Note 330 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 3)

There is a small poem, published in 1643, entitled “The Great Assizes holden in Parnassus,” in the manner of a later work, “The Sessions of the Poets,” in which all the Diurnals and Mercuries are arraigned and tried. An impartial satire on them all; and by its good sense and heavy versification, is so much in the manner of George Wither, that some have conjectured it to be that singular author’s. Its rarity gives it a kind of value. Of such verses as Wither’s, who has been of late extolled too highly, the chief merit is their sense and truth; which, if he were not tedious, might be an excellence in prose. Antiquaries, when they find a poet adapted for their purposes, conjecture that he is an excellent one. This prosing satirist, strange to say, in some pastoral poetry, has opened the right vein.

Aulicus is well characterized:—

———————“hee, for wicked ends, Had the Castalian spring defiled with gall, And changed by Witchcraft most satyricall, The bayes of Helicon and myrtles mild, To pricking hawthornes and to hollies wild. ———————with slanders false, With forged fictitious calumnies and tales— He added fewel to the direful flame Of civil discord; and domestic blowes, By the incentives of malicious prose. For whereas he should have composed his inke Of liquors that make flames expire, and shrink Into their cinders— —He laboured hard for to bring in The exploded doctrines of the Florentine, And taught that to dissemble and to lie Were vital parts of human policie.”