Part 33

The woman crying her ware by the door (a most pitiful cry, and a[811] lamentable hearing that such a stiff thing as starch should want customers), passing cunningly and slily by the stall,[812] not once taking notice of the party you wot on, but being by this some three or four shops off, Mass, quoth my young mistress to the weathercock her husband, such a thing I want, you know: then she named how many puffs and purls[813] lay in a miserable case for want of stiffening. The honest plain-dealing jewel her husband sent out a boy to call her (not bawd by her right name, but starchwoman): into the shop she came, making a low counterfeit curtsey, of whom the mistress demanded if the starch were pure gear,[814] and would be stiff in her ruff, saying she had often been deceived before, when the things about her have stood as limber as eelskins. The woman replied as subtilely, Mistress, quoth she, take this paper of starch of my hand; and if it prove not to your mind, never bestow penny with me,—which paper, indeed, was a letter sent to her from the gentleman her exceeding favourite. Say you so? quoth the young dame, and I’ll try it, i’faith. With that she ran up stairs like a spinner upon small cobweb ropes, not to try or arraign the starch, but to conster[815] and parse the letter (whilst her husband sat below by the counter, like one of these brow-bitten catchpolls that wait for one man all day, when his wife can put five in the counter before him), wherein she found many words that pleased her. Withal the gentleman writ unto her for a certain sum of money, which no sooner was read, but was ready to be sent: wherefore, laying up the starch and that, and taking another sheet of clean paper in her hand, wanting time and opportunity to write at large, with a penful of ink, in the very middle of the sheet, writ these few quaint monosyllables, _Coin, Cares, and Cures, and all C’s else are yours_. Then rolling up the white money like the starch in that paper very subtilely and artificially, came tripping down stairs with these colourable words, Here’s goodly starch indeed! fie, fie!—trust me, husband, as yellow as the jaundice; I would not have betrayed my puffs with it for a million:— here, here, here (giving her the paper of money). With that the subtle starchwoman, seeming sorry that it pleased her not, told her, within few days she would fit her turn with that which should like[816] her; meaning indeed more such sweet news from her lover. These and such like, madam, are the cunning conveyances[817] of secret, privy, and therefore unnoted harlots, that so avoid the common finger of the world, when less committers than they are publicly pointed at.

So likewise in the camp, whither now I return, borne on the swift wings of apprehension, the habit of a laundress shadows the abomination of a strumpet; and our soldiers are like glovers, for the one cannot work well, nor the other fight well, without their wenches. This was the first mark of villany that I found sticking upon the brow of war; but after the hot and fiery copulation of a skirmish or two, the ordnance playing like so many Tamburlaines,[818] the muskets and calivers answering like drawers, Anon, anon, sir,[819] I cannot be here and there too,—that is, in the soldier’s hand and in the enemy’s belly, I grew more acquainted, and, as it were, entered into the entrails of black-livered policy. Methought, indeed, at first, those great pieces of ordnance should speak English, though now by transportation turned rebels: and what a miserable and pitiful plight it was, lady, to have so many thousands of our men slain by their own countrymen the cannons,—I mean not the harmless canons of Paul’s, but those cannons that have a great singing in their heads! Well, in this onset I remember I was well smoke-dried, but neither arm nor leg perished, not so much as the loss of a petty finger; for when I counted them all over, I missed not one of them; and yet sometimes the bullets came within a hair of my coxcomb, even like a barber scratching my pate, and perhaps took away the left limb of a vermin, and so departed; another time shouldering me like a bailiff against Michaelmas-term, and then shaking me by the sleeve as familiarly as if we had been acquainted seven years together. To conclude, they used me very courteously and gentlemanlike awhile; like an old cunning bowler to fetch in a young ketling[820] gamester, who will suffer him to win one sixpenny-game at the first, and then lurch him in six pounds afterward: and so they played with me, still training me, with their fair promises, into far deeper and deadlier battles, where, like villanous cheating bowlers, they lurched me of two of my best limbs, viz. my right arm and right leg, that so, of a man of war, I became in shew a monster of war; yet comforted in this, because I knew war begot many such monsters as myself in less than a twelvemonth. Now I could discharge no more, having paid the shot dear enough, I think, but rather desired to be discharged, to have pay and begone: whereupon I appeared to my captain and other commanders, kissing my left hand, which then stood for both (like one actor that plays two parts), who seemed to pity my unjointed fortunes and plaster my wounds up with words, told me I had done valiant service in their knowledge; marry, as for pay, they must go on the score with me, for all their money was thumped out in powder: and this was no pleasing salve for a green sore, madam; ’twas too much for me, lady, to trust calivers with my limbs, and then cavaliers with my money. Nevertheless, for all my lamentable action of one arm, like old Titus Andronicus,[821] I could purchase no more than one month’s pay for a ten months’ pain and peril, nor that neither, but to convey away my miserable clamours, that lay roaring against the arches of their ears, marry, their bountiful favours were extended thus far,—I had a passport to beg in all countries.

Well, away I was packed; and after a few miseries by the way, at last I set one foot into England again (for I had no more then to set), being my native though unnatural country, for whose dear good I pawned my limbs to bullets, those merciless brokers, that will take the vantage of a minute; and so they were quite forfeited, lost, and unrecoverable. When I was on shore, the people gathered,—which word _gathering_ put me in hope of good comfort, that afterward I failed of; for I thought at first they had gathered something for me, but I found at last they did only but gather about me; some wondering at me, as if I had been some sea-monster cast ashore, some jesting at my deformity, whilst others laughed at the jests: one amongst them, I remember, likened me to a sea-crab, because I went all of one side; another fellow vied it,[822] and said I looked like a rabbit cut up and half-eaten, because my wing and leg, as they termed it, were departed. Some began to pity me, but those were few in number, or at least their pity was as pennyless as Pierce,[823] who writ to the devil for maintenance. Thus passing from place to place, like the motion[824] of Julius Cæsar or the City Nineveh, though not altogether in so good clothes, I overtook the city from whence I borrowed my first breath, and in whose defence I spent and laid out my limbs by whole sums to purchase her peace and happiness, nothing doubting but to be well entreated[825] there, my grievous maims tenderly regarded, my poor broken estate carefully repaired, the ruins of my blood built up again with redress and comfort: but woe the while, madam! I was not only unpitied, succourless, and rejected, but threatened with the public stocks, loathsome jails, and common whipping-posts, there to receive my pay—a goodly reward for my[826] bleeding service—if I were once found in the city again.

Wherefore I was forced to retire towards the Spital and Shoreditch, which, as it appeared, was the only Cole-harbor[827] and sanctuary for wenches and soldiers; where I took up a poor lodging a’ trust till the Sunday, hoping that then master Alms and mistress Charity would walk abroad and take the air in Finsbury. At which time I came hopping out from my lodging, like old lame Giles of Cripplegate; but when I came there, the wind blew so bleak and cold, that I began to be quite out of hope of charity; yet, like a torn map of misery, I waited my single halfpenny fortunes; when, of a sudden, turning myself about, and looking down the Windmill-hill, I might espy afar off a fine-fashioned dame of the city, with her man bound by indenture before her; whom no sooner I caught in mine eyelids, but I made to with all possible speed, and with a premeditated speech for the nonce,[828] thus, most soldier-like, I accosted her: Sweet lady, I beseech your beauty to weigh the estate of a poor unjointed soldier, that hath consumed the moiety, or the one-half of his limbs, in the dismembering and devouring wars, that have[829] cheated me of my flesh so notoriously, I protest I am not worth at this instant the small revenue of three farthings, beside my lodging unpleased[830] and my diet unsatisfied; and had I ten thousand limbs, I would venture them all in your sweet quarrel, rather than such a beauty as yourself should want the least limb of your desire. With that, as one being rather moved by my last words of promise than my first words of pity, she drew her white bountiful hand out of her marry-muff,[831] and quoited a single halfpenny; whereby I knew her then to be cold mistress Charity, both by her chill appearance and the hard, frozen pension she gave me. She was warm[832] lapt, I remember, from the sharp injury of the biting air; her visage was benighted with a taffeta-mask, to fray away the naughty wind from her face, and yet her very nose seemed so sharp with cold, that it almost bored a hole quite through: this was frost-bitten Charity; her teeth chattered in her head, and leaped up and down like virginal-jacks[833] which betrayed likewise who she was: and you would have broke into infinite laughter, madam (though misery made me leaden and pensive), had you been present, to have seen how quickly the muff swallowed her hand again; for no sooner was it drawn forth to drop down her pitiful alms, but, for fear the sun and air should have ravished it, it was extempore whipt up again. This is the true picture of Charity, madam, which is as cold as ice in the middle of July.

Well, still I waited for another fare; but then I bethought myself again, that all the fares went by water a’ Sundays to the bear-baiting,[834] and a’ Mondays to Westminster-hall; and therefore little to be looked for in Moorfields all the week long: wherefore I sat down by the rails there, and fell into these passionate,[835] but not railing speeches: Is this the farthest reward for a soldier? are[836] valour and resolution, the two champions of the soul, so slightly esteemed and so basely undervalued? doth reeling Fortune not only rob us of our limbs, but of our living? are soldiers, then, both food for cannon and for misery? But then, in the midst of my passion, calling to memory the peevish turns[837] of many famous popular gallants, whose names were writ even upon the heart of the world—it could not so much as think without them, nor speak but in the discourse of them—I began to outdare the very worst of cruel and disaster chances, and determined to be constant in calamity, and valiant against the battering siege of misery. But note the cross star that always dogged my fortunes: I had not long rested there, but I saw the tweering[838] constable of Finsbury, with his bench of brown-bill-men,[839] making towards me, meaning indeed to stop some prison-hole with me, as your soldiers, when the wars have done with them, are good for nothing else but to stop holes withal; at which sight, I scrambled up of[840] all two, took my skin off the hedge, cozened the constable, and slipt[841] into an ant again.

NIGHTINGALE.

O, ’twas a pretty, quaint deceit, (The Nightingale began to sing,) To slip from those that lie in wait, Whose touch is like a raven’s wing, Fatal and ominous, which, being spread Over a mortal, aims him dead.

Alas, poor emmet! thou wast tost In thousand miseries by this shape; Thy colour wasted, thy blood lost, Thy limbs broke with the violent rape Of hot impatient cannons, which desire To ravish lives, spending their lust in fire.

O what a ruthful sight it is to see, Though in a soldier of the mean’st degree, That right member perish’d Which the[842] body cherish’d! That limb dissever’d, burnt, and gone, Which the best part was borne upon: And then, the greatest ruth of all, Returning home in torn estate, Where he should rise, there most to fall, Trod down with envy, bruis’d with hate: Yet, wretch, let this thy comfort be, That greater worms[843] have far’d like thee.

So here thou left’st, bloodless and wan, Thy journeys thorough man and man; These two cross’d shapes, so much opprest, Did fray thy weakness from the rest.

ANT.

No, madam, once again my spleen did thirst To try the third, which makes men blest or curst; That number three many stars wait upon, Ushering clear hap or black confusion: Once more I ventur’d all my hopes to crown,— But, aye me! leapt into a scholar’s gown.

NIGHTINGALE.

A needy scholar! worse than worst, Less fate in that than both the first: I thought thou’dst leapt into a law-gown, then There had been hope t’ have swept up all agen;[844] But a lank scholar! study how you can, No academe makes a rich alderman. Well, with this comfort yet thou may’st discourse, When fates are worst, then they can be no worse.

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

You speak oracle, madam; and now suppose, sweet lady, you see me set forth, like a poor scholar, to the university, not on horseback, but in Hobson’s waggon,[845] and all my pack contained in less than a little hood-box, my books not above four in number, and those four were very needful ones too, or else they had never been bought; and yet I was the valiant captain of a grammar-school before I went, endured the assault and battery of many unclean lashes, and all the battles I was in stood upon points[846] much, which, once let down, the enemy the schoolmaster would come rearward, and do such an exploit ’tis a shame to be talked of. By this time, madam, imagine me slightly entertained to be a poor scholar and servitor to some Londoner’s son, a pure cockney, that must hear twice a-week from his mother, or else he will be sick ere the Sunday of a university-mulligrub. Such a one, I remember, was my first puling master, by whose peevish service I crept into an old battler’s[847] gown, and so began to be a jolly fellow. There was the first point of wit I shewed in learning to keep myself warm; to the confirming of which, you shall never take your true philosophers without two nightcaps at once and better, a gown of rug with the like appurtenances; and who be your wise men, I pray, but they? Now, as for study and books, I had the use of my young master’s; for he was all day a courtier in the tennis-court, tossing of balls instead of books, and only holding disputation with the court-keeper how many dozen he was in; and when any friend of his would remember him to his book with this old moth-eaten sentence, _nulla dies sine linea_, True, he would say, I observe it well, for I am no day from the line of the racket-court. Well, in the meantime, I kept his study warm, and sucked the honey of wit from the flowers of Aristotle—steeped my brain in the smart juice of logic, that subtle virtue,—and yet, for all my weighty and substantial arguments, being able indeed to prove any thing by logic, I could prove myself never the richer, make the best syllogism I could: no, although I daily rose before the sun, talked and conversed with midnight, killing many a poor farthing candle, that sometimes was ungently put to death when it might have lived longer, but most times living out the full course and hour, and the snuff dying naturally in his bed. Nevertheless, I had entered as yet but the suburbs of a scholar, and sat but upon the skirts of learning: full often I have sighed when others have snorted; and when baser trades have securely rested in their linens, I have forced mine eyes open, and even gagged them with capital letters, stretching them upon the tenters of a broad text-line when night and sleep have hung pound weights of lead upon my eyelids.

How many such black and ghastly seasons have I passed over, accompanied only with a demure watching-candle, that blinked upon Aristotle’s works, and gave even sufficient glimmering to read by, but none to spare! Hitherto my hopes grew comfortable upon the spreading branches of art and learning, rather promising future advancement than empty days and penurious scarcity. But shall I tell you, lady? O, here let me sigh out a full point, and take my leave of all plenteous hours and wealthy hopes! for in the spring of all my perfections, in the very pride and glory of all my labours, I was unfruitfully led to the lickerish study of poetry, that sweet honey-poison, that swells a supple scholar with unprofitable sweetness and delicious false conceits, until he burst into extremities and become a poetical almsman, or at the most, one of the Poor Knights of Poetry, worse by odds than one of the Poor Knights of Windsor. Marry, there was an age once, but, alas, long since dead and rotten, whose dust lies now in lawyers’ sand-boxes! in those golden days, a virtuous writer might have lived, maintained himself better upon poems than many upon ploughs, and might have expended more by the year by the revenue of his verse than any riotous elder brother upon the wealthy quartridges of three times three hundred acres, according to the excellent report of these lines:

There was a golden age—who murder’d it? How died that age, or what became of it? Then poets, by divinest alchemy, Did turn their ink to gold; kings in that time Hung jewels at the ear of every rhyme.

But O, those days are wasted! and behold The golden age that was is coin’d to gold: And why Time now is call’d an iron man, Or this an iron-age, ’tis thus exprest,— The golden age lies in an iron chest:

Or,

Gold lies now as prisoner in an usurer’s great iron-barred chest, where the prison-grates are the locks and the key-holes, but so closely mewed, or rather dammed up, that it never looks to walk abroad again, unless there chance to come a speedy rot among usurers,— for I fear me the piddling gout will never make them away soon enough; for your rank money-masters live their threescore and ten years as orderly as many honester men: and it is great pity, lady Philomel, that the gout should be such a long courtier in a usurer’s great toe, revelling and domineering above thirty years together in his rammish blood and his fusty flesh; and I wonder much, madam, that gold, being the spirit of the Indies, can couch so basely under wood and iron, two dull slaves, and not muster up his legion of angels,[848] burst through the wide bulk of a coffer, and so march into bountiful and liberal bosoms, shake hands with virtuous gentlemen, industrious spirits, and true-deserving worthies, detesting the covetous clutches and loathsome fangs of a goat-bearded usurer, a sable-soul[ed] broker, and an infectious law-fogger.

O, but I chide in vain! for gold wants eyes, And, like a whore, cares not with whom it lies.

Yet that which makes me most admire his baseness are these verses following, wherein he proudly sets forth his own glory, which he vaunts so much of, that I shame to think any ignoble spirit or copper disposition should fetter his smooth golden limbs in boisterous and sullen iron, but rather be let free to every virtuous, and therefore poor scholar (for poverty is niece to virtue); so should each elegant poem be truly valued, and divine Poesy sit crowned in gold, as she ought, where[849] now she only sits with a paper on her head, as if she had committed some notorious trespass, either for railing against some brawling lawyer, or calling some justice of peace a wise man; and how magnificently Gold sings of his own fame and glory, these his own verses shall stand for witnesses:—

Know, I am Gold, The richest spirit that breathes in earth or hell, The soul of kingdoms, and the stamp of souls; Bright angels[850] wear my livery, sovereign kings Christen their names in gold, and call themselves Royal[851] and sovereign[852] after my gilt name; All offices are mine and in my gift; I have a hand in all; the statist’s veins Flow in the blood of gold; the courtier bathes His supple and lascivious limbs in oil Which my brow sweats: what lady brightly spher’d But takes delight to kiss a golden beard? Those pleaders, forenoon players, act my parts With liberal[853] tongues and desperate-fighting spirits, That wrestle with the arms of voice and air; And lest they should be out, or faint, or cold, Their innocent clients hist them on with gold: What holy churchman’s not accounted even, That prays three times to me ere once to heaven? Then to let shine the radiance of my birth, I am th’ enchantment both in hell and earth.

Here’s golden majesty enough, I trow! and, Gold, art thou so powerful, so mighty, and yet snaffled with a poor padlock? O base drudge, and too unworthy of such an angel-like form! much like a fair sleek-faced courtier, without either wit or virtue; thou that throwest the earthen bowl of the world, with the bias the wrong way, to peasantry, baseness, ingentility, and never givest desert his due, or shakest thy yellow wings in a scholar’s study! But why do I lose myself in seeking thee, when thou art found of few but illiterate hinds, rude boors, and hoary penny-fathers,[854] that keep thee in perpetual durance, in vaults under false boards, subtle-contrived walls, and in horrible dark dungeons bury thee most unchristian-like, without amen, or the least noise of a priest or clerk, and make thee rise again at their pleasures many a thousand time before doomsday; and yet will not all this move thee once to forsake them, and keep company with a scholar that truly knows how to use thee?