Part 10

I need no Muse to give my passion vent, He brews his tears that studies to lament. Verse chemically weeps; that pious rain Distilled with art is but the sweat o' th' brain Whoever sobbed in numbers? Can a groan Be quavered out by soft division? 'Tis true for common formal elegies Not Bushel's Wells can match a poet's eyes In wanton water-works; he'll tune his tears From a Geneva jig up to the spheres. 10 But then he mourns at distance, weeps aloof. Now that the conduit head is our own roof, Now that the fate is public, we may call It Britain's vespers, England's funeral. Who hath a pencil to express the Saint But he hath eyes too, washing off the paint? There is no learning but what tears surround, Like to Seth's pillars in the Deluge drowned. There is no Church; Religion is grown So much of late that she 's increased to none, 20 Like an hydropic body, full of rheums, First swells into a bubble, then consumes. The Law is dead or cast into a trance,-- And by a law dough-baked, an Ordinance! The Liturgy, whose doom was voted next, Died as a comment upon him the text. There's nothing lives; life is, since he is gone, But a nocturnal lucubration. Thus you have seen death's inventory read In the sum total,--Canterbury's dead; 30 A sight would make a Pagan to baptize Himself a convert in his bleeding eyes; Would thaw the rabble, that fierce beast of ours, (That which hyena-like weeps and devours) Tears that flow brackish from their souls within, Not to repent, but pickle up their sin. Meantime no squalid grief his look defiles. He gilds his sadder fate with nobler smiles. Thus the world's eye, with reconciléd streams, Shines in his showers as if he wept his beams. 40 How could success such villanies applaud? The State in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud; The twins of public rage, adjudged to die For treasons they should act, by prophecy; The facts were done before the laws were made; The trump turned up after the game was played. Be dull, great spirits, and forbear to climb, For worth is sin and eminence a crime. No churchman can be innocent and high. 'Tis height makes Grantham steeple stand awry. 50

[_An Elegy, &c._ (_1647_.) If the Strafford epitaph seemed too serious, as well as too concentrated and passionate, for Cleveland, this on Strafford's fellow worker and fellow victim may seem almost a caricature of our author's more wayward and more fantastic manner. Yet there are fine lines in it, and perhaps nowhere else do we see the Dryden fashion of verse (though not of thought) more clearly foreshadowed. It appears to come under 'Uncertain Authors' in some _1647_ texts, but _1677_ gives it. Title in _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ 'On the Archbishop of Canterbury' only.]

[Line: 4 _1677_ '_by_ art'.]

[Line: 6 _1677_ '_in_ soft'.]

[Line: 8 Thomas Bushel[l] or Bushnell (1594-1674) was a page of Bacon's and afterwards a great 'projector' in mining and mechanical matters generally. He dabbled largely in fancy fountains and waterworks--a queer taste of the seventeenth century in which even the sober Evelyn records his own participation.]

[Lines: 9-10 Cf. the opening of the elegy on King, 'I like not tears in tune'.]

[Line: 11 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, &c. '_when_ he mourns', which is hardly so good.]

[Line: 18 Seth's pillars] A tradition, preserved in Josephus, that the race of Seth engraved antediluvian wisdom on two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone, the latter of which outlasted the Deluge.]

[Line: 20 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, &c. '_From_ much'.]

[Line: 34 _1647_, _1651_ misprint '_Agena_-like.]

[Line: 35 _1653_ misprints 'blackish'.]

[Line: 38 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ 'noble'.]

[Line: 44 _1677_, omitting the comma at 'act', makes something like nonsense; 'by prophecy' goes, I think, with 'adjudged to die'.]

[Line: 50 One would expect 'Chesterfield', for Grantham nowadays does not look very crooked--at least from the railway. But Fuller in the _Worthies_ quotes this as a proverb. Some take it as referring to the height and slenderness of the steeple and an optical illusion. They might quote 'The high masts _flickered_ as they lay afloat'. But few travellers had the excuse of Iphigenia.]

*On I. W. A. B. of York.

Say, my young sophister, what think'st of this? Chimera's real, _Ergo falleris_. The lamb and tiger, fox and goose agree And here concorp'rate in one prodigy. Call an Haruspex quickly: let him get Sulphur and torches, and a laurel wet, To purify the place: for sure the harms This monster will produce transcend his charms.-- 'Tis Nature's masterpiece of Error, this, And redeems whatever she did amiss 10 Before, from wonder and reproach, this last Legitimateth all her by-blows past. Lo! here a general Metropolitan, And arch-prelatic Presbyterian! Behold his pious garbs, canonic face, A zealous _Episcopo-mastix_ Grace-- A fair blue-apron'd priest, a Lawn-sleeved brother, One leg a pulpit holds, a tub the other. Let 's give him a fit name now if we can, And make th' Apostate once more Christian. 20 'Proteus' we cannot call him: _he_ put on His change of shapes by a succession, Nor 'the Welsh weather-cock', for that we find At once doth only wait upon the wind. These speak him not: but if you'll name him right, Call him Religion's Hermaphrodite. His head i' the sanctified mould is cast, Yet sticks th'abominable mitre fast. He still retains the 'Lordship' and the 'Grace', And yet hath got a reverend elder's place. 30 Such acts must needs be his, who did devise By crying altars down to sacrifice To private malice; where you might have seen His conscience holocausted to his spleen. Unhappy Church! the viper that did share Thy greatest honours, helps to make thee bare, And void of all thy dignities and store. Alas! thine own son proves the forest boar, And, like the dam-destroying cuckoo, he, When the thick shell of his Welsh pedigree 40 By thy warm fostering bounty did divide And open--straight thence sprung forth parricide: As if 'twas just revenge should be dispatched In thee, by th' monster which thyself hadst hatched. Despair not though, in Wales there may be got, As well as Lincolnshire, an antidote 'Gainst the foul'st venom he can spit, though 's head Were changed from subtle grey to pois'nous red. Heaven with propitious eyes will look upon Our party, now the curséd thing is gone; 50 And chastise Rebels who nought else did miss To fill the measure of their sins, but his-- Whose foul imparalleled apostasy, Like to his sacred character, shall be Indelible. When ages, then of late More happy grown, with most impartial fate A period to his days and time shall give, He by such Epitaphs as this shall live. _Here York's great Metropolitan is laid, Who God's Anointed, and His Church, betrayed._ 60

[_On I. W. A. B. of York._ (_1647_.) This vigorous onslaught on the trimmer John Williams, Archbishop of York, who began public life as a tool of Buckingham's and ended it as a kind of tolerated half-deserter to the Parliament, was turned out by the 'Vindicators' in _1677_. There may, however, have been reasons for this, other than certain spuriousness. Williams, though driven to doubtful conduct by his enmity with Laud, never called himself anything but a Royalist, was imprisoned as such, and is said to have died of grief (perhaps of compunction) at the King's execution. Also both Lake and Drake were Yorkshire men. The piece is vigorous, if not quite Clevelandish in the presence of some enjambment, and the absence of extravagant conceit.]

[Line: 2 _falleris_] In advancing the general observation that 'twy-natured is no nature'.]

[Line: 10 whatever] Perhaps we should read 'whatsoe'er'.]

[Line: 15 'garb' _1653_.]

[Line: 16 A parody of course on Prynne's _Histrio-mastix_.]

[Line: 21 'he' = Proteus. Williams went right over.]

[Line: 23 Williams was very popular with his fellow provincials. He took refuge in Wales when the war broke out, and was made a sort of mediator by the Welsh after Naseby.]

[Line: 26 'Religion's' _1647_; 'Religious' _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 27 _1651_, _1653_, 'I' th'': but here, as often, the apostrophation ruins the verse.]

[Line: 30 'hath' _1653_: 'has' _1647_, _1651_.]

[Line: 32 Williams had been chairman of the Committee 'to consider innovations' in 1641. His private malice was to Laud.]

[Line: 46 I am not certain of the meaning. But Lincolnshire (at least Lindsey) was strongly Royalist early in the war till Cromwell's successes at Grantham, Lea Moor, and Winceby in 1643.]

[Line: 53 _1647_, _1651_ 'unparalleled'.]

Mark Antony.

When as the nightingale chanted her vespers, And the wild forester couched on the ground, Venus invited me in th' evening whispers Unto a fragrant field with roses crowned, Where she before had sent My wishes' compliment; Unto my heart's content Played with me on the green. Never Mark Antony Dallied more wantonly 10 With the fair Egyptian Queen.

First on her cherry cheeks I mine eyes feasted, Thence fear of surfeiting made me retire; Next on her warmer lips, which, when I tasted, My duller spirits made active as fire. Then we began to dart, Each at another's heart, Arrows that knew no smart, Sweet lips and smiles between. Never Mark, &c. 20

Wanting a glass to plait her amber tresses Which like a bracelet rich deckéd mine arm, Gaudier than Juno wears when as she graces Jove with embraces more stately than warm, Then did she peep in mine Eyes' humour crystalline; I in her eyes was seen As if we one had been. Never Mark, &c.

Mystical grammar of amorous glances; 30 Feeling of pulses, the physic of love; Rhetorical courtings and musical dances; Numbering of kisses arithmetic prove; Eyes like astronomy; Straight-limbed geometry; In her art's ingeny Our wits were sharp and keen. Never Mark Antony Dallied more wantonly With the fair Egyptian Queen.

[_Mark Antony._ The unusual prosodic interest of this piece, and its companion, has been explained in the Introduction. The pair appeared first in 1647 (3rd), where they follow _The Character of a London Diurnal_ and precede the _Poems_.]

[Line: 14 'warmer' some copies of _1653_: _1647_, _1651_ 'warm'. Cf. 'bluer' in the 'Mock Song', l. 14 (below).]

[Line: 15 _1677_, &c. 'made _me_ active'--a bad blunder.]

[Line: 35 'Straight limb' _1647_.]

[Line: 36 'art's' is _1677_ for 'heart's' in _1647_, _1651_, _1653_. I rather prefer it, but with some doubts.]

[Line: 37 _1677_, &c. emends by substituting 'were' for _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ 'are'.]

The Author's Mock Song to Mark Antony.

When as the night-raven sung Pluto's matins And Cerberus cried three amens at a howl, When night-wandering witches put on their pattens, Midnight as dark as their faces are foul; Then did the furies doom That the nightmare was come. Such a misshapen groom Puts down Su. Pomfret clean. Never did incubus Touch such a filthy sus 10 As this foul gypsy quean.

First on her gooseberry cheeks I mine eyes blasted, Thence fear of vomiting made me retire Unto her bluer lips, which when I tasted, My spirits were duller than Dun in the mire. But then her breath took place Which went an usher's pace And made way for her face! You may guess what I mean. Never did, &c. 20

Like snakes engendering were platted her tresses, Or like the slimy streaks of ropy ale; Uglier than Envy wears, when she confesses Her head is periwigged with adder's tail. But as soon as she spake I heard a harsh mandrake. Laugh not at my mistake, Her head is epicene. Never did, &c.

Mystical magic of conjuring wrinkles; 30 Feeling of pulses, the palmistry of hags; Scolding out belches for rhetoric twinkles; With three teeth in her head like to three gags; Rainbows about her eyes And her nose, weather-wise; From them the almanac lies, Frost, Pond, and Rivers clean. Never did incubus Touch such a filthy sus As this foul gypsy quean. 40

[_The Author's Mock Song._ In _1647_ this runs on as a continuation of 'Mark Anthony'.]

[Line: 1 _1677_ _putidissime_ 'nightingale', as in the preceding poem. 'Night-raven' _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ is certainly right. Mr. Berdan's copy seems to have '_But_ as', which I rather like; but mine has 'When'.]

[Line: 2 howl] hole _1647_.]

[Line: 16 _1677_ 'when', not impossibly.]

[Line: 21 platted] placed _1647_.]

[Line: 22 _1647_, _1651_ 'the': omitted in _1653_: 'to' inserted in _1677_.]

[Line: 37 Cf. _A Young Man, &c._, l. 13.]

How the Commencement grows new.

It is no coranto-news I undertake; New teacher of the town I mean not to make; No New England voyage my Muse does intend; No new fleet, no bold fleet, nor bonny fleet send. But, if you'll be pleased to hear out this ditty, I'll tell you some news as true and as witty, _And how the Commencement grows new._

See how the simony doctors abound, All crowding to throw away forty pound. They'll now in their wives' stammel petticoats vapour 10 Without any need of an argument draper. Beholding to none, he neither beseeches This friend for venison nor t'other for speeches, _And so the Commencement grows new._

Every twice a day teaching gaffer Brings up his Easter-book to chaffer; Nay, some take degrees who never had steeple,-- Whose means, like degrees, comes from placets of people. They come to the fair and, at the first pluck, The toll-man Barnaby strikes 'um good luck, 20 _And so the Commencement grows new._

The country parsons come not up On Tuesday night in their old College to sup; Their bellies and table-books equally full, The next lecture-dinner their notes forth to pull; How bravely the Margaret Professor disputed, The homilies urged, and the school-men confuted; _And so the Commencement grows new._

The inceptor brings not his father the clown To look with his mouth at his grogoram gown; 30 With like admiration to eat roasted beef, Which invention posed his beyond-Trent belief; Who should he but hear our organs once sound, Could scarce keep his hoof from Sellenger's round, _And so the Commencement grows new._

The gentleman comes not to show us his satin, To look with some judgment at him that speaks Latin, To be angry with him that marks not his clothes, To answer 'O Lord, Sir' and talk play-book oaths, And at the next bear-baiting (full of his sack) 40 To tell his comrades our discipline's slack; _And so the Commencement grows new._

We have no prevaricator's wit. Ay, marry sir, when have you had any yet? Besides no serious Oxford man comes To cry down the use of jesting and hums. Our ballad (believe 't) is no stranger than true; Mum Salter is sober, and Jack Martin too, _And so the Commencement grows new._

[_How the Commencement, &c._, belongs to the same group as the _Mark Antony_ poems and _Square-Cap_, and there is the same ambiguity between four anapaests and five iambs. You would certainly take line 1 as it stands in _1677_ with ''Tis' for 'It is', and probably as it stands here, for a heroic if line 2 did not come to undeceive you. And this line 2 is bad as either.

First printed in _1653_. MS. copies are found in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 147, pp. 48-9, and Tanner MS. 465, fol. 83, of the Bodleian. Neither copy is good, but each helps to restore the text (see ll. 18 and 38). The Tanner MS. also has on fol. 44 an indignant poem 'Upon Mr. Cl. who made a Song against the DD^{rs}', beginning

Leave off, vain Satirist, and do not think, To stain our reverend purple with thy ink.

It adds the interesting evidence that the poem became a popular song at Cambridge:

Must gitterns now and fiddles be made fit, Be tuned and keyed to sweake [?squeak] a Johnian wit? Must now thy poems be made fidlers' notes, Puffed with Tobacco through their sooty throats? . . . . . . . . . . Are thy strong lines and mighty cart-rope things Now spun so small, they'll twist on fiddle strings? Canst thou prove Ballad-poet of the times? Can thy proud fancy stoop to penny rimes?

(This latter information, as to MSS., is Mr. Simpson's.)]

[Line: 5 out] but _1653_.]

[Line: 9 forty pound] Still the regular doctorate fee, though relatively three or four times heavier then than now.]

[Line: 10 stammel] Properly a stuff; but, as generally or often red in colour, the colour itself.]

[Line: 11 I am not certain of the meaning of this line though I could conjecture.]

[Line: 13 nor t'other for speeches] _MS._ 'that for his breeches'.]

[Line: 15 _1677_ inserts 'the' before 'teaching', but the absence of the article is much more characteristic.]

[Line: 18 The 'Vindicators', in the new bondage of grammar, 'come'.

Placets] both _MSS._: places _1653_: placers _1677_. 'Placets', evidently right, would baffle a non-university printer; probably the editors of _1677_ attempted to correct it, but were again baffled by the printer.]

[Line: 22 _1677_ 'they do not come up'--a natural but unnecessary patching of the line.]

[Line: 23 old] _1677_ own--less well, I think.

Both _MSS._ read in ll. 22-3:

The country parson cometh not up, Till Tuesday night in his old College to sup. ]

[Line: 26 'Marg_e_ret' _1653_: Marg'ret' _1677_.]

[Line: 29 inceptor] = 'M.A. to be'.]

[Line: 30 'o' of 'grog[o]ram' usually omitted, but both _1653_ and _1677_ have it here.]

[Line: 32 The North usually salting and boiling its beef?]

[Line: 38 Tanner MS. has the metrical punctuation 'To be'angry' found occasionally in texts of the time: 'marks' Tanner MS., all the texts have 'makes'.]

[Line: 40 at the next bear-baiting] in his next company _MSS._]

[Line: 44 _1653_ 'we' for 'you', less pointedly, I think.]

[Line: 45 Cleveland lived to think better of Oxford--at least to take refuge and be warmly welcomed there. There has probably been no time at which either University was not convinced that the other, whatever its merits, could not see a joke.]

[Line: 48 _1665_ (not a very good edition) and the _MSS._ read 'Mu_n_', which was of course the usual short for Edmund. But 'Mu_m_' in the context is appropriate enough and generally read.

The intense Cambridge flavour of this seems to require special comment by a Cambridge man. For the duties of the 'Prevaricator' refer to Peacock's _Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge_, 1841 (information kindly furnished by Mr. A. J. Bartholomew).]

The Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbyter.

With hair in characters and lugs in text; With a splay mouth and a nose circumflexed; With a set ruff of musket-bore that wears Like cartridges or linen bandoleers Exhausted of their sulphurous contents In pulpit fire-works, which that bomball vents; The Negative and Covenanting Oath, Like two mustachoes issuing from his mouth; The bush upon his chin like a carved story, In a box-knot cut by the Directory: 10 Madam's confession hanging at his ear, Wire-drawn through all the questions, how and where; Each circumstance so in the hearing felt That when his ears are cropped he'll count them gelt; The weeping cassock scared into a jump, A sign the presbyter's worn to the stump,-- The presbyter, though charmed against mischance With the divine right of an Ordinance! _If you meet any that do thus attire 'em, Stop them, they are the tribe of Adoniram._ 20 What zealous frenzy did the Senate seize, That tare the Rochet to such rags as these? Episcopacy minced, reforming Tweed Hath sent us runts even of her Church's breed, Lay-interlining clergy, a device That 's nickname to the stuff called lops and lice. The beast at wrong end branded, you may trace The Devil's footsteps in his cloven face; A face of several parishes and sorts, Like to a sergeant shaved at Inns of Courts. 30 What mean the elders else, those Kirk dragoons, Made up of ears and ruffs like ducatoons; That hierarchy of handicrafts begun; Those New Exchange men of religion? Sure, they're the antick heads, which placed without The church, do gape and disembogue a spout. Like them above the Commons' House, have been So long without; now both are gotten in. Then what imperious in the bishop sounds, The same the Scotch executor rebounds; 40 This stating prelacy the classic rout That spake it often, ere it spake it out. (So by an abbey's skeleton of late I heard an echo supererogate Through imperfection, and the voice restore, As if she had the hiccough o'er and o'er.) 'Since they our mixed diocesans combine Thus to ride double in their discipline, That Paul's shall to the Consistory call A Dean and Chapter out of Weavers' Hall, 50 Each at the ordinance for to assist With the five thumbs of his groat-changing fist. Down, Dagon-synod, with thy motley ware, Whilst we do swagger for the Common Prayer (That dove-like embassy that wings our sense To Heaven's gate in shape of innocence) Pray for the mitred authors, and defy These demicastors of divinity! For, when Sir John with Jack-of-all-trades joins, His finger 's thicker than the prelates' loins.' 60

[_The Hue and Cry._ (_1653_.) 1 'in characters' = in shorthand: _1677_ has 'character', wrongly. 'lugs' = ears. 'in text' = in capitals.

Cf. _Clievelandi Vindiciae_, 1677, p. 122 (Cleveland's letter on a Puritan who had deserted to the Royalists. His officer complained that he had absconded with official money): 'I doubt not, but you will pardon your Man. He hath but transcribed Rebellion, and copied out that Disloyalty in Shorthand, which you have committed in Text.']

[Line: 6 bomball] A compound of 'bomb' and 'ball'.]

[Line: 20 Adoniram] Byfield, a clerk of the Westminster Assembly whose minutes have been published in modern times. A great ejector of the clergy, who unfortunately did not live long enough to be ejected himself.]

[Line: 26 This stuff does not by any means sound nice.]

[Line: 32 ducatoons] One would take it that the ducatoon had a back view of some one's head; but a passage of _Hudibras_, and Grey's note on it, have complicated the matter with a story about the Archduke Albert of Austria, which seems to have little if any relevance _here_.]

[Line: 35 antick heads] = 'gargoyles'.]

[Line: 41 classic] As in Milton. Nor is this the only point in which the two old Christ's men, now on such opposite sides, agree in the 'New Forcers of Conscience' and this piece.]

[Line: 52 _1653_ great-changing--a mere misprint.]

[Line: 54 do swagger for] _1677_ most suspiciously improves to '_are champions_ for'.]

[From l. 43 onwards _1653_ has the whole in italics, and it is pretty clear that after the first four lines the Echo speaks to the end. The 'Vindicators' do not seem to have seen this, though the absence of the quotes above would not prove it. Professor Case, however, thinks that 'So' refers to what precedes, and that in l. 47 and onwards the author and Echo speaks. It is possible.]

The Antiplatonic.

For shame, thou everlasting wooer, Still saying grace and never falling to her! Love that 's in contemplation placed Is Venus drawn but to the waist. Unless your flame confess its gender, And your parley cause surrender, Y' are salamanders of a cold desire That live untouched amidst the hottest fire.