly bound up in
principal vellum, double-filleted with leaf-gold, strung
most gentlemanlike with carnation silk riband; which
book, industriously heaped with weighty conceits,
precious phrases, and wealthy numbers, I, Oliver
Hubburd, in the best fashion I might, presented to Sir
Christopher Clutchfist, whose bountiful virtue I blaze
in my first epistle.[855] The book he entertained but, I
think, for the cover’s sake, because it made such a
goodly show on the backside: and some two days after,
returning for my remuneration, I might espy—O lamentable
sight, madam!—my book dismembered very tragically; the
cover ript off, I know not for what purpose, and the
carnation silk strings pulled out and placed in his
Spanish-leather shoes; at which ruthful prospect I fell
down and sounded;[856] and when I came to myself again,
I was an ant, and so ever since I have kept me.

NIGHTINGALE.

There keep thee still;
Since all are ill,
Venture no more;
’Tis better be a little ant
Than a great man and live in want,
And still deplore:
So rest thee now
From sword, book, or plough.

By this the day began to spring,
And seize upon her watchful eyes,
When more tree-quiristers did sing,
And every bird did wake and rise:
Which was no sooner seen and heard,
But all their pretty chat was marr’d;
And then she said,
We are betray’d,
The day is up, and all the birds
And they abroad will blab our words.

With that she bade the ants farewell,
And all they likewise Philomel:
Away she flew,
Crying _Tereu_!
And all the industrious ants in throngs
Fell to their work and held their tongues.