By an enumeration of real circumstances, he gives us the following lively draught of the miserable tenement, yet ample services, of a poor copyholder.

Of one bay's breadth, god wot, a silly cote,

Whose thatched spars are furr'd with sluttish soote
A whole inch thick, shining like black-moor's brows,
Through smoke that downe the headlesse barrel blows.
At his bed's feete feeden his stalled teame,

His swine beneath, his pullen o'er the beame.
A starued tenement, such as I guesse

Stands straggling on the wastes of Holdernesse :
Or such as shivers on a Peake hill side, &c.—
Yet must he haunt his greedy landlord's hall
With often presents at each festivall :
With crammed capons euerie New-yeare's morne,

Or with greene cheeses when his sheepe are shorne:
Or many maunds-fulld of his mellow fruite, &c.

The lord's acceptance of these presents is touched with much hu

mour.

The smiling landlord shewes a sunshine face,
Feigning that he will grant him further grace;
And leers like Esop's foxe vpon the crane,
Whose neck he craves for his chirurgian.e

In the second, he reprehends the incongruity of splendid edifices and worthless inhabitants.

Like the vaine bubble of Iberian pride,

That overcroweth all the world beside;

Which rear'd to raise the crazy monarch's fame,
Striues for a court and for a college name:
Yet nought within but lousy coules doth hold,
Like a scabb'd cuckow in a cage of gold.

When Maevio's first page of his poesy
Nail'd to a hundred postes for nouelty,
With his big title, an Italian mot1,

Layes siege unto the backward buyer's grot, &c.

He then beautifully draws, and with a selection of the most picturesque natural circumstances, the inhospitality or rather desertion of an old magnificent rural mansion.

Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound
With double echoes doth againe rebound;
But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee,
Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see:
All dumb and silent, like the dead of night,
Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite!

The marble pavement, hid with desart weed,
With house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock-seed.—
Look to the towered chimnies, which should be
The wind-pipes of good hospitalitie:--
Lo, there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest,
And fills the tunnell with her circled nestk!

Afterwards, the figure of FAMINE is thus imagined.
Grim FAMINE sits in their fore-pined face,
All full of angles of vnequal space,

Like to the plane of many-sided squares
That wont be drawne out by geometars.

In the third, a satire is compared to the porcupine.

The satire should be like the porcupine,

That shoots sharp quills out in each angry line.m

This ingenious thought, though founded on a vulgar error, has been copied, among other passages, by Oldham. Of a true writer of satire, he says,

He'd shoot his quills just like a porcupine,
At view, and make them stab in every line."

In the fourth and last of this Book, he enumerates the extravagances of a married spendthrift, a farmer's heir, of twenty pounds a year. He rides with two liveries, and keeps a pack of hounds.

As when.

In this age, the three modern languages were studied to affectation. In the Return from Parnassus, above quoted, a fashionable fop tells his Page, “Sirrah, boy, remember me when I come in Paul's Church-yard, to buy a Ronsard and Dubartas in French, an Aretine in Italian, and our hardest writers in Spanish," &c. act ii. sc. 3.

The motto on the front of the house

ΟΥΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ, which he calls a fragment of Plato's poetry, is a humorous alteration of Plato's ΟΥΔΕΙΣ ΑΚΑΘΑΡΤΟΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ.

1 B. v. 2.

m B. v. 3.

n

Apology for the foregoing Ode, &c. Works, vol. i. p. 97. edit. 1722. 12mo.

But whiles ten pound goes to his wife's new gowne,
Not little less can serue to suite his owne :
While one piece pays her idle waiting-man,
Or buys an hood, or siluer-handled fan:
Or hires a Friezeland trotter, halfe yard deepe,
To drag his tumbrell through the staring Cheape.

The last Book, consisting of one long satire only, is a sort of epilogue to the whole, and contains a humorous ironical description of the effect of his satires, and a recapitulatory view of many of the characters and foibles which he had before delineated. But the scribblers seem to have the chief share. The character of Labeo, already repeatedly mentioned, who was some cotemporary poet, a constant censurer of our author, and who from pastoral proceeded to heroic poetry, is here more distinctly represented. He was a writer who affected compound epithets, which sir Philip Sydney had imported from France, and first used in his ARCADIA P. The character in many respects suits Chapman, though I do not recollect that he wrote any pastorals.

That Labeo reades right, who can deny,
The true straines of heroick poesy?
For he can tell how fury reft his sense,
And Phebus fill'd him with intelligence:
He can implore the heathen deities
To guide his bold and busy enterprise:
Or filch whole pages at a clap for need,
From honest Petrarch, clad in English weed;
While big BUT OH's each stanza can begin,
Whose trunk and taile sluttish and heartlesse been:
He knowes the grace of that new elegance
Which sweet Philisides fetch'd late from France,
That well beseem'd his high-stil'd ARCADY,
Though others marre it with much liberty,
In epithets to joine two words in one,
Forsooth, for adjectives can't stand alone.

The arts of composition must have been much practised, and a knowledge of critical niceties widely diffused, when observations of this kind could be written. He proceeds to remark, it was now customary for every poet, before he attempted the dignity of heroic verse, to try his strength by writing pastorals 9,

• B. v. 4.

? We have our author's opinion of Skelton in these lines of this satire, f. 83.

Well might these checks have fitted former
times,
And shoulder'd angry Skelton's breathe-
lesse rimes.

Though these lines bear a general sense, yet at the same time they seem to be connected with the character of Labeo, by which they are introduced. By the Carmelite, a pastoral writer ranked with Theocritus and Virgil, he means Man

tuan.

But ere his Muse her weapon learn to wield,
Or dance a sober Pirrhicke' in the field;-
The sheepe-cote first hath beene her nursery,
Where she hath worne her idle infancy;
And in high startups walk'd the pastur'd plaines,
To tend her tasked herd that there remains ;
And winded still a pipe of oate or breare, &c.

Poems on petty subjects or occasions, on the death of a favourite bird or dog, seem to have been as common in our author's age, as at present. He says,

Should Bandell's throstle die without a song,
Or Adamans my dog be laid along

Downe in some ditch, without his exequies",
Or epitaphs or mournful elegies'?

In the old comedy, the RETURN FROM PARNASSUS, we are told of a coxcomb who could bear no poetry "but fly-blown sonnets of his mistress, and her loving pretty creatures her monkey and her puppet"."

The following exquisite couplet exhibits our satirist in another and a more delicate species of poetry:

The Pyrrhic dance, performed in ar

mour. 8

In pursuance of the argument, he adds,

Folly itselfe and baldnes may be prais'd. An allusion to Erasmus's Moriæ Encomium, and the Encomium Calvitiei, written at the restoration of learning. Cardan also wrote an encomium on Nero, the Gout, &c.

In this Satire, Tarleton is praised as a poet, who is most commonly considered only as a comedian. Meres commends him for his facility in extemporaneous versification. Wit's Tr. f. 286.

I shall here throw together a few notices of Tarleton's poetry. "A new booke on English verse, entitled, Tarlton's Toyes," was entered Dec. 10, 1576, to R. Jones. Registr. Station. B. f. 136 b. See "Heruey's Foure Letters," 1592. p. 34. "Tarleton's devise uppon the unlooked for great snowe," is entered, in 1578. Ibid. f. 156 b. -A ballad called" Tarleton's Farewell," is entered in 1588. Ibid. f. 233 a.-" Tarleton's repentance just before his death," is entered in 1589. Ibid. f. 249 a. The next year, viz. 1590, Aug. 20, "A pleasant dittye dialogue-wise betweene Tarleton's ghost and Robyn Good fellowe," is entered to H. Carre. Ibid. f. 263 a. There is a transferred copy of Tarlton's Jests, I sup

pose Tarlton's Toyes, in 1607. Registr. C. f. 179 b. Many other pieces might be recited. [See supr. p. 388. note ".] See more of Tarleton, in Supplement to Shakspeare, i. pp. 55. 58. 59; and Old Plays, edit. 1778. Preface, p. lxii.

To what is there collected concerning Tarleton as a player, it may be added, that his ghost is one of the speakers, in that character, in Chettle's Kindharte's Dreame, printed about 1593. Without date, quarto. Signat. E. 3. And that in the Preface, he appears to have been also a musician. "Tarlton with his Taber taking two or three leaden friskes," &c. Most of our old comedians professed every part of the histrionic science, and were occasionally fidlers, dancers, and gesticulators. Dekker says, Tarleton, Kempe, nor Singer,

66

'ener plaid the Clowne more naturally." Dekker's Gul's Horne Booke, 1609, p. 3. One or two of Tarleton's Jests are mentioned in "The Discouerie of the Knights of the Poste," &c. By S. S. Lond. Impr. by G. S. 1597. 4to. bl. lett. In FitzGeoffrey's Cenotaphia, annexed to his Affania, 1601, there is a panegyric on Tarleton. Signat. N. 2. Tarleton and Greene are often mentioned as associates in Harvey's Four Letters, 1592. "Act iii. sc. 4.

Her lids like Cupid's bow-case, where he hides
The weapons which do wound the wanton-ey'd."

One is surprised to recollect, that these satires are the production of a young man of twenty-three. They rather seem the work of an experienced master, of long observation, of study and practice in composition.

They are recited among the best performances of the kind, and with applause, by Francis Meres, a cotemporary critic, who wrote in 1598*. But whatever fame they had acquired, it soon received a check, which was never recovered. They were condemned to the flames, as licentious and immoral, by an order of bishop Bancroft in 1599. And this is obviously the chief reason why they are not named by our author in the SPECIALITIES of his Life, written by himself after his preferment to a bishoprick. They were, however, admired and imitated by Oldham; and Pope, who modernised Donne, is said to have wished he had seen Hall's satires sooner. But had Pope undertaken to modernise Hall, he must have adopted, because he could not have improved, many of his lines. Hall is too finished and smooth for such an operation. Donne, though he lived so many years later, was susceptible of modern refinement, and his asperities were such as wanted and would bear the chisel.

I was informed, by the late learned bishop of Glocester, that in a copy of Hall's Satires in Pope's library, the whole first satire of the sixth book was corrected in the margin, or interlined, in Pope's own hand; and that Pope had written at the head of that satire, OPTIMA

SATIRA.

Milton, who had a controversy with Hall, as I have observed in a remonstrance called an APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS, published in 1641, rather unsuitably and disingenuously goes out of his way to attack these satires, a juvenile effort of his dignified adversary, and under every consideration alien to the dispute. Milton's strictures are more sarcastic than critical; yet they deserve to be cited, more especially as they present a striking specimen of those awkward attempts at humour and raillery, which disgrace his prose-works.

"Lighting upon this title of ToOTHLESS SATYRS, I will not conceal ye what I thought, readers, that sure this must be some sucking satyr, who might have done better to have used his coral, and made an end of breeding ere he took upon him to wield a satyr's whip. But when I heard him talk of scouring the shields of elvish knights', do not blame

B. vi. Pontan here mentioned, I presume, is Jovinianus Pontanus, an elegant Latin amatorial and pastoral poet of Italy, at the revival of learning.

* Wit's Treas. f. 282. It is extraordinary, that they should not have afforded any choice flowers to England's Parnassus, printed in 1600.

y Shaking of the Olive, or his Remain

ing Works, 1660. 4to. Nor are they here inserted.

A misquoted line in the Defiance to Envy, prefixed to the Satires. I will give the whole passage, which is a compliment to Spenser, and shows how happily Hall would have succeeded in the majestic march of the long stanza :