SECTION LXIV.

THE argument of the first satire of the fifth Book, is the oppressive exaction of landlords, the consequence of the growing decrease of the value of money. One of these had perhaps a poor grandsire, who grew rich by availing himself of the general rapine at the dissolution of the monasteries. There is great pleasantry in one of the lines, that he

Begg'd a cast abbey in the church's wayne.

In the mean time, the old patrimonial mansion is desolated; and even the parish-church unroofed and dilapidated, through the poverty of the inhabitants, and neglect or avarice of the patron.

Would it not vex thee, where thy sires did keepa,
To see the dunged folds of dag-tayl❜d sheep?
And ruin'd house where holy things were said,
Whose free-stone walls the thatched roofe vpbraid;
Whose shrill saints-bell hangs on his lovery,
While the rest are damned to the plumbery":
Yet pure devotion lets the steeple stand,
And idle battlements on either hand, &c.c

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

a live, inhabit.

b The bells were all sold, and melted down; except that for necessary use the Saints-bell, or sanctus-bell, was only suffered to remain within its lovery, that is louver, or turret, usually placed between

the chancel and body of the church. Marston has "pitch-black loueries." Sc. VILLAN. B. ii. 5.

с

Just to keep up the appearance of a church.

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 oer 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-full of his mellow fruite, &c.

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

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.

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;

d Maund is Basket. Hence MAUNDAYThursday, the Thursday in Passion-week, when the king with his own hands distributes a large portion of alms, &c. MAUNDAY is DIES SPORTULE. Maund occurs again, B. iv. 2.

With a maund charg'd with houshold
marchandize.

In the WHIPPINGE OF THE SATYRE, 1601.
Signat. C. 4.

Whole MAUNDS and baskets ful of fine
sweet praise.

e B. v. 1. f. 58.

f In this Satire there is an allusion to an elegant fiction in Chaucer, v. 5. f. 61.

Certes if Pity dyed at Chaucer's date.

Chaucer places the sepulchre of PITY in the COURT OF LOVE. See COURT OF L.

v. 700.

A tender creature

Is shrinid there, and PITY is her name:
She saw an Egle wreke him on a Flie,
And plucke his wing, and eke him in
his game,

And tendir harte of that hath made
her die.

This thought is borrowed by Fenton, in his MARIAMNE.

The Escurial in Spain.

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.

h 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. A. ii. Sc. iii.

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 OTAEIZ AKA@APΤΟΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ.

1 B. v. 2.

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 errour, 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 extravagancies of a married spendthrift, a farmer's heir, of twenty pounds a year. He rides with two liveries, and keeps a pack of hounds.

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 ARCADIAP. The character in many respects suits Chapman, though I do not recollect that he wrote any pastorals.

m B. v. 3.

n APOLOGY for the foregoing ODE, &c. WORKS, Vol. i. p. 97. edit. 1722. 12mo. ° 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 breathelesse rimes.

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.

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 fa

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.

The Pyrrhic dance, performed in

armour.