I wor not how the world's degenerate,
That men or know or like not their estate :
Out from the Gades up to th' eastern morn,
Not one but holds his native state forlorn.
When comely striplings wish it were their chance,
For Cænis' distaff to exchange their lance,
And wear curl'd periwigs, and chalk their face,
And still are poring on their pocket-glass.
Tir'd with pinn'd ruffs and fans, and partlet strips,
And busks and verdingales about their hips;
And tread on corked stilts a prisoner's pace,
And make their napkin for their spitting place,
And gripe their waist within a narrow span:
Fond Cænis, that wouldst wish to be a man!
Whose manish housewives like their refuse state,
And make a drudge of their uxorious mate,
Who like a cot-queen freezeth at the rock,
Whiles his breech'd dame doth man the foreign stock.
The general scope of this satire, as its motto denotes, is directed against the discontent of human beings with their respective conditions. It paints the ambition of the youth to become a man, of the muckworm to be rich, of the rustic to become a soldier, of the rhymer to appear in print, and of the brain-sick reader of foreign wonders to become a traveller.-E, A
Is 't not a shame to see each homely groom
Sit perched in an idle chariot room,
That were not meet some pannel to bestride,
Sursingled to a galled hackney's hide?
Each muck-worm will be rich with lawless gain,
Although he smother up mows of seven years grain,
And hang'd himself when corn grows cheap again;
Although he buy whole harvests in the spring,
And foist in false strikes to the measuring;
Altho' his shop be muffled from the light,
Like a day dungeon, or Cimmerian night;
Nor full nor fasting can the carle take rest,
While his George-Nobles rusten in his chest ;
He sleeps but once, and dreams of burglary,
And wakes, and casts about his frighted eye,
And gropes for thieves in ev'ry darker shade;
And if a mouse but stir, he calls for aid.
The sturdy ploughman doth the soldier see,
All scarfed with piëd colours to the knee,
Whom Indian pillage hath made fortunate,
And now he 'gins to loath his former state;
Now doth he inly scorn his Kendal-green,
And his patch'd cockers now despised been ;
Nor list he now go whistling to the car,
But sells his team, and fetleth to the war.
O war! to them that never tried thee, sweet!
When his dead mate falls groveling at his feet,
And angry bullets whistlen at his ear,
And his dim eyes see nought but death and drear.
Oh happy ploughman! were thy weal well known:
Oh happy all estates, except his own!
Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent,
If he can live to see his name in print,
Who, when he is once fleshed to the press,
And sees his hansell have such fair success,
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail,
He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sail,
Nor then can rest, but volumes up bodg'd rhymes,
To have his name talk'd of in future times.
The brain-sick youth, that feeds his tickled ear
With sweet sauc'd lies of some false traveller,
Which hath the Spanish decades read awhile,
Or whetstone leasings of old Mandeville,
Now with discourses breaks his midnight sleep
Of his adventures through the Indian deep,
Of all their massy heaps of golden mine,
Or of the antique tombs of Palestine,
Or of Damascus' magic wall of glass,
Of Solomon his sweating piles of brass,
Of the bird ruc that bears an elephant,
Of mermaids that the southern seas do haunt,
Of headless men, of savage cannibals,
The fashions of their lives and governals;
What monstrous cities there erected be,
Cairo, or the city of the Trinity;
Now are they dunghill cocks that have not seen
The bordering Alps, or else the neighbour Rhine;
And now he plies the news-full grashopper,
Of voyages and ventures to enquire.
His land mortgaged, he sea-beat in the way,
Wishes for home a thousand sighs a day;
And now he deems his home-bred fare as leaf
As his parch'd biscuit, or his barrell'd beef.
Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,
O let me lead an academic life;
To know much, and to think for nothing, know
Nothing to have, yet think we have enow;
In skill to want, and wanting seek for more;
In weal nor want, nor wish for greater store.
Envy, ye monarchs, with your proud excess,
At our low sail, and our high happiness.
WAS a native of Oxfordshire, and was born, as Mr. Ellis conjectures, in 1558. He left the university of Oxford without a degree, and came to London, where he pursued the business of an attorney of the common pleas. Scott, the poet of Amwell, discovered that he had been buried in the church of that parish in 1609, having died suddenly in the night-time.
His Albion's England was once exceedingly popular. Its publication was at one time interdicted by the Star-chamber, for no other reason that can now be assigned, but that it contains some lovestories more simply than delicately related. His contemporaries compared him to Virgil, whom he certainly did not make his model. Dr. Percy thinks
he rather resembled Ovid, to whom he is, if
sible, still more unlike. enormous ballad on the fables, appendant to the history of England; heterogeneous, indeed, like the Metamorphoses, but written with an almost doggrel simplicity. Headley has rashly preferred his works to our ancient ballads; but with the best of these they will bear no comparison. Argentile and Curan has indeed some beautiful touches, yet that episode requires to be weeded of many lines to be read with unqualified pleasure; and through the rest of his stories we shall search in vain for the familiar magic of such ballads as Chevy Chase or Gill Morrice.
His poem is, in fact, an history, or rather on thẻ
Argentile, the daughter and heiress of the deceased King, Adelbright, has been left to the protection of her uncle Edel, who discharges his trust unfaithfully, and seeks to force his niece to marry a suitor whom he believes to be ignoble, that he may have a pretext for seizing on her kingdom,
YET well he fosters for a time the damsel, that was
The fairest lady under heav'n, whose beauty being
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