Rams and slings now are silly battery;
Pistolets are the best artillery.
And they who write to lords, rewards to get,
Are they not like singers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have still
That excuse for writing, and for writing ill.
But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
Others’ wits’ fruits, and in his ravenous maw
Rankly digested, doth those things out-spew,
As his own things; and they’re his own, ’tis true;
For if one eat my meat, though it be known
The meat was mine, th’ excrement is his own.
But these do me no harm, nor they which use
To outdo ⸻, and out-usure Jews,
To out-drink the sea, to out-swear the ⸻,
Who with sins of all kinds as familiar be
As confessors, and for whose sinful sake
Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make,
Whose strange sins canonists could hardly tell
In which commandment’s large receipt they dwel.
But these punish themselves. The insolence
Of Coscus only breeds my just offence,
Whom time—which rots all, and makes botches pox,
And plodding on, must make a calf an ox—
Hath made a lawyer; which was, alas, of late
But scarce a poet; jollier of this state,
Than are new beneficed ministers, he throws,
Like nets or lime-twigs, wheresoe’er he goes,
His title of barrister on every wench,
And wooes in language of the pleas and bench.
“A motion, lady”—speak Coscus—“I have been
In love e’er since tricesimo of the Queen,
Continual claims I’ve made, injunctions got,
To stay my rival’s suit, that he should not
Proceed.”—Spare me.—“In Hilary term I went,
You said, if I return’d next ’size in Lent,
I should be in remitter of your grace;
In th’ interim my letters should take place
Of affidavits.” Words, words, which would tear
The tender labyrinth of a soft maid’s ear,
More, more than ten Sclavonians scolding, more
Than when winds in our ruin’d abbeys roar.
When sick with poetry, and possess’d with Muse
Thou wast, and mad, I hoped; but men, which choose
Law-practice for mere gain, bold soul[s] repute
Worse than embrothell’d strumpets, prostitute.
Now like an owl-like watchman, he must walk
His hand still at a bill, now he must talk
Idly, like prisoners, which whole months will swear,
The only suretyship hath brought them there,
And to every suitor lie in everything,
Like a king’s favourite, or like a king;
Like a wedge in a block, wring to the bar,
Bearing like asses, and more shameless far
Than carted whores; lie to the grave judge, for
Bastardy ’bounds not in king’s titles, nor
Simony and sodomy in churchmen’s lives,
As these things do in him; by these he thrives.
Shortly, as the sea, he’ll compass all the land,
From Scots to Wight, from Mount to Dover strand;
And spying heirs melting with luxury,
Satan will not joy at their sins, as he.
For as a thrifty wench scrapes kitchen stuff,
And barrelling the droppings, and the snuff
Of wasting candles, which in thirty year
(Relicly kept) perchance buys wedding-gear;
Piecemeal he gets lands, and spends as much time
Wringing each acre, as men pulling prime.
In parchment then, large as his fields, he draws
Assurances, big as gloss’d civil laws,
So huge, that men, in our time’s forwardness,
Are Fathers of the church for writing less.
These he writes not, nor for these written pays;
Therefore spares no length—as in those first days
When Luther was profess’d, he did desire
Short pater nosters, saying as a friar
Each day his beads, but having left those laws,
Adds to Christ’s prayer the Power and Glory clause.
But when he sells or changes land, he impairs
His writings, and, unwatch’d, leaves out, ses heires,
As slyly as any commenter goes by
Hard words, or sense; or, in divinity,
As controverters in vouch’d texts leave out
Shrewd words, which might against them clear the doubt.
Where are those spread woods which clothed heretofore
Those bought lands? not built, nor burnt within door.
Where the old landlord’s troops, and alms? In halls
Carthusian fasts, and fulsome Bacchanals
Equally I hate. Mean’s blest; in rich men’s homes
I bid kill some beasts, but no hecatombs;
None starve, none surfeit so. But oh, we allow
Good works, as good, but out of fashion now,
Like old rich wardrobes. But my words none draws
Within the vast reach of th’ huge statute’s jaws.
Satire III
Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids
Those tears to issue, which swell my eyelids.
I must not laugh, nor weep sins, and be wise.
Can railing, then, cure these worn maladies?
Is not our mistress, fair Religion,
As worthy of all our souls’ devotion,
As virtue was in the first blinded age?
Are not heaven’s joys as valiant to assuage
Lusts, as earth’s honour was to them? Alas,
As we do them in means, shall they surpass
Us in the end? and shall thy father’s spirit
Meet blind philosophers in heaven, whose merit
Of strict life may be imputed faith, and hear
Thee, whom he taught so easy ways, and near
To follow, damn’d? Oh, if thou darest, fear this;
This fear great courage and high valour is.
Darest thou aid mutinous Dutch; and darest thou lay
Thee in ships, wooden sepulchres, a prey
To leaders’ rage, to storms, to shot, to dearth?
Darest thou dive seas, and dungeons of the earth?
Hast thou courageous fire to thaw the ice
Of frozen North discoveries; and thrice
Colder than salamanders, like divine
Children in th’ oven, fires of Spain and the line,
Whose countries limbecs to our bodies be,
Canst thou for gain bear? and must every he
Which cries not, “Goddess!” to thy mistress, draw,
Or eat thy poisonous words? courage of straw!
O desperate coward, wilt thou seem bold, and
To thy foes, and his, who made thee to stand
Sentinel in his world’s garrison, thus yield,
And for forbid wars leave th’ appointed field?
Know thy foes; the foul devil, he whom thou
Strivest to please, for hate, not love, would allow
Thee fain his whole realm to be quit; and as
The world’s all parts wither away and pass,
So the world’s self, thy other loved foe, is
In her decrepit wane, and thou loving this,
Dost love a wither’d and worn strumpet; last,
Flesh, itself’s death, and joys which flesh can taste,
Thou lovest; and thy fair goodly soul, which doth
Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
Seek true religion, O where? Mirreus,
Thinking her unhoused here and fled from us,
Seeks her at Rome, there, because he doth know
That she was there a thousand years ago;
And loves the rags so, as we here obey
The
