Part 31

Else hadst thou left, as thou indeed hast left, Sufficient test, though now in others’ chests, T’ improve[727] the baseness of that humorous theft,[728] Which seems to flow from self-conceiving breasts: Thy name they bury, having buried thee; Drones eat thy honey—thou wert the true bee.

Peace keep thy soul! And now to you, sir ant: On with your prose, be neither rude nor nice; In your discourse let no decorum want, See that you be sententious and concise; And, as I like the matter, I will sing A canzonet, to close up every thing.

With this, the whole nest of ants hearing their fellow was free from danger, like comforters when care is over, came with great thanks to harmless Philomel, and made a ring about her and their restored friend, serving instead of a dull audience of stinkards sitting in the penny-galleries of a theatre, and yawning upon the players; whilst the ant began to stalk like a three-quarter sharer,[729] and was not afraid to tell tales out of the villanous school of the world, where the devil is the schoolmaster and the usurer the under-usher, the scholars young dicing landlords, that pass away three hundred acres with three dice in a hand, and after the decease of so much land in money become sons and heirs of bawdy-houses; for it is an easy labour to find heirs without land, but a hard thing indeed to find land without heirs. But for fear I interrupt this small actor in less than _decimo sexto_,[730] I leave, and give the ant leave to tell his tale.

_The Ant’s Tale when he was a ploughman._

I was sometimes, most chaste lady Nightingale, or rather, queen Philomel the ravished, a brow-melting husbandman: to be man and husband is to be a poor master of many rich cares, which, if he cannot subject and keep under, he must look for ever to undergo as many miseries as the hours of his years contain minutes: such a man I was, and such a husband, for I was linked in marriage: my havings were[731] small and my means less, yet charge came on me ere I knew how to keep it; yet did I all my endeavours, had a plough and land to employ it, fertile enough if it were manured, and for tillage I was never held a truant.

But my destruction, and the ruin of all painful husbandmen about me, began by the prodigal downfal of my young landlord, whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, for many generations had been lords of the town wherein I dwelt, and many other towns near adjoining: to all which belonged fair commons for the comfort of the poor, liberty of fishing, help of fuel by brush and underwood never denied, till the old devourer of virtue, honesty, and good neighbourhood, death, had made our landlord dance after his pipe,—which is so common, that every one knows the way, though they make small account of it. Well, die he did; and as soon as he was laid in his grave, the bell might well have tolled for hospitality and good housekeeping; for whether they fell sick with him and died, and so were buried, I know not; but I am sure in our town they were never seen since, nor, that I can hear of, in any other part; especially about us they are impossible to be found. Well, our landlord being dead, we had his heir, gentle enough and fair-conditioned,[732] rather promising at first his father’s virtues than the world’s villanies; but he was so accustomed to wild and unfruitful company about the court and London (whither he was sent by his sober father to practise civility and manners), that in the country he would scarce keep till his father’s body was laid in the cold earth; but as soon as the hasty funeral was solemnised, from us he posted, discharging all his old father’s servants (whose beards were even frost-bitten with age), and was attended only by a monkey and a marmoset;[733] the one being an ill-faced fellow, as variable as New-fangle[734] for fashions; the other an imitator of any thing, however villanous, but utterly destitute of all goodness. With this French page and Italianate serving-man was our young landlord only waited on, and all to save charges in servingmen, to pay it out in harlots: and we poor men had news of a far greater expense within less than a quarter. For we were sent for to London, and found our great landlord in a little room about the Strand; who told us, that whereas we had lived tenants at will, and might in his forefathers’ days [have] been hourly turned out, he, putting on a better conscience to usward, intended to make us leases for years; and for advice ’twixt him and us he had made choice of a lawyer, a mercer, and a merchant, to whom he was much beholding,[735] who that morning were appointed to meet in the Temple-church. Temple and church, both one in name, made us hope of a holy meeting; but there is an old proverb, _The nearer the church, the farther from God_: to approve[736] which saying, we met the mercer and the merchant, that, loving our landlord or his land well, held him a great man in both their books. Some little conference they had; what the conclusion was, we poor men were not yet acquainted with; but being called at their leisure, and when they pleased to think upon us, told us they were to dine together at the Horn in Fleet-street, being a house where their lawyer resorted; and if we would there attend them, we should understand matter much for our good: and in the meantime, they appointed us near the old Temple-Garden to attend their counsellor, whose name was master Prospero, not the great rider of horse[737]— for I heard there was once such a one,—but a more cunning rider, who had rid many men till they were more miserable than beasts, and our ill hap it was to prove his hackneys. Well, though the issue were ill, on we went to await his worship, whose chamber we found that morning fuller of clients than I could ever see suppliants to heaven in our poor parish-church, and yet we had in it three hundred households: and I may tell it with reverence, I never saw more submission done to God than to that great lawyer; every suitor there offered gold to this gowned idol, standing bareheaded in a sharp-set morning, for it was in booted[738] Michaelmas-term, and not a word spoke to him but it was with the[739] bowing of the body and the submissive flexure of the knee. Short tale to make, he was informed of us what we were, and of our coming up; when with an iron look and shrill voice, he began to speak to the richest of our number, ever and anon yerking out the word _fines_, which served instead of a full-point to every sentence.

But that word _fines_ was no fine word, methought, to please poor labouring husbandmen, that can scarce sweat out so much in a twelvemonth as he would demand in a twinkling. At last, to close up the lamentable tragedy of us ploughmen, enters our young landlord, so metamorphosed into the shape of a French puppet, that at the first we started, and thought one of the baboons had marched in in man’s apparel. His head was dressed up in white feathers like a shuttlecock, which agreed so well with his brain, being nothing but cork, that two of the biggest of the guard might very easily have tossed him with battledores, and made good sport with him in his majesty’s great hall. His doublet was of a strange cut; and to shew the fury of his humour, the collar of it rose up so high and sharp as if it would have cut his throat by daylight. His wings,[740] according to the fashion now, were[741] as little and diminutive as a puritan’s ruff, which shewed he ne’er meant to fly out of England, nor do any exploit beyond sea, but live and die about London, though he begged in Finsbury. His breeches, a wonder to see, were full as deep as the middle of winter, or the roadway between London and Winchester, and so large and wide withal, that I think within a twelvemonth he might very well put all his lands in them; and then you may imagine they were big enough, when they would outreach a thousand acres: moreover, they differed so far from our fashioned hose[742] in the country, and from his father’s old gascoynes,[743] that his back-part seemed to us like a monster; the roll of the breeches standing so low, that we conjectured his house of office, sir-reverence,[744] stood in his hams. All this while his French monkey bore his cloak of three pounds a-yard, lined clean through with purple velvet, which did so dazzle our coarse eyes, that we thought we should have been purblind ever after, what with the prodigal aspect of that and his glorious rapier and hangers[745] all bost[746] with pillars of gold, fairer in show than the pillars in Paul’s or the tombs at Westminster; beside, it drunk up the price of all my plough-land in very pearl, which stuck as thick upon those hangers as the white measles upon hog’s flesh. When I had well viewed that gay gaudy cloak and those unthrifty wasteful hangers, I muttered thus to myself: That is no cloak for the rain, sure; nor those no hangers for Derrick;[747] when of a sudden, casting mine eyes lower, I beheld a curious pair of boots of king Philip’s[748] leather, in such artificial wrinkles, sets, and plaits, as if they had been starched lately and came new from the laundress’s, such was my ignorance and simple acquaintance with the fashion, and I dare swear my fellows and neighbours here are all as ignorant as myself. But that which struck us most into admiration, upon those fantastical boots stood such huge and wide tops, which so swallowed up his thighs, that had he sworn, as other gallants did, this common oath, Would I might sink as I stand! all his body might very well have sunk down and been damned in his boots. Lastly, he walked the chamber with such a pestilent gingle,[749] that his spurs over-squeaked the lawyer, and made him reach his voice three notes above his fee; but after we had spied the rowels of his spurs, how we blest ourselves! they did so much and so far exceed the compass of our fashion, that they looked more like the forerunners of wheelbarrows. Thus was our young landlord accoutred in such a strange and prodigal shape,[750] that it amounted to above two years’ rent in apparel. At last approached[751] the mercer and the merchant, two notable arch-tradesmen, who had fitted my young master in clothes, whilst they had clothed themselves in his acres, and measured him out velvet by the thumb, whilst they received his revenues by handfuls; for he had not so many yards in his suit as they had yards and houses bound for the payment, which now he was forced to pass over to them, or else all his lands should be put to[752] their book and to their forfeiting neck-verse;[753] so my youngster was now at his pension, not like a gentleman-pensioner, but like a gentleman-spender. Whereupon entered master Bursebell, the royal scrivener, with deeds and writings hanged, drawn, and quartered, for the purpose: he was a valiant scribe, I remember; his pen lay mounted between his ear like a Tower-gun, but not charged yet till our young master’s patrimony shot off, which was some third part of an hour after. By this time, the lawyer, the mercer, and the merchant, were whispering and consulting together about the writings and passage of the land in very deep and sober conference; but our wiseacres all the while, as one regardless of either land or money, not hearkening or inquisitive after their subtle and politic devices, held himself very busy about the burning of his tobacco-pipe (as there is no gallant but hath a pipe to burn about London), though we poor simple men never heard of the name till that time; and he might very fitly take tobacco there, for the lawyer and the rest made him smoke already. But to have noted the apish humour of him, and the fantastical faces he coined in the receiving of the smoke, it would have made your ladyship have sung nothing but merry jigs[754] for a twelvemonth after,—one time winding the pipe like a horn at the Pie-corner of his mouth, which must needs make him look like a sow-gelder,[755] and another time screwing his face like one of our country players, which must needs make him look like a fool; nay, he had at least his dozen of faces, but never a good one amongst them all; neither his father’s face, nor the face of his grandfather, but yet more wicked and riotous faces than all the generation of him. Now their privy whisperings and villanous plots began to be drawn to a conclusion, when presently they called our smoky landlord in the midst of his draught, who in a valiant humour dashed his tobacco-pipe into the chimney-corner: whereat I started, and beckoning his marmoset[756] to me, asked him if those long white things did cost no money? to which the slave replied very proudly, Money! yes, sirrah; but I tell thee, my master scorns to have a thing come twice to his mouth. Then, quoth I, I think thy master is more choice in his mouth than in any member else: it were good if he used that all his body over, he would never have need, as many gallants have, of any sweating physic. Sweating physic! replied the marmoset; what may thy meaning be? why, do not you ploughmen sweat too? Yes, quoth I, most of any men living; but yet there is a difference between the sweat of a ploughman and the sweat of a gentleman, as much as between your master’s apparel and mine, for when we sweat, the land prospers, and the harvest comes in; but when a gentleman sweats, I wot how the gear[757] goes then. No sooner were these words spoken but the marmoset had drawn out his poniard half-way to make a show of revenge, but at the smart voice of the lawyer he suddenly whipt it in again. Now was our young master with one penful of ink doing a far greater exploit than all his forefathers; for what they were a-purchasing all their lifetime, he was now passing away in the fourth part of a minute; and that which many thousand drops of his grandfather’s brows did painfully strive for, one drop now of a scrivener’s inkhorn did easily pass over: a dash of a pen stood for a thousand acres: how quickly they were dashed in the mouth by our young landlord’s prodigal fist! it seemed he made no more account of acres than of acorns. Then were we called to set our hands for witnesses of his folly, which we poor men did witness too much already; and because we were found ignorant in writing, and never practised in that black art—which I might very fitly term so, because it conjured our young master out of all—we were commanded, as it were, to draw any mark with a pen, which should signify as much as the best hand that ever old Peter Bales[758] hung out in the Old Bailey. To conclude, I took the pen first of the lawyer, and turning it arsy-versy, like no instrument for a ploughman, our youngster and the rest of the faction burst into laughter at the simplicity of my fingering; but I, not so simple as they laughed me for, drew the picture of a knavish emblem, which was a plough with the heels upward, signifying thereby that the world was turned upside down since the decease of my old landlord, all hospitality and good housekeeping kicked out of doors, all thriftiness and good husbandry tossed into the air, ploughs turned into trunks,[759] and corn into apparel. Then came another of our husbandmen to set his mark by mine: he holding the pen clean at the one side towards the merchant and the mercer, shewing that all went on their sides, drew the form of an unbridled colt, so wild and unruly, that he seemed with one foot to kick up the earth and spoil the labours of many toiling beasts, which was fitly alluded to our wild and unbridled landlord, which, like the colt, could stand upon no ground till he had no ground to stand upon.