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For ever are you bound to curse those quacks
That undertook to cure your happy cracks ;
For, though no art can ever make them sound,
The tampering cost you threescore thousand pound.
How high might you have liv'd, and play'd, and lost,
Yet been no more undone by being choust,
Nor fore'd upon the king's account to lay
All that, in serving him, you lost at play!
For nothing but your brain was ever found
To suffer sequestration, and compound.
Yet you 'ave an imposition laid on brick,
For all you then laid out at Beast or Gleek;

And when you've rais'd a sum, straight let it fly,
By understanding low, and venturing high;
Until you have reduc'd it down to tick,

And then recruit again from lime and brick.

UPON CRITICS,

THO JUDGE OF MODERN PLAYS PRECISELY BY THE RULES OF THE ANCIENTS'.

WHOEVER will regard poetic fury,
When it is once found ideot by a jury,
And every pert and arbitrary fool
Can all poetic licence over-rule;
Assume a barbarous tyranny, to handle

The Muses worse than Ostrogoth and Vandal;
Make them submit to verdict and report,
And stand or fall to th' orders of a court?
Much less be sentenc'd by the arbitrary
Proceedings of a witless plagiary,
That forges old records and ordinances
Against the right and property of fancies,

More false and nice than weighing of the weather,

To th' hundredth atom of the lightest feather,
Or measuring of air upon Parnassus,
With cylinders of Torricellian glasses;
Redace all tragedy, by rules of art,
Back to its antique theatre, a cart,

And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads
Of reverend choruses and episodes;
Reform and regulate a puppet play,
According to the true and ancient way,
That not an actor shall presume to squeak,
Unless he have a licence for 't in Greek;
Nor Whittington henceforward sell his cat in
Plain valgar English, without mewing Latin:
No pudding shall be suffer'd to be witty,
Unless it be in order to raise pity;
Nor Devil in the puppet-play b' allow'd
To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,
Unless some god or demon chance t' have piques
Against an ancient family of Greeks;
That other men may tremble, and take warning,
How such a fatal progeny they 're born in;
For none but such for tragedy are fitted,
That have been ruin'd only to be pity'd:
And only those held proper to deter,
Who've had th' ill luck against their wills to err.
Whence only such as are of middling sizes,
Between morality and venial vices,

'This warm invective was very probably occasoned by Mr. Rymer, historiographer to Charles II. who censured three tragedies of Beaumont's and Fletcher's. The cold, severe critic may perhaps

Are qualify'd to be destroy'd by Fate,
For other mortals to take warning at.
As if the antique laws of tragedy
Did with our own municipal agree,

And serv'd, like cobwebs, but t' ensnare the weak,

And give diversion to the great to break;
To make a less delinquent to be brought
To answer for a greater person's fault,
And suffer all the worst the worst approver
Can, to excuse and save himself, discover.
No longer shall dramatics be confin'd
To draw true images of all mankind;
To punish in effigie criminals,
Reprieve the innocent, and hang the false;
But a club-law to execute and kill,
For nothing, whomsoe'er they please, at will,
To terrify spectators from committing
The crimes they did, and suffer'd for, unwitting.
These are the reformations of the stage,
Like other reformations of the age,
On purpose to destroy all wit and sense,
As th' other did all law and conscience;
No better than the laws of British plays,
Confirm'd in th' ancient good king Howell's days;
Who made a general council regulate
Men's catching women by the-you know what,
And set down in the rubric at what time
It should be counted legal, when a crime;
Declare when 'twas, and when 'twas not a sin,
And on what days it went out or came in.

An English poet should be try'd b' his peers,
And not by pedants and philosophers,
Incompetent to judge poetic fury,

As butchers are forbid to b' of a jury;
Besides the most intolerable wrong
To try their matters in a foreign tongue,
By foreign jurymen, like Sophocles,
Or tales, falser than Euripides;

When not an English native dares appear

To be a witness for the prisoner;
When all the laws they use t' arraign and try
The innocent and wrong'd delinquent by,
Were made b' a foreign lawyer and his pupils,
To put an end to all poetic scruples,
And, by th' advice of virtuosi Tuscans,
Determin'd all the doubts of socks and buskins;
Gave judgment on all past and future plays,
As is apparent by Speroni's case,
Which Lope Vega first began to steal,
And after him the French filou Corneille;
And since our English plagiaries nim
And steal their far-fet criticisms from him,
And, by an action falsely laid of trover,
The lumber for their proper goods recover,
Enough to furnish all the lewd impeachers
Of witty Beaumont's poetry and Fletcher's;
Who, for a few misprisions of wit,

Are charg'd by those who ten times worse commit;
And, for misjudging some unhappy scenes,
Are censur'd for 't with more unlucky sense;
When all their worst miscarriages delight,
And please more than the best that pedants
write.

find some few inaccuracies to censure in this composition; but the reader of taste will either overlook or pardon them for the sake of the spirit that runs through it.

PROLOGUE

TO THE

QUEEN OF ARRAGON,

ACTED BEFORE THE DUKE OF YORK, UPON HIS BIRTH-DAY.

SIR, while so many nations strive to pay
The tribute of their glories to this day,
That gave them earnest of so great a sum
Of glory (from your future acts) to come,
And which you have discharg'd at such a rate,
That all succeeding times must celebrate;
We, that subsist by your bright influence,
And have no life but what we own from thence,
Come humbly to present you, our own way,
With all we have, (beside our hearts) a play.
But, as devontest men can pay no more
To deities than what they gave before,
We bring you only what your great commands
Did rescue for us from engrossing hands,
That would have taken out administration
Of all departed poets' goods i' th' nation;
Or, like to lords of manors, seiz'd all plays
That come within their reach, as wefts and strays,
And claim'd a forfeiture of all past wit,
But that your justice put a stop to it.

'Twas well for us, who else must have been glad
T' admit of all who now write new and bad;
For, still the wickeder some authors write,
Others to write worse are encourag'd by 't;
And though those fierce inquisitors of wit,
The critics, spare no flesh that ever writ,
But, just as tooth-drawers, find, among the rout,
Their own teeth work in pulling others out;
So they, decrying all of all that write,
Think to erect a trade of judging by 't.
Small poetry, like other heresies,

By being persecuted multiplies;

But here they 're like to fail of all pretence;
For he that writ this play is dead long since,
And not within their power; for bears are said
To spare those, that lie still and seen but dead.

EPILOGUE TO THE SAME.

TO THE DUTCHESS.

MADAM, the joys of this great day are due,
No less than to your royal lord, to you;
And, while three mighty kingdoms pay your part,
You have, what's greater than them all, his
heart;

That heart that, when it was his country's guard,
The fury of two elements outdar'd,
And made a stubborn haughty enemy
The terrour of his dreadful conduct fly;
And yet you conquer'd it--and made your charms
Appear no less victorious than his arms;
For which you oft have triumph'd on this day,
And many more to come Heaven grant you may!
But, as great princes use, in solemn times
Of joy, to pardon all but heinous crimes,
If we have sinn'd without an ill intent,
And done below what really we meant,
We humbly ask your pardon for 't, and pray
You would forgive, in honour of the day.

UPON

PHILIP NYE'S THANKSGIVING BEARD

A BEARD is but the vizard of a face,
That Nature orders for no other place;
The fringe and tassel of a countenance,
That hides his person from another man's,
And, like the Roman habits of their youth,
Is never worn until his perfect growth;
A privilege no other creature has,
To wear a natural mask upon his face,
That shifts its likeness every day he wears,
To fit some other persons' characters,
And by its own mythology implies,
That men were born to live in some disguise.

This satisfy'd a reverend man, that clear'd
His disagreeing conscience by his beard.
He 'ad been preferr'd i' th' army, when the church
Was taken with a Why not? in the lurch;
When primate, metropolitan, and prelates,
Were turn'd to officers of horse and zealots,
From whom he held the most pluralities
Of contributions, donatives, and salaries;
Was held the chiefest of those spiritual trumpets,
That sounded charges to their fiercest combats;
But in the desperatest of defeats

Had never blown as opportune retreats,
Until the synod order'd his departure
To London, from his caterwauling quarter,
To sit among them, as he had been chosen,
And pass or null things at his own disposing:
Could clap up souls in limbo with a vote,
And for their fees discharge and let them out;
Which made some grandees bribe him with the place
Of holding-forth upon thanksgiving-days;
Whither the members, two and two abreast,
March'd to take in the spoils of all-the feast;

But by the way repeated the oh-hones
Of his wild Irish and chromatic tones;
His frequent and pathetic hums and haws,
He practis'd only t' animate the cause,
With which the sisters were so prepossest,
They could remember nothing of the rest.

As our poet has thought fit to bestow so many
verses upon this trumpeter of sedition, it may, per-
haps, be no thankless office to give the reader some
further information about him, than what merely
relates to his beard.-He was educated at Oxford,
first in Brazen Nose College, and afterwards in
Magdalen Hall; where, under the influence of a
puritanical tutor, he received the first tincture of
sedition and disgust to our ecclesiastical establish-
ment. After taking his degrees, he went into orders,
but soon left England to go and reside in Holland,
where he was not very likely to lessen those pre-
In the
judices which he had already imbibed.
year 1640, he returned home, became a furious
presbyterian, and a zealous stickler for the parlia-
ment; and was thought considerable enough, in
his way, to be sent by his party into Scotland, to
encourage and spirit-up the cause of the covenant;
in defence of which he wrote several pamphlets.
However, as his zeal arose from self-interest and
ambition, when the independents began to have the
ascendant, and power and profit ran in that chan-
nel, he faced about, and became a strenuous
preacher on that side; and in this situation he was
when he fell under the lash of Butler's satire.

He thought upon it, and resolv'd to put
His beard into as wonderful a cut,

And, for the further service of the women,
T'abate the rigidness of his opinion;
And, but a day before, had been to find
The ablest virtuoso of the kind,

With whom he long and seriously conferr'd
On all intrigues that might concern his beard;
By whose advice he sate for a design

In little drawn, exactly to a line,

That if the creature chance to have occasion

To undergo a thorough reformation,

It might be borne conveniently about,
And by the meanest artist copy'd out.

This done, he sent a journeyman sectary
He ad brought up to retrieve, and fetch, and carry,
To find out one that had the greatest practice,
To prune and bleach the beards of all fanatics,
And set their most confus'd disorders right,
Not by a new design, but newer light;
Who us'd to shave the grandees of their sticklers,
And crop the worthies of their conventiclers;
To whom he show'd his new-invented draught,
And told him how 'twas to be copy'd out.

Quoth he, "Tis but a false and counterfeit, And scandalous device of human wit, That's abs lutely forbidden in the Scripture, To make of any carnal thing the picture." Quoth th' other saint, "You must leave that to us, Tagree what 's lawful, or what scandalous, For, till it is determin'd by our vote, Tis either lawful, scandalous, or not: Which, since we have not yet agreed upon,

Is left indifferent to avoid or own."

Quoth he, "My conscience never shall agree
To do it, till I know what 'tis to be;
For though I use it in a lawful time,
What if it after should be made a crime?

""Tis true we fought for liberty of conscience,
Gainst human constitutions, in our own sense,
Which I'm resolv'd perpetually t' avow,
And make it lawful whatsoe'er we do;
Then do your office with your greatest skill,
And let th' event befal us how it will."

This said, the nice barbarian took his tools,
To prune the zealot's tenets and his jowles;
Talk'd on as pertinently as he snipt,

A hundred times for every hair he clipt;
Until the Beard at length began t' appear,
And reassume its antique character,

Grew more and more itself, that art might strive,
And stand in competition with the life;

For some have doubted if 'twere made of snips
Of sables, glew'd and fitted to his lips,
And set in such an artificial frame,
As if it had been wrought in filograin,
More subtly fil'd and polish'd than the gin
That Vulcan caught himself a cuckold in;
That Lachesis, that spins the threads of Fate,
Could not have drawn it out more delicate.
But being design'd and drawn so regular,
Ta scrupulous punctilio of a hair,
Who could imagine that it should be portal
To selfish, inward-unconforming mortal?
And yet it was, and did abominate

The least compliance in the church or state,
And from itself did equally dissent,
As from religion and the government 2.

I und among Butler's manuscripts several

SATIRE

UPON

THE WEAKNESS AND MISERY OF MAN.

WHO would believe that wicked Earth,
Where Nature only brings us forth

To be found guilty and forgiven,
Should be a nursery for Heaven;
When all we can expect to do
Will not pay half the debt we owe,
And yet more desperately dare,
As if that wretched trifle were
Too much for the eternal Powers,

Our great and mighty creditors,
Not only slight what they enjoin,
But pay it in adulterate coin?
We only in their mercy trust,
To be more wicked and unjust;
All our devotions, vows, and prayers,
Are our own interest, not theirs;
Our offerings, when we come t' adore,
But begging presents to get more;
The purest business of our zeal

Is but to err, by meaning well,

And make that meaning do more harm
Than our worst deeds, that are less warm;
For the most wretched and perverse
Does not believe himself he errs.

Our holiest actions have been
Th' effects of wickedness and sin;
Religious houses made compounders
For th' horrid actions of the founders;
Steeples that totter'd in the air,
By letchers sinn'd into repair;
As if we had retain'd no sign
Nor character of the divine
And heavenly part of human nature,
But only the coarse earthy matter.

other little sketches upon the same subject, but none worth printing, except the following one may be thought passable, by way of note.

This reverend brother, like a goat,
Did wear a tail upon his throat,
The fringe and tassel of a face,
That gives it a becoming grace,
But set in such a curious frame,
As if 'twere wrought in filograin,
And cut so even, as if 't had been
Drawn with a pen upon his chin.
No topiary hedge of quickset

Was e'er so neatly cut or thick set,
That made beholders more admire,
Than China-plate that 's made of wire;
But being wrought so regular

In every part, and every hair,
Who would believe it should be portal
To unconforming-inward mortal?
And yet it was, and did dissent
No less from its own government,
Than from the church's, and detest
That which it held forth and profest;
Did equally abominate

Conformity in church and state;
And, like an hypocritic brother,
Profess'd one thing and dal another;
As all things, where they 're most profest,
Are found to be regarded least.

Our universal inclination
Tends to the worst of our creation;
As if the stars conspir'd t' imprint,
In our whole species, by instinct,
A fatal brand and signature
Of nothing else but the impure.
The best of all our actions tend
To the preposterousest end,

And, like to mongrels, we 're inclin'd
To take most to th' ignobler kind;
Or monsters, that have always least
Of th' human parent, not the beast.
Hence 'tis we 've no regard at all
Of our best half original;
But, when they differ, still assert
The interest of th' ignobler part;
Spend all the time we have upon
The vain capriches of the one,

But grudge to spare one hour to know
What to the better part we owe.
As, in all compound substances,
The greater still devours the less;
So, being born and bred up near
Our earthy gross relations here,
Far from the ancient nobler place
Of all our high paternal race,
We now degenerate, and grow
As barbarous, and mean, and low,
As modern Grecians are, and worse,
To their brave nobler ancestors.
Yet, as no barbarousness beside
Is half so barbarous as pride,
Nor any prouder insolence

Than that which has the least pretence,
We are so wretched to profess
A glory in our wretchedness;
To vapour sillily, and rant,
Of our own misery and want,
And grow vain-glorious on a score
We ought much rather to deplore;
Who, the first moment of our lives,
Are but condemn'd, and giv'n reprieves;
And our great'st grace is not to know
When we shall pay them back, nor how;
Begotten with a vain caprich,
And live as vainly to that pitch.

Our pains are real things, and all
Our pleasures but fantastical;
Diseases of their own accord,
But cures come difficult and hard.
Our noblest piles, and stateliest rooms,
Are but outhouses to our tombs;
Cities, though e'er so great and brave,
But mere warehouses to the grave.
Our bravery's but a vain disguise,
To hide us from the world's dull eyes,
The remedy of a defect,

With which our nakedness is deckt;
Yet makes us swell with pride, and boast,
As if we 'd gain'd by being lost.

All this is nothing to the evils

Which men, and their confederate devils, Inflict, to aggravate the curse

On their own hated kind much worse;
As if by Nature they 'd been serv'd
More gently than their fate deserv'd,
Take pains (in justice) to invent,
And study their own punishment;
That, as their crimes should greater grow,
So might their own inflictions too.

Hence bloody wars at first began,
The artificial plague of man,
That from his own invention rise,
To scourge his own iniquities;

That, if the heavens should chance to spare
Supplies of constant poison'd air,
They might not, with unfit delay,
For lingering destruction stay;
Nor seek recruits of Death so far,
But plague themselves with blood and war.
And if these fail, there is no good
Kind Nature e'er ou man bestow'd,
But he can easily divert

To his own misery and hurt;/
Make that which Heaven meant to bless
Th' ungrateful world with, gentle Peace,
With luxury and excess, as fast
As war and desolation, waste;
Promote mortality, and kill,

As fast as arms, by sitting still;
Like earthquakes, slay without a blow,
And, only moving, overthrow;
Make law and equity as dear
As plunder and free-quarter were,
Aud fierce encounters at the bar
Undo as fast as those in war;
Enrich bawds, whores, and usurers,
Pimps, scriveners, silenc'd ministers,
That get estates by being undone
For tender conscience, and have none.
Like those that with their credit drive
A trade, without a stock, and thrive;
Advance men in the church and state
For being of the meanest rate,
Rais'd for their double-guil'd deserts,.
Before integrity and parts;
Produce more grievious complaints
For plenty, than before for wants,
And make a rich and fruitful year
A greater grievance than a dear;
Make jests of greater dangers far,
Than those they trembled at in war;
Till, unawares, they 've laid a train
To blow the public up again;
Rally with horrour, and, in sport,
Rebellion and destruction court,
And make fanatics, in despight
Of all their madness, reason right,
And vouch to all they have foreshown,
As other monsters oft have done,
Although from truth and sense as far,
As all their other maggots are:

For things said false, and never meant,
Do oft prove true by accident.

That wealth, that bounteous Fortune sends
As presents to her dearest friends,
Is oft laid out upon a purchase

Of two yards long in parish-churches,
And those too-happy men that bought it
Had liv'd, and happier too, without it:
For what does vast wealth bring but cheat,
Law, luxury, disease, and debt;
Pain, pleasure, discontent, and sport,
An easy-troubled life, and short1?

I Though this satire seems fairly transcribed for the press, yet, on a vacancy in the sheet opposite to this line, I find the following verses, which probably were intended to be added; but as they are

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UPON THE LICENTIOUS AGE OF CHARLES II.

But all these plagues are nothing near
Those, far more cruel and severe,
Unhappy man takes pains to find,
Tindict himself upon his mind:
And out of his own bowels spins
A rack and torture for his sins;
Torments himself in vain, to know
That most which he can never do;
And, the more strictly 'tis deny'd,
The more he is unsatisfy'd;
Is busy in finding scruples out,
To languish in eternal doubt;

Sees spectres in the dark, and ghosts,
And starts, as horses do at posts,
And, when his eyes assist him least,
Discerns such subtle objects best.
On hypothetic dreams and visions
Grounds everlasting disquisitions,
And raises endless controversies
On vulgar theorems and hearsays;
Grows positive and confident,
In things so far beyond th' extent
Of human sense, he does not know
Whether they be at all or no,

And doubts as much in things that are
As plainly evident and clear;
Disdains all useful sense, and plain,
T apply to th' intricate and vain ;
And cracks his brains in plodding on
That, which is never to be known;
To pose himself with subtleties,
And hold no other knowledge wise;
Although, the subtler all things are,
They're but to nothing the more near;
And, the less weight they can sustain,
The more he still lays on in vain,
And hangs his soul upon as nice

And subtle curiosities,

As one of that vast multitude,

That on a needle's point have stood;

Weighs right and wrong, and true and false,
Upon as nice and subtle scales,

As those that turn upon a plane

With th' hundredth part of half a grain,

And still the subtler they move,

The sooner false and useless prove.

So man, that thinks to force and strain,

Beyond its natural sphere, his brain,
In vain torments it on the rack,
And, for improving, sets it back;
Is ignorant of his own extent,

And that to, which his aims are bent;

not regularly inserted, I choose rather to give them
by way of note.

For men ne'er digg'd so deep into
The bowels of the Earth below,
For metals, that are found to dwell
Near neighbour to the pit of Hell,
And have a magic power to sway
The greedy souls of men that way,
But with their bodies have been fain
To fill those trenches up again;
When bloody battles have been fought
For sharing that which they took out:
For wealth is all things that conduce
To man's destruction or his use;
A standard both to buy and sell
All things from Heaven down to Hell.

Is lost in both, and breaks his blade
Upon the anvil where 'twas made:
For, as abortions cost more pain
Than vigorous births, so all the vain
And weak productions of man's wit,
That aim at purposes unfit,
Require more drudgery, and worse,
Than those of strong and lively force.

SATIRE

UPON

203

THE LICENTIOUS AGE OF CHARLES II.
'Tis a strange age we 've liv'd in, and a lewd,
As e'er the Sun in all his travels view'd;
An age as vile as ever Justice urg'd,
Like a fantastic letcher, to be scourg'd;
Nor has it scap'd, and yet has only learn'd,
The more 'tis plagued, to be the less concern'd.
Twice have we seen two dreadful judgments rage,
Enough to fright the stubborn'st-hearted age;
The one to mow vast crowds of people down,
The other (as then needless) half the town;
And two as mighty miracles restore
What both had ruin'd and destroy'd before;
In all as unconcern'd, as if they 'ad been
But pastimes for diversion to be seen,
Or, like the plagues of Egypt, meant a curse,
Not to reclaim us, but to make us worse.

(head)

Twice have men turn'd the World (that silly block-
The wrong side outward, like a juggler's pocket,
Shook out hypocrisy as fast and loose
As e'er the Devil could teach, or sinners use,
And on the other side at once put in

As impotent iniquity and sin.

As sculls that have been crack'd are often found
Upon the wrong side to receive the wound;
And like tobacco-pipes at one end hit,
To break at th' other still that 's opposite:
So men, who one extravagance would shun,
Into the contrary extreme have run;
And all the difference is, that, as the first
Provokes the other freak to prove the worst,
So, in return, that strives to render less
The last delusion, with its own excess,
And, like two unskill'd gamesters, use one way,
With bungling t' help out one another's play.
For those who heretofore sought private holes,
Secure in the dark to damn their souls,
Wore vizards of hypocrisy to steal
And slink away in masquerade to Hell,
Now bring their crimes into the open Sun,
For all mankind to gaze their worst upon,
As eagles try their young against his rays,
To prove if they 're of generous breed or base;
Call Heaven and Earth to witness how they 've aim'd,
With all their utmost vigour, to be damn'd,
And by their own examples, in the view
Of all the world, striv'd to damn others too;
On all occasions sought to be as civil
As possible they could t' his grace the Devil,
To give him no unnecessary trouble,
Nor in small matters use a friend so noble,
But with their constant practice done their best
T" improve and propagate his interest:
For men have now made vice so great an art,
The matter of fact 's become the slightest part;

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