Part 5

Problem of sexes! Must thou likewise be As disputable in thy pedigree? Thou twins in one, in whom Dame Nature tries To throw less than aums ace upon two dice. Wert thou served up two in one dish, the rather To split thy sire into a double father? True, the world's scales are even; what the main In one place gets, another quits again. Nature lost one by thee, and therefore must Slice one in two to keep her number just. 10 Plurality of livings is thy state, And therefore mine must be impropriate. For, since the child is mine and yet the claim Is intercepted by another's name, Never did steeple carry double truer; His is the donative and mine the cure. Then say, my Muse (and without more dispute), Who 'tis that fame doth superinstitute. The Theban wittol, when he once descries Jove is his rival, falls to sacrifice. 20 That name hath tipped his horns; see, on his knees! A health to Hans-in-kelder Hercules! Nay, sublunary cuckolds are content To entertain their fate with compliment; And shall not he be proud whom Randolph deigns To quarter with his Muse both arms and brains? Gramercy Gossip, I rejoice to see She'th got a leap of such a barbary. Talk not of horns, horns are the poet's crest; For, since the Muses left their former nest 30 To found a nunnery in Randolph's quill, Cuckold Parnassus is a forked hill. But stay, I've waked his dust, his marble stirs And brings the worms for his compurgators. Can ghost have natural sons? Say, Og, is't meet Penance bear date after the winding sheet? Were it a Ph[oe]nix (as the double kind May seem to prove, being there's two combined) I would disclaim my right, and that it were The lawful issue of his ashes swear. 40 But was he dead? Did not his soul translate Herself into a shop of lesser rate; Or break up house, like an expensive lord That gives his purse a sob and lives at board? Let old Pythagoras but play the pimp And still there's hopes 't may prove his bastard imp. But I'm profane; for, grant the world had one With whom he might contract an union, They two were one, yet like an eagle spread, I' th' body joined, but parted in the head. 50 For you, my brat, that pose the Porph'ry Chair, Pope John, or Joan, or whatsoe'er you are, You are a nephew; grieve not at your state, For all the world is illegitimate. Man cannot get a man, unless the sun Club to the act of generation. The sun and man get man, thus Tom and I Are the joint fathers of my poetry. For since, blest shade, thy verse is male, but mine O' th' weaker sex, a fancy feminine, 60 We'll part the child, and yet commit no slaughter; So shall it be thy son, and yet my daughter.

[_The Author's Hermaphrodite._] (_1647_.) The note, which appears in all editions, seems evidently conclusive as to this poem. Moreover the quibbles are right Clevelandish.]

[Line: 7 'main' is a little ambiguous, or may appear so from the recent mention of dice. But that sense will hardly come in, and Cleveland was probably thinking of the famous passage in Spenser (Artegall's dispute with the giant, _F. Q._ v. ii) as to the washing away and washing up of the _sea_. Yet 'main' _might_ mean 'stock'. The reading of 'gets place' in one edition (_1662_), rather notable for blunders, cannot be listened to.]

[Line: 15 steeple] By synecdoche for 'church' or 'parish'.]

[Line: 16 donative] A play on words, as also in 'cure'.]

[Line: 19 Theban wittol] Amphitryon.]

[Line: 22 Hans-in-kelder] = 'unborn'.

[Line: 28 She'th] _1667_ changes to 'Th'hast'. barbary] 'Barbs' or Spanish horses were imported for the stud as early as Anglo-Saxon times; but before Cleveland's day actual Arabs had been tried.]

[Line: 34 compurgators] persons who swear in a court of law to the innocence or the veracity of some other person.]

[Line: 35 I was unable to say why the King of Bashan comes in here, except that the comparison of the _Dialogue on the &c._, 'Og the great _commissary_', and the put case about 'penance', suggest some church lawyer of portly presence. But Mr. Simpson and Mr. Thorn-Drury have traced the thing from this point as follows:

Cf. _A Dialogue upon the &c._, l. 47 'Og the great commissary', where the copy in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 26, fol. 94 _b_, has a marginal note 'Roan'. This was Dr. William Roan, of whom an account is given in the _Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum_, Division 1, 'Political and Personal Satires', p. 156: 'Dr. Roane was one of the most eminent doctors who acted in Laud's Ecclesiastical Courts; he fled from the indignation of the House of Commons, and is frequently alluded to in pamphlets and broadsides of the time (see _Times Alteration_, Jan. 8, 1641,... _Old News newly Revived_, Dec. 21, 1640,...and _The Spirituall Courts Epitomised_, June 26, 1641).' The pamphlet illustrated in this note is _A Letter front Rhoan in France Written by Doctor Roane one of the Doctors of the late Sicke Commons, to his Fellow Doctor of the Civill Law. Dated 28, of Iune last past. With an Ellegy written by his oune hand upon the death and buriall of the said Doctors Commons. Printed in this happy yeare, 1641_. (Thomason's copy dated June 28.)

Mr. Thorn-Drury supplies the following references bearing directly on the nickname, and not noticed in the B.M. Catalogue: _Foure fugitives meeting Or, The Discourse amongst my Lord Finch, Sir Frances Windebank, Sir John Sucklin, and Doctor Roane, as they accidentally met in France, with a detection of their severall pranks in England. Printed In the Yeare, 1641_. 4^{o}.

Suckling says to Roane, 'Hold there good Doctor _Roane_, and take me with you, you are to be blamed too, for not bidding farewell to Sir _Paul Pinder_, (at whose beauteous house, you have devoured the carkasse of many a cram'd Capon) before you fled, but I wonder more, why you came hither so unprovided; methinks some English dyet would have bin good for a weake stomack: the Church-Wardens of Northhamptonshire promised to give you a good fee, if you will goe to 'em, and resolve 'em whether they may lawfully take the oath &c. or no.

'_Wind_. That may very well be, for they have given him a great Addition, they stile him, Og the great Commissary, they say he was as briske in discharging the new Canons, as he that made them.'

Suckling addresses Roane as 'Immense Doctor Roane': so it is possible that it was his personal appearance which suggested the name of Og.

Cf. also _Canidia. The Third Part_, p. 150 (1683):

Are you a Smock-Sinner, or so, Commute soundly, and you shall be let go. Fee _Ogg_ the great _Commissary_ before and behind, Then sin on, you know my mind. ]

[Line: 39 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, &c. '_It_ would', which can hardly be right.]

[Line: 44 'sob' _1647_, _1651_: _1653_ clearly '_f_ob': 'Sob' 1677. Cf. _Comedy of Errors_ (iv. iii. 22) 'gives a sob'. 'Sob' is literally 'an act on the part of a horse of recovering its wind after exertion'--hence 'respite' (_N.E.D._).]

[Line: 51 Porph'ry Chair] The Pope's throne, the myths of which, as well as of Pope Joan herself, are vulgate. 'Nephew' carries out the allusion: Popes' sons being called so

Better to preserve the peace. ]

[Line: 59 thy] this _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 62 The merit of the style for burlesque use could hardly be better brought out.]

*_To the Hectors, upon the unfortunate death of H. Compton._

You Hectors! tame professors of the sword, Who in the chair state duels, whose black word Bewitches courage, and like Devils too, Leaves the bewitch'd when 't comes to fight and do. Who on your errand our best spirits send, Not to kill swine or cows, but man and friend; Who are a whole court-martial in your drink, And dispute honour, when you cannot think, Not orderly, but prate out valour as You grow inspired by th' oracle of the glass; 10 Then, like our zeal-drunk presbyters, cry down All law of Kings and God, but what's their own. Then y' have the gift of fighting, can discern Spirits, who 's fit to act, and who to learn, Who shall be baffled next, who must be beat, Who killed--that you may drink, and swear, and eat. Whilst you applaud those murders which you teach And live upon the wounds your riots preach. Mere booty-souls! Who bid us fight a prize To feast the laughter of our enemies, 20 Who shout and clap at wounds, count it pure gain, Mere Providence to hear a Compton 's slain. A name they dearly hate, and justly; should They love 't 'twere worse, their love would taint the blood. Blood always true, true as their swords and cause, And never vainly lost, till your wild laws Scandalled their actions in this person, who Truly durst more than you dare think to do. A man made up of graces--every move Had entertainment in it, and drew love 30 From all but him who killed him, who seeks a grave And fears a death more shameful than he gave. Now you dread Hectors! you whom tyrant drink Drags thrice about the town, what do you think? (If you be sober) Is it valour, say, To overcome, and then to run away? Fie! Fie! your lusts and duels both are one; Both are repented of as soon as done.

[_To the Hectors_ (_1653_) is struck out in _1677_ and Mr. Berdan does not give it. I asterisk it in text; but as it might be Cleveland's (though I do not think it is) I do not exclude it. The Comptons were a good Royalist family in those days. This Henry (not the Bishop) was killed in 1652 in a duel by George Brydges, Lord Chandos, who died three years later (see Professor Firth's _House of Lords during the Civil War_, p. 223). The fame of the Hectors as predecessors of the Mohocks and possible objects of Milton's objurgation 'flown with insolence and wine', &c., is sufficient. But they seem to have been more methodical maniacs and ruffians than their successors, and even to have had something of the superior quality of Sir Lucius O'Trigger and Captain M^{c}Turk about them, as professors and painful preachers of the necessity and etiquette of the duel.]

[Line: 2 state duels] Arrange them like the said Captain M^{c}Turk in _St. Ronan's Well_? word] _1653_ (wrongly for rhyme, though not necessarily for concord) 'words'.]

[Line: 19 booty-souls] Apparently 'souls interested in nothing but booty'. The piece would seem to have been addressed to Hectors in the actual Cavalier camp, or at least party. The 'enemies' are of course the Roundheads, and it will soon be noticed that there is no apodosis or consequence to all these 'who's', &c. It is literally an 'Address' and no more.]

[Line: 25 their] = 'the Comptons'--nothing to do with 'their' and 'they' in the preceding lines.]

[Line: 31 Does not run very smoothly: the second 'him' may be a foist.]

Square-Cap.

Come hither, Apollo's bouncing girl, And in a whole Hippocrene of sherry Let 's drink a round till our brains do whirl, Tuning our pipes to make ourselves merry. A Cambridge lass, Venus-like, born of the froth Of an old half-filled jug of barley-broth, She, she is my mistress, her suitors are many, But she'll have a Square-cap if e'er she have any.

And first, for the plush-sake, the Monmouth-cap comes, Shaking his head like an empty bottle; 10 With his new-fangled oath by Jupiter's thumbs, That to her health he'll begin a pottle. He tells her that, after the death of his grannam, He shall have God knows what per annum. But still she replied, 'Good Sir, la-bee; If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'

Then Calot Leather-cap strongly pleads, And fain would derive the pedigree of fashion. The antipodes wear their shoes on their heads, And why may not we in their imitation? 20 Oh, how this football noddle would please, If it were but well tossed on S. Thomas his leas! But still she replied, 'Good sir, la-bee; If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'

Next comes the Puritan in a wrought-cap, With a long-waisted conscience towards a sister. And, making a chapel of ease of her lap, First he said grace and then he kissed her. 'Beloved,' quoth he, 'thou art my text.' Then falls he to use and application next; 30 But then she replied, 'Your text, sir, I'll be; For then I'm sure you'll ne'er handle me.'

But see where Satin-cap scouts about, And fain would this wench in his fellowship marry. He told her how such a man was not put out Because his wedding he closely did carry. He'll purchase induction by simony, And offers her money her incumbent to be; But still she replied, 'Good sir, la-bee; If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!' 40

The lawyer's a sophister by his round-cap, Nor in their fallacies are they divided, The one milks the pocket, the other the tap; And yet this wench he fain would have brided. 'Come, leave these thread-bare scholars,' quoth he, 'And give me livery and seisin of thee.' 'But peace, John-a-Nokes, and leave your oration, For I never will be your impropriation; I pray you therefore, good sir, la-bee; For if ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!' 50

[_Square-Cap_ (_1647_) is one of the pleasantest of all Cleveland's poems. Its prosodic puzzle and profit have been indicated in the Introduction, and it might sometimes run more easily. But the thorough good-fellowship and _esprit de corps_ carry it off more than sufficiently. It would be pleasant to think that Mr. Samuel Pepys sang it on the famous occasion when he was 'scandalously over-served with drink' as an undergraduate. It had been printed only three years when he went up, though no doubt written earlier.]

[Line: 2 Cleveland has got the fount right here.]

[Line: 7 she is] she's _1653_.]

[Line: 9 Monmouth-cap] A soldier.]

[Lines: 13, 14 A most singular blunder in _1677_ (and the editions that follow it) shows that Cleveland's 'Vindicators' were by no means always attentive to his sense. It reads '_her_ grannam' and '_She_ shall have'--the exact effect of which, as an inducement to marry him, one would like to hear.]

[Line: 15 la-bee] = 'let-a-be', 'let me alone'.]

[Line: 17 One or two editions (but not very good ones) '_Thin_ Calot'. Calot of course = 'calotte', the lawyer's cap or coif.]

[Line: 18 This is a signal instance of the way in which these early anapaestic lines break down into heroics. _1677_ and others read '_his_ pedigree'--not so well.]

[Line: 22 S. Thomas his leas] A decree of Oct. 29, 1632, ordains that scholars and students of Corpus and Pembroke shall play football only 'upon St. Thomas Layes', the site of Downing College later. This decree and the 'S.' of _1651_, _1653_, would seem to show that _1677_ is wrong in expanding to 'Sir', though two Cambridge editors ought to have known the right name. It was also called 'Swinecroft'. (Information obtained from the late Mr. J. W. Clark's _Memories and Customs_, Cambridge, 1909, through the kindness of Mr. A. J. Bartholomew.)]

[Line: 33 Satin-cap] Clerical: cf. Strode's poem on _The Caps_ (_Works_, ed. Dobell, p. 106):]

The Sattin and the Velvet hive Unto a Bishopric doth drive.

[Line: 36 closely ... carry] = 'disguise', 'conceal'.]

Upon Phillis walking in a morning before sun-rising.

The sluggish morn as yet undressed, My Phillis brake from out her East, As if she'd made a match to run With Venus, usher to the sun. The trees, like yeomen of her guard, Serving more for pomp than ward, Ranked on each side, with loyal duty Weave branches to enclose her beauty. The plants, whose luxury was lopped, Or age with crutches underpropped, 10 Whose wooden carcasses are grown To be but coffins of their own, Revive, and at her general dole Each receives his ancient soul. The winged choristers began To chirp their mattins, and the fan Of whistling winds like organs played, Until their voluntaries made The wakened Earth in odours rise To be her morning sacrifice. 20 The flowers, called out of their beds, Start and raise up their drowsy heads; And he that for their colour seeks May find it vaulting in her cheeks, Where roses mix--no civil war Between her York and Lancaster. The marigold (whose courtier's face Echoes the sun and doth unlace Her at his rise--at his full stop Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop) 30 Mistakes her cue and doth display: Thus Phillis antedates the day. These miracles had cramped the sun, Who, thinking that his kingdom 's won, Powders with light his frizzled locks To see what saint his lustre mocks. The trembling leaves through which he played, Dappling the walk with light and shade Like lattice-windows, give the spy Room but to peep with half an eye; 40 Lest her full orb his sight should dim And bid us all good-night in him, Till she should spend a gentle ray To force us a new-fashioned day. But what religious palsy 's this Which makes the boughs divest their bliss, And, that they might her footsteps straw, Drop their leaves with shivering awe? Phillis perceived and (lest her stay Should wed October unto May, 50 And, as her beauty caused a Spring, Devotion might an Autumn bring) Withdrew her beams, yet made no night, But left the sun her curate-light.

[_Upon Phillis, &c._ (_1647_.) This is perhaps the prettiest, as _The Senses' Festival_ is the most vigorous and _Fuscara_ the most laboured, of Cleveland's Clevelandisms.]

[Line: 6 _1677_ &c. insert 'her' between 'serving' and 'more'--doubtless on the principle, noticed before, of patching lines to supposed 'regularity'.]

[Line: 7 'Ranked' _1647_, _1677_: 'Banked' _1651_, _1653_. As it happens either will do; and at the same time either, if original, is likely to have been mistaken for the other.]

[Line: 8 'Weave' _1647_: 'Wave' _1651_, _1653_: 'Weav'd' _1677_ (the printer unconsciously assimilating it to the 'Ranked' of l. 8). The same remark applies as to the preceding line.]

[Line: 11 are] were _1677_, _1687_.]

[Line: 18 _1654_ 'Un_to_'.]

[Line: 19 _1677_ &c. 'weaken'd': _putide_.]

[Line: 20 A meeting-point of many pious poems.]

[Line: 24 _1677_ 'vaulting _to_'--hardly an improvement.]

[Line: 26 Dryden may have had Cleveland in mind (as he pretty often, and most naturally had, seeing that the poems must have 'spent their youth with him') when he wrote some of the latest and most beautiful of his own lines to the Duchess of Ormond (Lady Mary Somerset):

O daughter of the Rose whose cheeks unite The differing titles of the Red and White. ]

[_1677_ '_Divides_ her York and Lancaster'--pretty palpable emendation to supply the apparent lack of a verb.]

[Lines: 27-30 It has been suggested to me that the sense wants mechanical aid to clear it up; and I have therefore made a visible parenthesis of 'whose ... shop', following _1677_.]

[Line: 34 thinking] fearing _1677_.]

[Line: 36 _1653_ &c. 'saints'--a misprint, as _1647_, _1651_ have the singular.]

[Line: 38 Here, for once, Cleveland achieves the really poetical conceit.]

[Line: 42 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, &c. 'bids'--again a mere misprint.]

[Line: 43 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ 'would'.]

[Line: 47 straw] For 'strew', as in the A. V.]

[Line: 49 _1649_, _1651_, _1653_, 'perceives' (an unconscious echo of 'leaves' in l. 48).]

Upon a Miser that made a great feast, and the next day died for grief.

Nor 'scapes he so; our dinner was so good My liquorish Muse cannot but chew the cud, And what delight she took in th' invitation Strives to taste o'er again in this relation. After a tedious grace in Hopkins' rhyme, Not for devotion but to take up time, Marched the trained-band of dishes, ushered there To show their postures and then as they were. For he invites no teeth; perchance the eye He will afford the lover's gluttony. 10 Thus is our feast a muster, not a fight, Our weapons not for service, but for sight. But are we tantalized? Is all this meat Cooked by a limner for to view, not eat? Th' astrologers keep such houses when they sup On joints of Taurus or their heavenly Tup. Whatever feasts be made are summed up here, His table vies not standing with his cheer. His churchings, christenings, in this meal are all, And not transcribed but in th' original. 20 Christmas is no feast movable; for lo, The self-same dinner was ten years ago! 'Twill be immortal if it longer stay, The gods will eat it for ambrosia. But stay a while; unless my whinyard fail Or is enchanted, I'll cut off th' entail. Saint George for England then! have at the mutton When the first cut calls me bloodthirsty glutton. Stout Ajax, with his anger-coddled brain, Killing a sheep thought Agamemnon slain; 30 The fiction's now proved true; wounding his roast I lamentably butcher up mine host. Such sympathy is with his meat, my weapon Makes him an eunuch when it carves his capon. Cut a goose leg and the poor soul for moan Turns cripple too, and after stands on one. Have you not heard the abominable sport A Lancaster grand-jury will report? The soldier with his Morglay watched the mill; The cats they came to feast, when lusty Will 40 Whips off great puss's leg which (by some charm) Proves the next day such an old woman's arm. 'Tis so with him whose carcass never 'scapes, But still we slash him in a thousand shapes. Our serving-men (like spaniels) range to spring The fowl which he had clucked under his wing. Should he on widgeon or on woodcock feed It were, Thyestes like, on his own breed. To pork he pleads a superstition due, But we subscribe neither to Scot nor Jew. 50 [No liquor stirs; call for a cup of wine. 'Tis blood we drink; we pledge thee, Catiline.] Sauces we should have none, had he his wish. The oranges i' th' margent of the dish He with such huckster's care tells o'er and o'er, The Hesperian dragon never watched them more. But being eaten now into despair (Having nought else to do) he falls to prayer. 'As thou didst once put on the form of bull And turned thine Io to a lovely mull, 60 Defend my rump, great Jove, grant this poor beef May live to comfort me in all this grief.' But no Amen was said: see, see it comes! Draw, boys, let trumpets sound, and strike up drums. See how his blood doth with the gravy swim, And every trencher hath a limb of him. The venison's now in view, our hounds spend deeper. Strange deer, which in the pasty hath a keeper Stricter than in the park, making his guest, (As he had stoln't alive) to steal it drest! 70 The scent was hot, and we, pursuing faster Than Ovid's pack of dogs e'er chased their master, A double prey at once may seize upon, Acteon, and his case of venison. Thus was he torn alive; to vex him worse Death serves him up now as a second course. Should we, like Thracians, our dead bodies eat, He would have lived only to save his meat. [Lastly; we did devour that corpse of his Throughout all Ovid's Metamorphoses.] 80