Part 32

These marks, set down under the shape of simplicity, were the less marked with the eyes of knavery; for they little dreamed that we ploughmen could have so much satire in us as to bite our young landlord by the elbow. Well, this ended, master Bursebell, the calves’-skin scrivener, was royally handled, that is, he had a royal[760] put in his hand by the merchant. And now I talk of calves’-skin, ’tis great pity, lady Nightingale, that the skins of harmless and innocent beasts should be as instruments to work villany upon, entangling young novices and foolish elder brothers, which are caught like woodcocks in the net of the law; for[761] ’tis easier for one of the greatest fowls to slide through the least hole of a net, than one of the least fools to get from the lappet of a bond. By this time the squeaking lawyer began to re-iterate that cold word _fines_, which struck so chill to our hearts, that it made them as cold as our heels, which were almost frozen to the floor with standing. Yea, quoth the merchant and the mercer, you are now tenants of ours; all the right, title, and interest of this young gentleman, your late landlord, we are firmly possessed of, as you yourselves are witnesses: wherefore this is the conclusion of our meeting; such fines as master Prospero here, by the valuation of the land, shall, out of his proper judgment, allot to us, such are we to demand at your hands; therefore we refer you to him, to wait his answer at the gentleman’s best time and leisure. With that, they stiffled two or three angels[762] in the lawyer’s right hand:—right hand, said I? which hand was that, trow ye? for it is impossible to know which is the right hand of a lawyer, because there are but few lawyers that have right hands, and those few make much of them. So, taking their leaves of my young landlord that was, and that never shall be again, away they marched, heavier by a thousand acres at their parting than they were before at their meeting. The lawyer then, turning his Irish face to usward, willed us to attend his worship the next term, when we should further understand his pleasure. We, poor souls, thanked his worship, and paid him his fee out in legs;[763] when, in sight of us, he embraced our young gentleman (I think, for a fool), and gave him many riotous instructions how to carry himself, which he was prompter to take than the other to put into him; told him he must acquaint himself with many gallants of the Inns-of-Court, and keep rank with those that spend most, always wearing a bountiful disposition about him, lofty and liberal; his lodging must be about the Strand in any case, being remote from the handicraft scent of the city; his eating must be in some famous tavern, as the Horn, the Mitre, or the Mermaid;[764] and then after dinner he must venture beyond sea, that is, in a choice pair of noblemen’s oars, to the Bankside,[765] where he must sit out the breaking-up[766] of a comedy, or the first cut of a tragedy; or rather, if his humour so serve him, to call in at the Blackfriars,[767] where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man. This said, our young goose-cap, who was ready to embrace such counsel, thanked him for his fatherly admonitions, as he termed them, and told him again that he should not find him with the breach of any of them, swearing and protesting he would keep all those better than the ten commandments: at which word he buckled on his rapier and hangers,[768] his monkey-face casting on his cloak by the book; after an apish congee or two, passed down stairs, without either word or nod to us his old father’s tenants. Nevertheless we followed him, like so many russet servingmen, to see the event of all, and what the issue would come to; when, of a sudden, he was encountered by a most glorious-spangled gallant, which we took at first to have been some upstart tailor, because he measured all his body with a salutation, from the flow of the doublet to the fall of the breeches; but at last we found him to be a very fantastical sponge, that licked up all humours, the very ape of fashions, gesture, and compliment,—one of those indeed, as we learned afterward, that fed upon young landlords, riotous sons and heirs, till either he or the Counter in Wood-street had swallowed them up; and would not stick to be a bawd or pander to such young gallants as our young gentleman, either to acquaint them with harlots, or harlots with them; to bring them a whole dozen of taffeta punks at a supper, and they should be none of these common Molls neither, but discontented and unfortunate gentlewomen, whose parents being lately deceased, the brother ran away with all the land, and they,[769] poor squalls,[770] with a little money, which cannot hold out long without some comings in; but they will rather venture a maidenhead than want a head-tire; such shuttlecocks as these, which, though they are tossed and played withal, go still[771] like maids, all white on the top: or else, decayed gentlemen’s wives, whose husbands, poor souls, lying for debt in the King’s Bench, they go about to make monsters in the King’s-Head tavern; for this is a general axiom, all your luxurious[772] plots are always begun in taverns, to be ended in vau[l]ting-houses;[773] and after supper, when fruit comes in, there is small fruit of honesty to be looked for,—for you know that the eating of the apple always betokens the fall of Eve. Our prodigal child, accompanied with this soaking swaggerer and admirable cheater, who had supt up most of our heirs about London like poached eggs, slips into White-Friars’ nunnery,[774] whereas[775] the report went he kept his most delicate drab of three hundred a-year, some unthrifty gentleman’s daughter, who had mortgaged his land to scriveners, sure enough from redeeming again; for so much she seemed by her bringing up, though less by her casting down. Endued she was, as we heard, with some good qualities, though all were converted then but to flattering villanies: she could run upon the lute very well, which in others would have appeared virtuous, but in her lascivious, for her running was rather jested at, because she was a light runner besides: she had likewise the gift of singing very deliciously, able to charm the hearer; which so bewitched away our young master’s money, that he might have kept seven noise[776] of musicians for less charges, and yet they would have stood for servingmen too, having blue coats[777] of their own. She had a humour to lisp often, like a flattering wanton, and talk childish, like a parson’s daughter; which so pleased and rapt our old landlord’s lickerish son, that he would swear she spake nothing but sweetmeats, and her breath then sent forth such a delicious odour, that it perfumed his white-satin doublet better than sixteen milliners. Well, there we left him, with his devouring cheater and his glorious cockatrice;[778] and being almost upon dinner-time, we hied us and took our repast at thrifty mother Walker’s, where we found a whole nest of pinching bachelors, crowded together upon forms and benches, in that most worshipful three-halfpenny ordinary,[779] where presently they were boarded[780] with hot monsieur Mutton-and-porridge (a Frenchman by his blowing); and next to them we were served in order, every one taking their degree: and I tell you true, lady, I have known the time when our young landlord’s father hath been a three-halfpenny eater there,—nay more, was the first that acquainted us with that sparing and thrifty ordinary, when his riotous son hath since spent his five pound at a sitting. Well, having discharged our small shot (which was like hail-shot in respect of our young master’s cannon-reckonings in taverns), we plodded home to our ploughs, carrying these heavy news to our wives both of the prodigality of our old landlord’s son, as also of our oppressions to come by the burden of uncharitable fines. And, most musical madam Nightingale, do but imagine now what a sad Christmas we all kept in the country, without either carols, wassail-bowls,[781] dancing of Sellenger’s round[782] in moonshine nights about May-poles, shoeing the mare, hoodman-blind, hot-cockles, or any of our old Christmas gambols; no, not so much as choosing king and queen on twelfth night: such was the dulness of our pleasures,—for that one word _fines_ robbed us of all our fine pastimes.

This sour-faced Christmas thus unpleasantly past over, up again we trotted to London, in a great frost, I remember, for the ground was as hard as the lawyer’s conscience; and arriving at the luxurious Strand some three days before the term, we inquired for our bountiful landlord, or the fool in the full, at his neat and curious lodging; but answer was made us by an old chamber-maid, that our gentleman slept not there all the Christmas time, but had been at court, and at least in five masques; marry, now, as she thought, we might find him at master Poops his ordinary, with half-a-dozen of gallants more at dice. At dice? at the devil! quoth I, for that is a dicer’s last throw. Here I began to rail, like Thomas Nash[783] against Gabriel Harvey, if you call that railing; yet I think it was but the running a tilt of wits in booksellers’ shops on both sides of John of Paul’s[784] churchyard; and I wonder how John scaped unhorsing. But when we were entered the door of the ordinary, we might hear our lusty gentleman shoot off a volley of oaths some three rooms over us, cursing the dice, and wishing the pox were in their bones, crying out for a new pair of square ones, for the other belike had cogged[785] with him and made a gull of him. When the host of the ordinary coming down stairs met us with this report, after we had named him, Troth, good fellows, you have named now the most unfortunatest gentleman living, at passage[786] I mean; for I protest I have stood by myself as a heavy eye-witness, and seen the beheading of five hundred crowns, and what pitiful end they all made. With that he shewed us his embost girdle and hangers[787] new-pawned for more money, and told us beside, not without tears, his glorious cloak was cast away three hours before overboard, which was, off the table. At which lamentable hearing, we stood still in the lower room, and durst not venture up stairs, for fear he would have laid all us ploughmen to pawn too; and yet I think all we could scarce have made up one throw. But to draw to an end, as his patrimony did, we had not lingered the better part of an hour, but down came fencing[788] his glittering rapier and dagger, as if he had been newly shoulder-clapt by a pewter-buttoned sergeant and his weapons seized upon. At last, after a great peal of oaths on all sides, the court broke up, and the worshipful bench of dicers came thundering down stairs, some singing, with such a confusion of humours, that had we not[789] known before what rank of gallants they were, we should have thought the devils had been at dice in an ordinary. The first that appeared to us was our most lamentable landlord, dressed up in his monkey’s livery-cloak, that he seemed now rather to wait upon his monkey than his monkey upon him, which did set forth his satin suit so excellent scurvily, that he looked for all the world like a French lord in dirty boots. When casting his eye upon us, being desirous, as it seemed, to remember us now if we had any money, brake into these fantastical speeches: What, my whole warren of tenants?—thinking indeed to make conies[790] of us,—my honest nest of ploughmen, the only kings of Kent! More dice, ho! i’faith,[791] let’s have another career, and vomit three dice in a hand again. With that I plucked his humour at one side, and told him we were indeed his father’s tenants, but his we were sorry we were not; and as for money to maintain his dice, we had not sufficient to stuff out the lawyer. Then replied our gallant in a rage, tossing out two or three new-minted oaths, These ploughmen are politicians, I think; they have wit, the whorsons; they will be tenants, I perceive, longer than we shall be landlords. And fain he would have swaggered with us, but that his weapons were at pawn: so, marching out like a turned gentleman, the rest of the gallants seemed to cashier him, and throw him out of their company like a blank die—the one having no black peeps[792], nor he no white pieces. Now was our gallant the true picture of the prodigal; and having no rents to gather now, he gathered his wits about him, making his brain pay him revenues in villany; for it is a general observation, that your sons and heirs prove seldom wise men till they have no more land than the compass of their noddles. To conclude, within few days’ practice he was grown as[793] absolute in cheating, and as exquisite in pandarism, that he outstripped all Greene’s books[794] _Of the Art of Cony-catching_; and where[795] before he maintained his drab, he made his drab now maintain him; proved the only true captain of vaulting-houses,[796] and the valiant champion against constables and searchers; feeding upon the sin of White-Friars, Pict-hatch, and Turnboll Street.[797] Nay, there was no landed novice now but he could melt him away into nothing, and in one twelvemonth make him hold all his land between his legs, and yet but straddle easily neither; no wealthy son of the city but within less than a quarter he could make all his stock not worth a Jersey stocking: he was all that might be in dissolute villany, and nothing that should be in his forefathers’ honesty. To speak troth, we did so much blush at his life, and were so ashamed of his base courses, that ever after we loathed to look after them. But returning to our stubble-haired lawyer, who reaped his beard every term-time (the lawyer’s harvest), we found the mercer and the merchant crowdd in his study amongst a company of law-books, which they justled so often with their coxcombs, that they were almost together by the ears with them; when at the sight of us they took an _habeas corpus_, and removed their bodies into a bigger room. But there we lingered not long for our torments; for the mercer and the merchant gave fire to the lawyer’s tongue with a rope of angels,[798] and the word _fines_ went off with such a powder, that the force of it blew us all into the country, quite changed our ploughmen’s shapes, and so we became little ants again.

This, madam Nightingale, is the true discourse of our rural fortunes, which, how miserable, wretched, and full of oppression they were, all husbandmen’s brows can witness, that are fined with more sweat still year by year; and I hope a canzonet of your sweet singing will set them forth to the world in satirical harmony.

The remorseful[799] nightingale, delighted with the ant’s quaint discourse, began to tune the instrument of her voice, breathing forth these lines in sweet and delicious airs.

_The Nightingale’s Canzonet._

Poor little ant, Thou shalt not want The ravish’d music of my voice! Thy shape is best, Now thou art least, For great ones fall with greater noise: And this shall be the marriage of my song, Small bodies can have but a little wrong.

Now thou art securer, And thy days far surer; Thou pay’st no rent upon the rack, To daub a prodigal landlord’s back, Or to maintain the subtle running Of dice and drabs, both one in cunning; Both pass from hand to hand to many, Flattering all, yet false to any; Both are well link’d, for, throw dice how you can, They will turn up their peeps[800] to every man.

Happy art thou, and all thy brothers, That never feel’st the hell of others! The torment to a luxur[801] due, Who never thinks his harlot true; Although upon her heels he stick his eyes, Yet still he fears that though she stands she lies.

Now are thy labours easy, Thy state not sick or queasy; All drops thou sweat’st are now thine own; Great subsidies be as unknown To thee and to thy little fellow-ants, Now none of you under that burden pants.

Lo, for example, I myself, poor worms,[802] That have outworn the rage of Tereus’ storms, Am ever blest now, in this downy shape, From all men’s treachery or soul-melting rape; And when I sing _Tereu_, _Tereu_, Through every town, and so renew

The name of Tereus, slaves, through fears, With guilty fingers bolt their ears, All[803] ravishers do rave and e’en fall mad, And then such wrong’d souls as myself are glad.

So thou, small wretch, and all thy nest, Are in those little bodies blest, Not tax’d beyond your poor degree With landlord’s fine and lawyer’s fee: But tell me, pretty toiling worm, Did that same ploughman’s weary form Discourage thee so much from others, That neither thou nor those thy brothers, In borrow’d shapes, durst once agen[804] Venture amongst perfidious men?

ANT.

Yes, lady, the poor ant replied, I left not so; but then I tried War’s sweating fortunes; not alone Condemning rash all states for one, Until I found by proof, and knew by course, That one was bad, but all the rest were worse.

NIGHTINGALE.

Didst thou put on a rugged soldier then? A happy state, because thou fought’st ’gainst men. Prithee, discourse thy fortunes, state, and harms; Thou wast, no doubt, a mighty man-at-arms.

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

Then thus, most musical and prickle-singing[805] madam (for, if I err not, your ladyship was the first that brought up prick-song,[806] being nothing else but the fatal notes of your pitiful ravishment), I, not contented long, a vice cleaving to all worldlings, with this little estate of an ant, but stuffed with envy and ambition, as small as I was, desired to venture into the world again, which I may rather term the upper hell or _frigida gehenna_, the cold-charitable hell, wherein are all kind of devils too; as your gentle devil, your ordinary devil, and your gallant devil; and all these can change their shapes too, as to-day in cowardly white, to-morrow in politic black, a third day in jealous yellow; for believe it, sweet lady, there are devils of all colours. Nevertheless, I, covetous of more change, leapt out of this little skin of an ant, and hung my skin on the hedge, taking upon me the grisly shape of a dusty soldier. Well made I was, and my limbs valiantly hewn out for the purpose: I had a mazzard,[807] I remember, so well lined in the inside with my brain, it stood me in better stead than a double headpiece; for the brain of a soldier, differing from all other sciences, converts itself to no other[808] use but to line, fur, and even quilt the coxcomb, and so makes a pate of proof: my face was well leavened, which made my looks taste sour, the true relish of a man of war; my cheeks dough-baked, pale, wan, and therefore argued valour and resolution; but my nose somewhat hard-baked, and a little burnt in the oven, a property not amiss in a soldier’s visage, who should scorn to blush but in his nose; my chin was well thatched with a beard, which was a necessary shelter in winter, and a fly-flap in summer, so brushy and spreading, that my lips could scarce be seen to walk abroad, but played at all-hid, and durst not peep forth for starting a hair. To conclude, my arms, thighs, and legs, were so sound, stout, and weighty, as if they had come all out of the timber-yard, that my very presence only was able to still the bawlingest infant in Europe. And I think, madam, this was no unlikely shape for a soldier to prove well; here was mettle enough for four shillings a-week to do valiant service till it was bored as full of holes as a skimmer. Well, to the wars I betook me, ranked myself amongst desperate hot shots,—only my carriage put on more civility, for I seemed more like a spy than a follower, an observer rather than a committer of villany. And little thought I, madam, that the camp had been supplied with harlots too as well as the Curtain,[809] and the guarded tents as wicked as garden tenements;[810] trulls passing to and fro in the washed shape of laundresses, as your bawds about London in the manner of starchwomen, which is the most unsuspected habit that can be to train out a mistress. And if your ladyship will not think me much out of the way though I take a running leap from the camp to the Strand again, I will discover a pretty knavery of the same breeding between such a starchwoman and a kind wanton mistress; as there are few of those balassed vessels now-a-days but will have a love and a husband.