Note 416 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 5)

It would, however, appear that these revolutionary publications reached the universities, and probably fermented “the green heads” of our students, as the following grave admonition directed to them evidently proves:—

“Anti-Martinus sive monitio cujusdam Londinensis ad adolescentes vtrimque academiæ contra personatum quendam rabulam qui se Anglicè Martin Marprelat, &c. Londini, 1589, 4^o.”

A popular favourite as he was, yet even Martin, in propria persona, acknowledges that his manner was not approved of by either party. His “Theses Martinianæ” opens thus: “I see my doings and my course misliked of many, both the good and the bad; though also I have favourers of both sortes. The bishops and their traine, though they stumble at the cause, yet especially mislike my maner of writing. Those whom foolishly men call Puritanes, like of the matter I have handled, but the forme they cannot brooke. So that herein I have them both for mine adversaries. But now what if I should take the course in certain theses or conclusions, without inveighing against either person or cause.” This was probably written after Martin had swallowed some of his own sauce, or taken his “Pap (offered to him) with a Hatchet,” as one of the most celebrated government pamphlets is entitled. But these “Theses Martinianæ,” without either scurrility or invective are the dullest things imaginable; abstract propositions were not palatable to the multitude; and then it was, after the trial had been made, that Martin Junior and Senior attempted to revive the spirit of the old gentleman; but if sedition has its progress, it has also its decline; and if it could not strike its blow when strongest, it only puled and made grimaces, prognostics of weakness and dissolution. This is admirably touched in “Pappe with an Hatchet.” “Now Old Martin appeared, with a wit worn into the socket, twingling and pinking like the snuffe of a candle; quantum mutatus ab illo, how unlike the knave he was before, not for malice, but for sharpnesse! The hogshead was even come to the hauncing, and nothing could be drawne from him but dregs; yet the emptie caske sounds lowder than when it was full, and protests more in his waining than he could performe in his waxing. I drew neere the sillie soul, whom I found quivering in two sheets of protestation paper (alluding to the work mentioned here in the following note). O how meager and leane he looked, so crest falne that his combe hung downe to his bill; and had I not been sure it was the picture of Envie, I should have sworn it had been the image of Death: so like the verie anatomie of Mischief, that one might see through all the ribbes of his conscience.”

In another rare pamphlet from the same school, “Pasquill of England to Martin Junior, in a countercuffe given to Martin Junior,” he humorously threatens to write “The Owle’s Almanack, wherein your night labours be set down;” and “some fruitful volumes of ‘The Lives of the Saints,’ which, maugre your father’s five hundred sons, shall be printed,” with “hays, jiggs, and roundelays, and madrigals, serving for epitaphs for his father’s hearse.”