Part 6

[_Upon a Miser, &c._ (_1647_.) This juxtaposition of the serious-sentimental-fanciful with the burlesque-satiric may not please some readers. But the older editions which give it seem to me better to represent the ideas of the time than the later siftings and reclassifications of the age of prose and sense. And this is one reason why I follow the order of _1653_ rather than that of _1677_.]

[Line: 2 'Cud' is spelt in _1647_ here and elsewhere in Cleveland 'cood'.]

[Line: 3 In some copies 'i_mi_tation', of course wrongly.]

[Line: 4 taste] cast _1653_.]

[Line: 5 Cleveland gibed at Sternhold and Hopkins in prose (_The Character of a London Diurnall_) as well as verse. _1647_, _1651_ misprint 'rhythm'.]

[Line: 11 The text, from _1677_, is a clear improvement at first sight on the earlier '_This_ is _a_ feast': though I would not be too sure that Cleveland did not write it thus.]

[Line: 16 _1677_ '_the_ heavenly'.]

[Line: 17 _1677_ 'he made'.]

[Line: 18 Meaning, apparently, that, as was the custom, the table between these sham feast-days was moved off its trestles and cleared away; but the feast was a 'standing' one, kept to reappear.]

[Line: 20 in th'] i' th' _1647_, _1651_.]

[Line: 26 is] it _1647_, _1651_.]

[Line: 28 _1677_ 'Whe_re_'.]

[Line: 29 Stout] What _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 31 _1677_ '_the_ roast'.]

[Line: 34 carves] One edition, of no value (_1665_), '_se_rves'.]

[Line: 35 soul] fool _1677_.]

[Line: 38 Lancaster, because of the Lancashire witches. See Heywood, _Lancashire Witches_, Act V.]

[Line: 39 Morglay] The sword of Bevis.]

[Line: 43 'Tis] It's _1677_.]

[Line: 44 'him' _1647_: 'them' _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 46 These lines appear with some variants and are not clear in any text: 'which he had cluck'd under his wing' _1677_, for the earlier 'when he hath clock't under her wing' _1647_, _1651_, _1653_. Professor Case suggests 'cloakt' (i.e. 'hidden') for 'clock't'.]

[Line: 50 Mr. Berdan says, '_Englishmen supposed_ that the Scotch did not eat pork'. But, until quite recently, it was a fact; and even now there is much less eaten north than south of the Tweed. As for Cleveland's day, James the First's aversion to it was well known and had been celebrated by Ben Jonson. In _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ 'But not a mouth is muzzled by the Jew'.]

[Line: 51-2 Not in earlier editions. Added in _1677_.]

[Line: 54 _1677_ 'margin of _his_ dish'.]

[Line: 55 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, &c. omit 'care' and read 'tells them'.]

[Line: 59 _1677_ 'Thou that didst'.]

[Line: 60 'turned thine' _1677_, _1687_: 'turn'st thy' _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, &c. mull] Dialectic for 'cow', especially as a call-name. It seems to be connected with the sense of the word for 'lips', especially large loose ones.]

[Line: 61 _1677_

allay my grief, O spare me this, this monumental beef. ]

[Line: 66 'hath' _1677_, _1687_: 'has' _1651_, _1653_ and its group.]

[Line: 73 'may' _1651_, _1653_, &c.: 'we' _1677_.]

[Lines: 79, 80 Added in _1677_ &c., with very doubtful advantage.]

A Young Man to an Old Woman courting him.

Peace, Beldam Eve, surcease thy suit; There 's no temptation in such fruit; No rotten medlars, whilst there be Whole orchards in virginity. Thy stock is too much out of date For tender plants t' inoculate. A match with thee thy bridegroom fears Would be thought interest in his years, Which, when compared to thine, become Odd money to thy grandam sum. 10 Can wedlock know so great a curse As putting husbands out to nurse? How Pond and Rivers would mistake And cry new almanacs for our sake. Time sure hath wheeled about his year, December meeting Janiveer. The Egyptian serpent figures Time, And stripped, returns unto his prime. If my affection thou wouldst win, First cast thy hieroglyphic skin. 20 My modern lips know not, alack! The old religion of thy smack. I count that primitive embrace As out of fashion as thy face. And yet, so long 'tis since thy fall, Thy fornication 's classical. Our sports will differ; thou mayst play Lero, and I Alphonso way. I'm no translator, have no vein To turn a woman young again, 30 Unless you'll grant the tailor's due, To see the fore-bodies be new. I love to wear clothes that are flush, Not prefacing old rags with plush, Like aldermen, or under-shrieves With canvass backs and velvet sleeves: And just such discord there would be Betwixt thy skeleton and me. Go study salve and treacle, ply Your tenant's leg or his sore eye. 40 Thus matrons purchase credit, thank Six pennyworth of mountebank; Or chew thy cud on some delight That thou didst taste in 'eighty-eight; Or be but bed-rid once, and then Thou'lt dream thy youthful sins again. But if thou needs wilt be my spouse, First hearken and attend my vows. _When Aetna's fires shall undergo_ _The penance of the Alps in snow;_ 50 _When Sol at one blast of his horn_ _Posts from the Crab to Capricorn;_ _When th' heavens shuffle all in one_ _The Torrid with the Frozen Zone;_ _When all these contradictions meet_, _Then, Sibyl, thou and I will greet._ For all these similes do hold In my young heat and thy dull cold. Then, if a fever be so good A pimp as to inflame thy blood, 60 Hymen shall twist thee and thy page, The distinct tropics of man's age. Well, Madam Time, be ever bald. I'll not thy periwig be called. I'll never be 'stead of a lover, An aged chronicle's new cover.

[_A Young Man, &c._ (_1647_.)]

[Line: 8 _1677_, &c. have 'incest', which is rather tempting, but considering the 'odd money' which follows, not, I think, absolutely certain.]

[Line: 13 Edward Pond died in 1629; but the almanac, published by him first in 1601, lasted till 1709. Rivers was probably Peregrine Rivers, 'Student in Mathematics', writer of one of the numerous almanacs of the period. There are in the Bodleian copies of his almanacs for 1629, 1630, 1638, all printed at Cambridge. (Information supplied to me from Oxford.)]

[Line: 15 Some copies 'this'.]

[Line: 22 Rather a good line.]

[Line: 27 _1651_, _1653_, &c. 'mayst': _1647_, _1677_, &c. 'must'.]

[Line: 35 _1647_ 'Monster Shrieves', _1653_ 'Monster-Sheriffs', which can hardly be right.]

[Line: 44 'eighty-eight] The Armada year, often taken as a standard of remoteness not too remote. This, which is the later reading, of 1677 _sqq._, seems better than '_Thou takest in thy_ Eighty Eight' (_1647_, _1651_, _1653_, &c.).]

[Lines: 49-62 The italics of _1653_, though discarded in _1677_, seem worth keeping, because of the solemn call of attention to the particulars of the 'Vow'; they extend in the _1653_ text to l. 60. But _1647_ and _1651_, prefix inverted commas to ll. 49-56, which seems a more effective ending to the 'Vow'.]

[Line: 53 Some inferior editions put in 'shall'. _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, and _1677_ exclude it.]

[Line: 61 twist] In the sense of 'twine', 'unite'. 'page' = 'boy'.]

[Line: 62 _1647_, _1651_ 'Tropicks': _1653_ 'Tropick'; but both Cancer and Capricorn are wanted.]

To Mrs. K. T.

(Who asked him why he was dumb.)

Stay, should I answer, Lady, then In vain would be your question: Should I be dumb, why then again Your asking me would be in vain. Silence nor speech, on neither hand, Can satisfy this strange demand. Yet, since your will throws me upon This wished contradiction, I'll tell you how I did become So strangely, as you hear me, dumb. 10 Ask but the chap-fallen Puritan; 'Tis zeal that tongue-ties that good man. (For heat of conscience all men hold Is th' only way to catch their cold.) How should Love's zealot then forbear To be your silenced minister? Nay, your Religion which doth grant A worship due to you, my Saint, Yet counts it that devotion wrong That does it in the Vulgar Tongue. 20 My ruder words would give offence To such an hallowed excellence, As th' English dialect would vary The goodness of an Ave Mary. How can I speak that twice am checked By this and that religious sect? Still dumb, and in your face I spy Still cause and still divinity. As soon as blest with your salute, My manners taught me to be mute. 30 For, lest they cancel all the bliss You signed with so divine a kiss, The lips you seal must needs consent Unto the tongue's imprisonment. My tongue in hold, my voice doth rise With a strange E-la to my eyes, Where it gets bail, and in that sense Begins a new-found eloquence. Oh listen with attentive sight To what my pratling eyes indite! 40 Or, lady, since 'tis in your choice To give or to suspend my voice, With the same key set ope the door Wherewith you locked it fast before. Kiss once again, and when you thus Have doubly been miraculous, My Muse shall write with handmaid's duty The Golden Legend of your beauty.

He whom his dumbness now confines But means to speak the rest by signs. 50

_I. C._

[_To Mrs. K. T., &c._ (_1647_). To this title _1677_ and its followers add 'Written _calente calamo_'. The variant on _currente_ is of some interest, and the statement may have been made to excuse the bad opening rhyme.]

[Line: 5 neither] either _1677_.]

[Line: 14 'their cold' _1651_, _1653_: 'that cold' _1647_, _1677_.]

[Line: 16 silenced] As some Puritans were before Cleveland wrote, and all, or almost all, Churchmen afterwards.]

[Line: 31 _1677_ 'Lest I should cancel all the bliss'.]

[Line: 37 bail] _1653_ &c. '_h_ail', which is doubtless a misprint.]

[Line: 40 'prating' _1677_.]

[Line: 47 'handmaid' _1677_.]

[Line: 50 _1677_ '_Intends_ to speak'--an obvious correction of the 'red-hot pen'. But whether Cleveland's or his vindicators' who shall say?]

[Line: 51 So _1647_, _1651_, _1653_. The couplet is meaningless without them.]

A Fair Nymph scorning a Black Boy courting her.

_Nymph._ Stand off, and let me take the air; Why should the smoke pursue the fair?

_Boy._ My face is smoke, thence may be guessed What flames within have scorched my breast.

_Nymph._ The flame of love I cannot view For the dark lantern of thy hue.

_Boy._ And yet this lantern keeps Love's taper Surer than yours, that's of white paper. Whatever midnight hath been here, The moonshine of your light can clear. 10

_Nymph._ My moon of an eclipse is 'fraid, If thou shouldst interpose thy shade.

_Boy._ Yet one thing, Sweetheart, I will ask; Take me for a new-fashioned mask.

_Nymph._ Yes, but my bargain shall be this, I'll throw my mask off when I kiss.

_Boy._ Our curled embraces shall delight To checker limbs with black and white.

_Nymph._ Thy ink, my paper, make me guess Our nuptial bed will prove a press, 20 And in our sports, if any came, They'll read a wanton epigram.

_Boy._ Why should my black thy love impair? Let the dark shop commend the ware; Or, if thy love from black forbears, I'll strive to wash it off with tears.

_Nymph._ Spare fruitless tears, since thou must needs Still wear about thee mourning weeds. Tears can no more affection win Than wash thy Ethiopian skin. 30

[_A Fair Nymph, &c._ (_1647_.)]

[Line: 2 An odd fancy included by Browne among the _Vulgar Errors_.]

[Line: 5 'Thy flaming love' _1677_ &c.]

[Line: 10 'face will clear' _1677_ &c.]

[Line: 14 _1677_ 'Take me for a new-fashioned mask': _1647_, _1651_ 'Buy me for a new false mask', varied in _1653_ 'Buy for me'--apparently a misprint, as the boy does not seem to wish to disguise himself.]

[Line: 15 Yes] Done _1677_.]

[Line: 20 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, 'make a press', ill repeated from above.]

[Line: 24 'the ware' _1677_: _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, not so well, '_thy_ ware'.]

[Line: 28 _1677_ changed 'thee' to 'thy'.]

[Line: 30 Some inferior copies '_the_ Ethiopian'.]

A Dialogue between two Zealots upon the &c. in the Oath.

Sir Roger, from a zealous piece of frieze Raised to a vicar of the children's threes; Whose yearly audit may by strict account To twenty nobles and his vails amount; Fed on the common of the female charity Until the Scots can bring about their parity; So shotten that his soul, like to himself, Walks but in cuerpo; this same clergy-elf, Encountering with a brother of the cloth, Fell presently to cudgels with the Oath. 10 The quarrel was a strange misshapen monster, &c., (God bless us) which they conster The brand upon the buttock of the Beast, The Dragon's tail tied on a knot, a nest Of young Apocryphas, the fashion Of a new mental Reservation. While Roger thus divides the text, the other Winks and expounds, saying, 'My pious brother, Hearken with reverence, for the point is nice. I never read on 't, but I fasted twice, 20 And so by revelation know it better Than all the learn'd idolaters o'th' letter.' With that he swelled, and fell upon the theme Like great Goliah with his weaver's beam. 'I say to thee, &c., thou li'st! Thou art the curléd lock of Antichrist; Rubbish of Babel; for who will not say Tongues were confounded in &c.? Who swears &c., swears more oaths at once Than Cerberus out of his triple sconce. 30 Who views it well, with the same eye beholds The old half Serpent in his numerous folds. Accurst &c. thou, for now I scent What lately the prodigious oysters meant! Oh Booker! Booker! How camest thou to lack This sign in thy prophetic almanac? It 's the dark vault wherein th' infernal plot Of powder 'gainst the State was first begot. Peruse the Oath and you shall soon descry it By all the Father Garnets that stand by it; 40 'Gainst whom the Church, (whereof I am a member,) Shall keep another Fifth Day of November. Yet here's not all; I cannot half untruss &c.--it's so abhominous! The Trojan nag was not so fully lined; Unrip &c., and you shall find Og the great commissary, and (which is worse) The apparitor upon his skew-bald horse. Then finally, my babe of grace, forbear, &c. will be too far to swear, 50 For 'tis (to speak in a familiar style) A Yorkshire wee bit longer than a mile.' Here Roger was inspired, and by God's diggers He'll swear in words at large but not in figures. Now by this drink, which he takes off, as loath To leave &c. in his liquid oath. His brother pledged him, and that bloody wine He swears shall seal the Synod's Catiline. So they drunk on, not offering to part 'Till they had quite sworn out th' eleventh quart, 60 While all that saw and heard them jointly pray They and their tribe were all &c.

[_A Dialogue, &c._ (_1647_.) This occurs also in the _Rump_ (1662, reprinted London, N. D.). A MS. copy is found in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 26 of the Bodleian, at fol. 94, with the title '_A Dialogue between 2. Zelots concerning &c. in the new Oath_.' 'The Oath' is the famous one formulated in 1640 by Convocation. Fuller, who was proctor for the diocese of Bristol (and who would have been fined heavily for his part, 'moderate' as he was, if the Puritan Ultras of the Commons could have had their way), has left much about it. This oath, to be taken by all the clergy, imported approval of the doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church, and disclaimed, twice over, 'Popish' doctrine and the usurpations of the see of Rome. Unluckily the government of the Church was defined as 'by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, _&c._', which last was, in the absence of any other handle, seized by the Puritan party as possibly implying all sorts of horrors. Cleveland banters them well enough, but hardly with the force and directness which he was to show later. The Royalists were then under the fatal error of underrating the strength of their opponents, and the gullibility of the people of England.]

[Line: 2 'vicar', _1647_, _1651_, _1653_, _MS._: 'vicarage' _1677_. 'children' _1651_, _1653_: I have been waiting a long time to know what 'children's threes' means. It occurs elsewhere, but to my thinking as an obvious reminiscence of Cleveland.]

[Line: 7 shotten] 'like a herring that has spawned', 'thin'.]

[Line: 8 in cuerpo] 'in body-clothes', 'cloakless'. _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ 'Querpo': _MS._ 'Quirpo', with 'cuerpo' written above it.]

[Line: 12 _1677_ extends '&c.' to 'et caetera'. This is a mistake, as the actual ampersand occurred in the oath and gave some slight assistance to the cavillers. Cleveland's expressions--'tail tied on a knot' (l. 14), 'curled lock' (l. 26), 'numerous folds' (l. 32)--lose their point without the ampersand. _1677_ also has '_may_ conster', which though possible enough, seems to me neither necessary nor even much of an improvement.]

[Line: 17 _1677_, less euphoniously, 'Whil_st_'.]

[Line: 22 A reading of the _Rump_ version, 'Than all the Idolaters of the letter', though almost certainly a mere mistaken correction, has some interest.]

[Line: 23 fell] sett _MS._]

[Line: 24 Goliah] This form occurs in all the texts.]

[Line: 25 In this and other lines that follow much of the quaintness is lost by 'extending' the '&c.' of the older editions.]

[Line: 28 were] are _1677_, _MS._]

[Line: 32 All editions, I think, before _1677_ (which substitutes 'false') have 'half'. 'False' is very feeble; 'half' refers picturesquely to the delineation of the Serpent tempting Eve with a human head, being coiled below like the curves of the _&c._ 'False' _MS._]

[Line: 33 _1677_, _MS._ 'Accurst Et Caetera! now, now I scent'.]

[Line: 34 I do not know whether these very Livyish oysters have been traced. _1677_ and _MS._ omit 'lately' and read 'prodigious bloody oysters'.]

[Line: 35 John Booker (1603-1677), Manchester man, haberdasher, writing-master, and astrologer, gained a great deal of credit by interpreting an eclipse after the usual fashion as portending disaster to kings and princes, the great Gustavus Adolphus and the unfortunate Frederick, 'Winter'-King of Bohemia, being complaisant enough to die in accordance.]

[Line: 36 This sign] _1677_, _MS._ 'This _fiend_'--more energetically.]

[Line: 37 ''Tis the dark vault where the' _MS._]

[Line: 40 The sting of 'the _Father Garnets_ that _stand by_ it' lies in the words immediately preceding the obnoxious '&c.'--'archbishops, bishops, &c.'--whom the Puritan divine stigmatizes as Jesuits and traitors to Church and State. As has been stated, the oath distinctly, in set terms and twice over, abjured Rome and all things Roman; but the Puritans of those days, like their descendants, paid no attention to trifles of this kind. For 'stand' _MS._ reads 'stood'.]

[Line: 43 Yet] Nay _MS._]

[Line: 44 _1647_, _1651_ 'abominous'; _1653_ 'abhominous'. The 'h' must be kept in 'ab_h_ominous', though not unusual for 'ab_om_-', because it helps to explain, and perhaps to justify, _1677_ and _MS._ in reading 'ab_d_ominous'. This, though something suggestive of a famous Oxford story, derives some colour from 'untruss' and may be right, especially as I do not know another example of 'abominous' for 'abominable'.]

[Line: 47 Og] _v. sup._, p. 31. _MS._ has marginal note 'Roan'.]

[Line: 48 'Skew-bald' is not = 'piebald', though most horses commonly called piebald are skewbalds. 'Pie[magpie]bald' is _black_ and white; skewbald _brown_ (or some other colour not black) and white. The Church-courts were much more unpopular, in these as in mediaeval times, than the Church, and High Commissioners and commissaries and apparitors were alleged to lurk under the guileful and dreadful '&c.']

[Line: 49 'babes' _1677_.]

[Line: 52 Blount's _Glossographia_ (1656), a useful book, shows the ignorance of Northern English then prevailing by supposing 'we_a_-bit' (the form found in Cleveland originally) to be '_way_-bit'. It is, of course, 'little bit', the Scotch 'mile and a bittock'.]

[Line: 53 Here] Then _1647_, _1651_, _1653_. God's diggers] = nails or fingers. Commoner in the corruption 'Ods niggers'.]

[Line: 54 'in words at large' _1647_ ('at length', one issue of _1647_): 'at words in large' _1651_, _1653_: 'in words at length, and not in figures' _MS._]

[Line: 58 Edd. 'Cat_a_line', as usual, but _1677_ 'Catiline'. 'He swears he'll be the Synod's' _MS._]

[Line: 59 'Thus they drink on, not offering to depart' _MS._]

[Line: 60 _1677_ omits 'quite'--no doubt for the old syllabic reason. _MS._ substitutes 'fully'.]

[Line: 62 Perhaps nowhere is the comic surprise of the symbol more wanted than here, and more of a loss when that symbol is extended.]

Smectymnuus, or the Club-Divines.