Part 8

And why a tenant to this vile disguise Which who but sees, blasphemes thee with his eyes? My twins of light within their penthouse shrink, And hold it their allegiance now to wink. O, for a state-distinction to arraign Charles of high treason 'gainst my Sovereign! What an usurper to his prince is wont, Cloister and shave him, he himself hath don' 't. His muffled feature speaks him a recluse-- His ruins prove him a religious house! 10 The sun hath mewed his beams from off his lamp And majesty defaced the royal stamp. Is 't not enough thy dignity 's in thrall, But thou'lt transmute it in thy shape and all, As if thy blacks were of too faint a dye Without the tincture of tautology? Flay an Egyptian for his cassock skin, Spun of his country's darkness, line 't within With Presbyterian budge, that drowsy trance, The Synod's sable, foggy Ignorance; 20 Nor bodily nor ghostly negro could Roughcast thy figure in a sadder mould. This privy-chamber of thy shape would be But the close mourner of thy Royalty. Then, break the circle of thy tailor's spell, A pearl within a rugged oyster's shell. Heaven, which the minster of thy person owns, Will fine thee for dilapidations. Like to a martyred abbey's coarser doom, Devoutly altered to a pigeon-room; 30 Or like a college by the changeling rabble, Manchester's elves, transformed into a stable; Or if there be a profanation higher; Such is the sacrilege of thine attire, By which thou'rt half deposed.--Thou look'st like one Whose looks are under sequestration; Whose renegado form at the first glance Shows like the Self-denying Ordinance; Angel of light, and darkness too, (I doubt) Inspired within and yet possessed without; 40 Majestic twilight in the state of grace, Yet with an excommunicated face. Charles and his mask are of a different mint; A psalm of mercy in a miscreant print. The sun wears midnight, day is beetle-browed, And lightning is in kelder of a cloud. O the accursed stenography of fate! The princely eagle shrunk into a bat! What charm, what magic vapour can it be That checks his rays to this apostasy? 50 It is no subtile film of tiffany air, No cobweb vizard such as ladies wear, When they are veiled on purpose to be seen, Doubling their lustre by their vanquished screen. No, the false scabbard of a prince is tough And three-piled darkness, like the smoky slough Of an imprisoned flame; 'tis Faux in grain; Dark lantern to our bright meridian. Hell belched the damp; the Warwick Castle vote Rang Britain's curfew, so our light went out. 60 [A black offender, should he wear his sin For penance, could not have a darker skin.] His visage is not legible; the letters Like a lord's name writ in fantastic fetters; Clothes where a Switzer might be buried quick; Sure they would fit the body politic; False beard enough to fit a stage's plot (For that 's the ambush of their wit, God wot), Nay, all his properties so strange appear, Y' are not i' th' presence though the King be there. 70 A libel is his dress, a garb uncouth, Such as the _Hue and Cry_ once purged at mouth. Scribbling assassinate! Thy lines attest An earmark due, Cub of the Blatant Beast; Whose breath, before 'tis syllabled for worse, Is blasphemy unfledged, a callow curse. The Laplanders, when they would sell a wind Wafting to hell, bag up thy phrase and bind It to the bark, which at the voyage end Shifts poop and breeds the colic in the Fiend. 80 But I'll not dub thee with a glorious scar Nor sink thy sculler with a man-of-war. The black-mouthed _Si quis_ and this slandering suit Both do alike in picture execute. But since w' are all called Papists, why not date Devotion to the rags thus consecrate? As temples use to have their porches wrought With sphinxes, creatures of an antic draught, And puzzling portraitures to show that there Riddles inhabited; the like is here. 90 But pardon, Sir, since I presume to be Clerk of this closet to your Majesty. Methinks in this your dark mysterious dress I see the Gospel couched in parables. At my next view my purblind fancy ripes And shows Religion in its dusky types; Such a text royal, so obscure a shade Was Solomon in Proverbs all arrayed. Come, all the brats of this expounding age To whom the spirit is in pupilage, 100 You that damn more than ever Samson slew, And with his engine, the same jaw-bone too! How is 't he 'scapes your inquisition free Since bound up in the Bible's livery? Hence, Cabinet-intruders! Pick-locks, hence! You, that dim jewels with your Bristol sense: And characters, like witches, so torment Till they confess a guilt though innocent! Keys for this coffer you can never get; None but St. Peter's opes this cabinet, 110 This cabinet, whose aspect would benight Critic spectators with redundant light. A Prince most seen is least. What Scriptures call The Revelation, is most mystical. Mount then, thou Shadow Royal, and with haste Advance thy morning-star, Charles, overcast. May thy strange journey contradictions twist And force fair weather from a Scottish mist. Heaven's confessors are posed, those star-eyed sages, T' interpret an eclipse thus riding stages. 120 Thus Israel-like he travels with a cloud, Both as a conduct to him and a shroud. But oh, he goes to Gibeon and renews A league with mouldy bread and clouted shoes!

[_The Kings Disguise._] That assumed on the fatal journey from Oxford to the camp of the Scots. (First printed as a quarto pamphlet of four leaves; Thomason bought his copy on 21 January, 1647; reprinted in the 1647 _Poems_. Vaughan wrote a poem on the same subject about the same time.)]

[Line: 1 a tenant to] so coffin'd in _1677_.]

[Line: 2 Which] That _1677_.]

[Line 4: _1677_ omits 'now', rather to one's surprise, as the value 'allegi-ance' is of the first rather than of the second half of the century. It is therefore probably right.]

[Line: 14 transmute] transcribe _1677_. The two readings obviously pertain to two different senses of 'blacks'--'clothes' and 'ink'.]

[Line: 17 for] from _1647_ (pamphlet).]

[Line: 18 line 't] lin'de _1647_ (pamphlet).]

[Line: 19 The _1677_ 'Vindicators' had forgotten 'budge' in the sense of 'fur' (perhaps they were too loyal to read Milton) and made it 'b_a_dge'.]

[Line: 20 _1651_, _1653_ 'Synod', with no hyphen but perhaps meant for a compound. The genitive is perhaps better. The comma at 'sable', which Mr. Berdan omits, is important.]

[Lines: 21-2 The error of those who say that such a rhyme points to the pronunciation of the _l_ in words like 'could' is sufficiently shown by the fact that 'coud' is frequent. It is, of course, a mere eye-rhyme, like many of Spenser's earlier. 'No bodily' _1647_ (pamphlet).]

[Line: 23 shape] garb _1677_.]

[Line: 24 of] to _1677_.]

[Line: 25 'Twill break' _1647_, _1653_. tailor's] jailor's _1647_, _1651_, _1653_.]

[Line: 29 _1653_, but obviously by a mere misprint, 'co_u_rser'.]

[Line: 31 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ '_the_ college'. It is said that the definite article usually at this time designates 'the College _of Physicians_'. But, as Mr. Berdan well observes, 'the case was unfortunately too common to admit of identification'. Cleveland's restless wit was not idle in calling 'Manchester's elves'--the Parliamentary troops--'changelings'. The soldier ought to be a King's man: and indeed pretended to be.]

[Line: 32 _1647_ (pamphlet) 'reformed'.]

[Line: 40 This and l. 47 are examples of the Drydenian line before Dryden, so frequent in Cleveland.]

[Line: 46 = 'The unborn child of a cloud'.]

[Line: 47 Alliteration, and some plausibility of verse, seduced _1677_ into 'of State', but I think 'fate' is better.]

[Line: 50 checks] shrinks _1647_, _1651_, _1653_.]

[Lines: 55-6 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ read

_Nor_ the false scabbard of a Princ_e's_ tough _Metal_ and three-piled darkness like the slough.

Some fight might be made for 'Metal', but 'Nor' is indefensible. I am half inclined to transfer it above to l. 52 and take 'No' thence. The text, which is _1677_, is I suppose a correction. Both _1647_ texts mark 'slough' with an asterisk, and have a marginal note 'A damp in coal-pits usual'.]

[Line: 57 I cannot understand what Mr. Berdan--who prints 'Fawkes'--means by saying it is not authorized by any edition, whereas his own apparatus gives 'Faux' in every one. It is a mere question of spelling. 'Three-piled darkness' equally surrounds to me his further remark that he 'adopted it as the only reading approximating sense; _treason in grain_'. The metaphor of the dark lantern cloaked is surely clear enough; and this 'in grain' is one of the innumerable passages showing the rashness of invariably interpreting 'in grain' as = 'with the grain of the cochineal insect'. Beyond all doubt it has the simple sense of _penitus_, 'inward'.]

[Line: 58 bright] high _1647_, _1653_.]

[Line: 59 the Warwick Castle vote] The Resolution of the Commons on May 6, 1646, that the King, after the Scots sold him, should be lodged in Warwick Castle.]

[Lines: 61-2 Not in _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ and its group, but added in _1677_.]

[Line: 63 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ '_Thy_ visage'.]

[Line: 67 _1677_ has the very considerable and not at once acceptable alteration of 'thatch a poet's plot'. But it may have been Cleveland.]

[Line: 72 _1647_, _1651_, again give an asterisked note, 'Britanicus', showing the definite, not general, reference of 'Hue and Cry'. It seems that _Mercurius Britannicus_ did issue a 'Hue and Cry' after the King, for which the editor, Captain Audley, was put in the Gate-house till he apologized.]

[Line: 75 _1651_ 'wreath', corrupted into 'wrath' in _1653_.]

[Line: 76 Blount stupidly thought 'callow' to mean 'lewd or wicked', as if 'unfledged' did not ratify the usual sense.]

[Line: 80 breeds] brings _1647_, _1651_.]

[Line: 83 _Si quis_] The first words of a formal inquiry as to disqualifications in a candidate for orders, &c. It would apply to the Hue and Cry itself.]

[Line: 85 It being a favourite Puritan trick to identify 'Royalist' with 'Papist'. 'Date' apparently in the sense of 'begin', which it usually has only as neuter.]

[Line: 89 puzzling] _1677_ and its followers 'purling', with no sense.]

[Line: 95 _1677_ 'The second view' and 'wipes'.]

[Line: 106 Bristol] as of diamonds.]

[Line: 109 coffer] cipher _1677_, &c.]

[Line: 110 opes] ope _1677_.]

[Line: 116 'Charles' _1677_: _1647_, _1651_, _1653,_ by a clear error 'Charles's'.]

[Line: 120 'T' interpret an' _1647_ (pamphlet): 'To interpret an' _1647_ (Poems) _1653_, _1677_. _1651_ omits 'To' and reads the 'an' which seems bad in metre and meaning alike.]

The Rebel Scot.

How, Providence? and yet a Scottish crew? Then Madam Nature wears black patches too! What? shall our nation be in bondage thus Unto a land that truckles under us? Ring the bells backward! I am all on fire. Not all the buckets in a country quire Shall quench my rage. A poet should be feared, When angry, like a comet's flaming beard. And where 's the stoic can his wrath appease, To see his country sick of Pym's disease? 10 By Scotch invasion to be made a prey To such pigwiggin myrmidons as they? But that there 's charm in verse, I would not quote The name of Scot without an antidote; Unless my head were red, that I might brew Invention there that might be poison too. Were I a drowsy judge whose dismal note Disgorgeth halters as a juggler's throat Doth ribbons; could I in Sir Emp'ric's tone Speak pills in phrase and quack destruction; 20 Or roar like Marshall, that Geneva bull, Hell and damnation a pulpit full; Yet to express a Scot, to play that prize, Not all those mouth-grenadoes can suffice. Before a Scot can properly be curst, I must like Hocus swallow daggers first. Come, keen iambics, with your badger's feet And badger-like bite till your teeth do meet. Help, ye tart satirists, to imp my rage With all the scorpions that should whip this age. 30 Scots are like witches; do but whet your pen, Scratch till the blood come, they'll not hurt you then. Now, as the martyrs were enforced to take The shapes of beasts, like hypocrites, at stake, I'll bait my Scot so, yet not cheat your eyes; A Scot within a beast is no disguise. No more let Ireland brag her harmless nation Fosters no venom since the Scot's plantation: Nor can ours feigned antiquity maintain; Since they came in, England hath wolves again. 40 The Scot that kept the Tower might have shown, Within the grate of his own breast alone, The leopard and the panther, and engrossed What all those wild collegiates had cost The honest high-shoes in their termly fees; First to the salvage lawyer, next to these. Nature herself doth Scotchmen beasts confess, Making their country such a wilderness: A land that brings in question and suspense God's omnipresence, but that Charles came thence, 50 But that Montrose and Crawford's loyal band Atoned their sins and christ'ned half the land. Nor is it all the nation hath these spots; There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots. As in a picture where the squinting paint Shows fiend on this side, and on that side saint. He, that saw Hell in 's melancholy dream And in the twilight of his fancy's theme, Scared from his sins, repented in a fright, Had he viewed Scotland, had turned proselyte. 60 A land where one may pray with cursed intent, 'Oh may they never suffer banishment!' Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom; Not forced him wander but confined him home! Like Jews they spread and as infection fly, As if the Devil had ubiquity. Hence 'tis they live at rovers and defy This or that place, rags of geography. They're citizens o' th' world; they're all in all; Scotland's a nation epidemical. 70 And yet they ramble not to learn the mode, How to be dressed, or how to lisp abroad; To return knowing in the Spanish shrug, Or which of the Dutch States a double jug Resembles most in belly or in beard, (The card by which the mariners are steered). No, the Scots-errant fight and fight to eat, Their Ostrich stomachs make their swords their meat. Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt Who use to hang their teeth upon their belt. 80 Yet wonder not at this their happy choice, The serpent 's fatal still to Paradise. Sure, England hath the hemorrhoids, and these On the north postern of the patient seize Like leeches; thus they physically thirst After our blood, but in the cure shall burst! Let them not think to make us run o' th' score To purchase villenage, as once before When an act passed to stroke them on the head, Call them good subjects, buy them gingerbread. 90 Not gold, nor acts of grace, 'tis steel must tame The stubborn Scot; a Prince that would reclaim Rebels by yielding, doth like him, or worse, Who saddled his own back to shame his horse. Was it for this you left your leaner soil, Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's spoil? They are the Gospel's life-guard; but for them, The garrison of New Jerusalem, What would the brethren do? The Cause! The Cause! Sack-possets and the fundamental laws! 100 Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts! How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts! They wanted food and raiment, so they took Religion for their seamstress and their cook. Unmask them well; their honours and estate, As well as conscience, are sophisticate. Shrive but their titles and their money poise, A laird and twenty pence pronounced with noise, When construed, but for a plain yeoman go, And a good sober two-pence; and well so. 110 Hence then, you proud impostors; get you gone, You Picts in gentry and devotion; You scandal to the stock of verse, a race Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace. Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce The ostracism and shamed it out of use. The Indian, that Heaven did forswear Because he heard some Spaniards were there, Had he but known what Scots in Hell had been, He would Erasmus-like have hung between. 120 My Muse hath done. A voider for the nonce! I wrong the Devil should I pick their bones; That dish is his; for, when the Scots decease, Hell, like their nation, feeds on barnacles. A Scot, when from the gallow-tree got loose, Drops into Styx and turns a Solan goose.

[_The Rebel Scot._] This famous piece is said to be the only one of Cleveland's poems which is in every edition. In _1677_ it is accompanied by a Latin version (of very little merit, and probably if not certainly by 'another hand') which I do not give. A poor copy is in Tanner MS. 465 of the Bodleian, at fol. 92, with the title 'A curse on the Scots'. The piece is hot enough, and no wonder; but it would no doubt have been hotter if it had been written later, when Cleveland was actually gagged by Leven's dismissal of him. It is not unnoteworthy that the library of the University of Edinburgh contains not a single one of the numerous seventeenth-century editions of Cleveland. Years afterwards, when a Douglas had chequered the disgrace of 'the Dutch in the Medway' by a brave death, Marvell, who probably knew our poet, composed for 'Cleveland's Ghost' a half palinode, half continuation, entitled 'The _Loyal_ Scot'.]

[Line: 10 It would seem that Pym had not yet gone to his account, as he died on December 6, 1643, after getting Parliament to accept the Covenant and the Scots to invade England.]

[Line: 12 The early texts have Drayton's name correctly: _1677_ makes it 'Pigwidgin'.]

[Line: 15 It seems hardly necessary to remind the reader of the well-known habit of painting Judas's hair red.]

[Line: 19 could ... tone] or in the Empiric's misty tone _MS._]

[Line: 21 Stephen Marshall, the 'Smec.' man and a mighty cushion-thumper (who denounced the 'Curse of Meroz' on all who came not to destroy those in any degree opposed to the Parliament), actually preached Pym's funeral sermon.]

[Line: 22 'Damnati-on'. But _MS._ reads 'a whole pulpit full'.]

[Line: 28 _1653_ has the obvious blunder of 'feet' repeated for 'teeth'. The first 'feet' is itself less obvious, but I suppose the strong claw and grip of the badger's are meant. Some, however, refer it to the supposed lop-sidedness or inequality of badgers' feet, answering to the [)]-- of the iamb. I never knew but one badger, who lived in St. Clement's, Oxford, and belonged (surreptitiously) to Merton College. I did not notice his feet.]

[Line: 32 The more usual reproach was the other way--that 'the Scot would not fight _till_ he saw his own blood'.]

[Line: 38 _1677_, less well, '_that_ Scot'.]

[Line: 39 'ours ... maintain' _1647_, _1651_, _1653_: 'our ... obtain' _1677_.]

[Line: 41 The Scot] Sir William Balfour, a favoured servant of the King, who deserted to the other side.]

[Line: 44 A difficulty has been made about 'collegiate', but there is surely none. The word (or 'colleg_ian_') is old slang, and hardly slang for 'jail-bird'. The double use of the Tower as a prison and a menagerie should of course be remembered.]

[Line: 45 high-shoes] Country folk in boots.

termly] = 'when they came up to business'.]

[Line: 51 Crawford] Ludovic, sixteenth Earl, who fought bravely all through the Rebellion, served after the downfall in France and Spain, and died, it is not accurately known when or where, but about 1652.]

[Line: 52 A fine line. _1677_ does not improve it by reading '_their_ land'.]

[Lines: 63-4 The central and most often quoted couplet.]

[Lines: 65-6 follow 70 in the _MS._]

[Line: 67 at rovers] Common for shooting not at a definite mark, but at large.]

[Line: 70 epidemical] In the proper sense of 'travelling from country to country', not doubtless without the transferred one of a 'travelling _plague_'.]

[Line: 74 States] not the Provinces; but the representative Hogan Mogans themselves.]

[Line: 78 'Ostrich' in _1677_: _1647_, _1651,_ and _1653_ the older 'estrich'.]

[Line: 80 hang] string _1677_.]

[Line: 81 'But why should we be made your frantic choice?' _MS._]

[Line: 82 'England too hath emerods' _MS._]

[Line: 83 _1651_, _1653_ have a middle form between 'emerod' and 'hemorrhoid'--'Hemeroids'. _1647_ 'Hemerods'.]

[Line: 84 _1647_, _1651_, _1653_ and its group, oddly, 'posture'.]

[Line: 89 The Parliamentary bribe or Danegelt of 1641.]

[Line: 95 'left' _1653_, &c., _1677_: 'gave' _1647_, _1651_. The _MS._ reads 'But they may justly quit their leaner soil. 'Tis to lard ...']

[Line: 101 _1651_, _1653_ 'goodly', but here, I think, the old is not the better.]

[Line: 107 'money' _1647_, _1651_, _1653_: 'moneys' _1677_.]

[Line: 108 _1647_, _1653_, &c. 'pound', wrongly. Twenty Scots pence = not quite two-pence English. Therefore 'well so'.]

[Line: 118 _1641_, _1651_, and _1653_ 'the Spaniards', but 'some' (_1677_) is more pointed.]

[Line: 120 Erasmus] Regarded as neither Papist nor Protestant?]

[Cleveland never wrote anything else of this force and fire: and it, or parts of it, were constantly revived when the occasion presented itself.]

The Scots' Apostasy.