with duke Humphry". He professes to keep a plentiful and open house for every straggling cavaliere, where the dinners are long and enlivened with music, and where many a gay youth, with a high-plumed hat, chooses to dine, much rather than to pay his shilling. He is so emaciated for want of eating, that his sword-belt hangs loose over his hip, the effect of hunger and heavy iron. Yet he is dressed in the height of the fashion, All trapped in the new-found brauerie. He pretends to have been at the conquest of Cales, where the nuns worked his bonnet. His hair stands upright in the French style, with one long lock hanging low on his shoulders, which, the satirist adds, puts us in mind of a native cord, the truly English rope which he probably will one day wear. His linen collar labyrinthian set, Whose thovsand double turnings neuer met: Lik'st a strawe scare-crow in the new-sowne field, In the Prologue to this book, our author strives to obviate the objections of certain critics who falsely and foolishly thought his satires too perspicuous. Nothing could be more absurd, than the notion, that because Persius is obscure, therefore obscurity must be necessarily one of the qualities of satire. If Persius, under the severities of a proscriptive and sanguinary government, was often obliged to conceal his meaning, this was not the case of Hall. But the darkness and diffi That is, he has walked all day in saint Paul's church without a dinner. In the body of old saint Paul's, was a huge and conspicuous monument of sir John Beauchamp, buried in 1358, son of Guy and brother of Thomas, earls of Warwick. This, by a vulgar mistake, was at length called the tomb of Humphry duke of Gloucester, who was really buried at St. Alban's, where his magnificent shrine now remains. The middle ile of Saint Paul's is called the Dukes gallery, in a chapter of the Guls Horne Booke, "How a gallant should behaue himself in Powles Walkes." Ch. iiii. p. 17. Of the humours of this famous ambulatory, the general rendezvous of lawyers and their clients, pickpockets, cheats, bucks, pimps, whores, poets, players, and many others who either for idleness or business found it convenient to frequent the most fashionable crowd in London, a more particular description may be seen, in Dekker's "Dead Terme, or Westminsters Complaint for long Vacations and short Termes, under the chapter, Pawles Steeples complaint." Signat. D. 3. Lond. for John Hodgetts, 1608. 4to. Bl. lett. Barnaby Rich in his Irish Hubbub, printed 1617, thus describes four gallants coming from an ordinary. "The third was in a yellow-starched band, that made him looke as if he had been troubled with the yellow iaundis.They were all four in white bootes and gylt spurres," &c. Lond. 1617. 4to. p. 36. P B. iii. 7. f. 62. culties of Persius arise in great measure from his own affectation and false taste. He would have been enigmatical under the mildest government. To be unintelligible can never naturally or properly belong to any species of writing. Hall of himself is certainly obscure yet he owes some of his obscurity to an imitation of this ideal excellence of the Roman satirists. The fourth Book breathes a stronger spirit of indignation, and abounds with applications of Juvenal to modern manners, yet with the appearance of original and unborrowed satire. The first is miscellaneous and excursive, but the subjects often lead to an unbecoming licentiousness of language and images. In the following nervous lines, he has caught and finely heightened the force and manner of his master. Who list, excuse, when chaster dames can hire After her husband's dozen years despair: He thus enhances the value of certain novelties, by declaring them to be Worth little less than landing of a whale, The allusion is to Spenser's Talus in the following couplet, Gird but the cynicke's helmet on his head, Cares he for Talus, or his flayle of leade? He adds, that the guilty person, when marked, destroys all distinction, like the cuttle-fish concealed in his own blackness. Long as the craftie cuttle lieth sure, In the blacke cloud of his thicke vomiture; Who list, complaine of wronged faith or fame, He thus describes the effect of his satire, and the enjoyment of his own success in this species of poetry. Now see I fire-flakes sparkle from his eyes, Some fair-faced stripling to be their page. Marston has this epithet, Sc. Villan. B. i. 3. Had I some snout-faire brats, they should indure The newly-found Castilion calenture, Before some pedant, &c. In Satires and Epigrams, called The Letting of Humors Blood in the HeadVayne, 1600, we have "Some pippinsquire." Epigr. 33. Cadiz was newly taken. His powting cheeks puft vp aboue his brow, Like a swolne toad touch'd with the spider's blow: Nowe laugh I loud, and breake my splene to see Or Mimo's whistling to his tabouret", It is in Juvenal's style to make illustrations satirical. They are here very artfully and ingeniously introduced". The second is the character of an old country squire, who starves himself, to breed his son a lawyer and a gentleman. It appears, that the vanity or luxury of purchasing dainties at an exorbitant price began early. Let sweet-mouth'd Mercia bid what crowns she please, To make so lavish cost for little cheare. When Lollio feasteth in his revelling fit, Of the young elephant, or two-tayl'd steere, A fish. Jonson says, in the Silent Woman, "Of a fool, that would stand thus, with a playse-mouth," &c. A. i. s. 2. See more instances in Old Plays, vol. iii. p. 395. edit. 1780. "Then led they cosin [the gull] to the gase of an enterlude, or the bearebayting of Paris-Garden, or some other place of thieving." A MANIFEST DETECTION of the most vyle and detestable vse of DICE PLAY, &c. No date, Bl. lett. Signat. D. iiii. Abraham Vele, the printer of this piece, lived before the year 1548. Again, ibid. "Some ii or iii [pickpockets] hath Paules church on charge, other hath Westminster hawle in terme time, diuerse Chepesyde with the flesh and fishe shambles, some the Borough and Bearebayting, some the court," &c. Paris-garden was in the Borough. Fools they may feede on words, and liue on ayrea, He predicts, with no small sagacity, that Lollio's son's distant posterity will rack their rents to a treble proportion, And hedge in all their neighbours common lands. Enclosures of waste lands were among the great and national grievances of our author's aged. It may be presumed, that the practice was then carried on with the most arbitrary spirit of oppression and monopoly. The third is on the pride of pedigree. The introduction is from Juvenal's eighth satire; and the substitution of the memorials of English ancestry, such as were then fashionable, in the place of Juvenal's parade of family statues without arms or ears, is remarkably happy. But the humour is half lost, unless by recollecting the Roman original, the reader perceives the unexpected parallel. Or call some old church-windowe to record Or find some figures half obliterate, In rain-beat marble neare to the church-gate, Afterwards, some adventurers for raising a fortune are introduced. One trades to Guiana for gold. This is a glance at sir Walter Raleigh's expedition to that country. Another, with more success, seeks it in the philosopher's stone. When half his lands are spent in golden smoke, Some well-known classical passages are thus happily mixed, modernised, and accommodated to his general purpose. Was neuer foxe but wily cubs begets; The bear his fiercenesse to his brood besets: In the fourth, these diversions of a delicate youth of fashion and refined manners are mentioned, as opposed to the rougher employments of a military life. Gallio may pull me roses ere they fall, Or tend his spar-hawke mantling in her mewe, Seest thou the rose-leaues fall ungathered? Hye thee, and giue the world yet one dwarfe more, Svch as it got, when thou thyself was bore. In the contrast between the martial and effeminate life, which includes a general ridicule of the foolish passion which now prevailed, of making it a part of the education of our youth to bear arms in the wars of the Netherlands, are some of Hall's most spirited and nervous verses fin Judea. B. iv. 3. f. 26. angle for fish. i a pit-fall. A trap-cage. |
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