Part 1 — Scarron to Lewis le Grand. By Mr. Brown.

ALL the conversation of this lower world, at present, runs upon you; and the devil a word we can hear in any of our coffee-houses, but what his Gallic Majesty is more or less concern’d in. ’Tis agreed on by all our Virtuosos, that since the days of Dioclesian, no prince has been so great a benefactor to hell as your self; and as much a matter of eloquence as I was once thought to be at Paris, I want words to tell you, how much you are commended here for so heroically trampling under foot the treaty of Reswick, and opening a new scene of war in your great climateric, at which age most of the princes before you were such recreants, as to think of making up their scores with heaven, and leaving their neighbours in peace. But you, they say, are above such sordid precedents, and rather than Pluto should want men to people his dominions, are willing to spare him half a million of your own subjects, and that at a juncture too, when you are not overstock’d with them.

This has gain’d you an universal applause in these regions; the three Furies sing your praises in every street; Bellona swears there’s never a prince in Christendom worth hanging besides your self; and Charon bustles for you in all companies: he desir’d me, about a week ago, to present his most humble respects to you; adding, that if it had not been for your majesty, he, with his wife and children, must long ago been quarter’d upon the parish; for which reason he duly drinks your health every morning in a cup of cold Styx next his conscience.

Indeed I have a double title to write to you, in the first place, as one of your dutiful, tho’ unworthy, subjects, who formerly tasted of your liberality; and secondly, as you have done me the honour to take away my late wife, not only into your private embraces, but private councils. Poor soul! I little thought she would fall to your majesty’s share when I took my last farwel of her, or that a prince that had his choice of so many thousands, would accept of my sorry leavings. And therefore, I must confess, I am apt to be a little vain, as often as I reflect, that the greatest monarch in the universe and I are brother-stallions, and that the eldest son of the church, and the little Scarron have fish’d in the same hole. Some sawcy fellows have had the impudence to tell me to my face, that Madam Maintenon (for so, out of respect to your majesty, I must call her) is your lawful wife, and that you were clandestinely marry’d to her. I took them up roundly, as they deserv’d, and told them, I was sure it was a damn’d lie; for, said I to them, if my master was marry’d to her, as you pretend, she had broke his heart long ago, as well as she did mine; from whence I positively concluded, that she might be your mistress, but was none of your wife.

Last week, as I was sitting with some of my acquaintance in a publick-house, after a great deal of impertinent chat about the affairs of the Milanese, and the intended siege of Mantua, the whole company fell a talking of your majesty, and what glorious exploits you had perform’d in your time. Why, gentlemen, says an ill-look’d rascal, who prov’d to be Herostratus, for Pluto’s sake let not the grand monarch run away with all your praises. I have done something memorable in my time too; ’twas I, who out of the Gaiete de Cœur, and to perpetuate my name, fir’d the famous temple of the Ephesian Diana, and in two hours consumed that magnificent structure which was two hundred years a building: therefore, gentlemen, lavish not away all your praises, I beseech you, upon one man, but allow others their share. Why, thou diminutive inconsiderable wretch said I, in a great passion to him, thou worthless idle logger head, thou pigmy in sin, thou Tom Thumb in iniquity, how dares such a puny insect as thou art, have the impudence to enter the lists with Lewis le Grand? thou valuest thy self upon firing a church, but how? when the mistress of the house, who was a midwife by profession, was gone out to assist Olympias, and deliver’d her of Alexander the Great. ’Tis plain, thou hadst not the courage to do it when the goddess was present, and upon the spot; but what is this to what my royal master can boast of, that had destroyed a hundred and a hundred such foolish fabricks in his time, and bravely ordered them to be bombarded, when he knew the very God that made and redeemed him had taken up his Quarters in ’em. Therefore turn out of the room, like a paltry insignificant villain as thou art, or I’ll pick thy carcass for thee.

He had no sooner made his exit, but cries an odd sort of a spark, with his hat button’d up before, like a country scraper, under favour, Sir, what do you think of me? Why, who are you? reply’d I to him, Who am I, answer’d he, Why Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome, that murder’d my—— Come, said I to him, to stop your prating, I know your history as well as yourself, that murder’d your mother, kick’d your wife down stairs, dispatch’d two Apostles out of the world, begun the first persecution against the christians, and, lastly, put your master Seneca to death. As for the murder of your mother, I confess it shew’d you had some taste of wickedness, and may pass for a tolerable piece of gallantry; but prithee, what a mighty matter was it to send your wife packing with a good kick in the guts, when once she grew nauseous and sawcy; ’tis no more than what a thousand tinkers and foot-soldiers have done before you: or to put the penal laws in execution against a brace of hot-headed bigots, and their besotted followers, that must needs come and preach up a new religion at Rome: or, in fine, to take away a haughty, ungrateful pedant’s life, who conspir’d to take away your’s; altho’ I know those worthy gentlemen, the school-masters, make a horrid rout about it in their nonsensical declamations? Whereas his most Christian Majesty, whose advocate I am resolved to be against all opposers whatever, has bravely and generously starv’d a million of poor Hugonots at home, and sent t’other million of them a grasing into foreign countries, contrary to solemn edicts, and repeated promises, for no other provocation, that I know of, but because they were such coxcombs, as to place him upon the throne. In short, friend Nero, thou may’st pass for a rogue of the third or fourth class; but be advised by a stranger, and never shew thyself such a fool as to dispute the pre-eminence with Lewis le Grand, who has murder’d more men in his reign, let me tell thee, than thou hast murder’d tunes, for all thou art the vilest thrummer upon cat-gut the sun ever beheld. However, to give the Devil his due, I will say it before thy face, and behind thy back, that if thou had’st reign’d as many years as my gracious master has done, and had’st had, instead of Tigellinus, a Jesuit or two to have govern’d thy conscience, thou mightest, in all probability, have made a much more magnificent figure, and been inferior to none but the mighty monarch I have been talking of.

Having put my Roman emperor to silence, I look’d about me, and saw a pack of grammarians (for so I guessed them to be by their impertinence and noise) disputing it very fiercely at the next table; the matter in debate was, which was the most heroical age; and one of them, who valu’d himself very much upon his reading, maintain’d, that the heroical age, properly so call’d, began with the Theban, and ended with the Trojan war, in which compass of time, that glorious constellation of heroes, Hercules, Jason, Theseus, Tidæus, with Agamemnon, Ajax, Achilles, Hector, Troilus, and Diomedes flourished: men that had all signaliz’d themselves by their personal gallantry, and valour. His next neighbour argued very fiercely for the age wherein Alexander founded the Grecian monarchy, and saw so many noble generals and commanders about him. The third was as obstreperous for that of Julius Cæsar, and manag’d his argument with so much heat, that I expected every minute when these puppies wou’d have gone to loggerheads in good earnest. To put an end to your controversy, gentlemen, says I to them, you may talk till your lungs are founder’d, but this I positively assert, that the present age we live in is the most heroical age, and that my master, Lewis le Grand is the greatest hero of it. Hark you me, Sir, how do you make that appear, cry’d the whole pack of them, opening upon me all at once: by your leave, gentlemen, answer’d I, two to one is odds at foot-ball; but having a hero’s cause to defend, I find myself possess’d with a hero’s vigour and resolution, and don’t doubt but I shall bring you over to my party. That age therefore is the most heroical which is the boldest and bravest; the antients, I grant you, whor’d and got drunk, and cut throats as well as we do; but, gentlemen, they did not sin upon the same foot as we, nor had so many wicked discouragements to deter them; we whore when we know ’tis ten to one but we get a clap for our pains; whereas our fore-fathers, before the siege of Naples, had no such blessing to apprehend; we drink and murther one another in cold blood, at the same time we believe that we must be rewarded with damnation; but your old hero’s had no notion at all, or at least an imperfect one of a future state: so ’tis a plain case, you see, that the heroism lies on our side. To apply this then to my royal master; he has fill’d all Christendom with blood and confusion; he has broke thro’ the most solemn treaties sworn at the altar; he has stray’d and undone infinite numbers of poor wretches; and all this for his own glory and ambition, when he’s assured that hell gapes every moment for him: now tell me, whether your Jasons, your Agamemnons, or Alexanders, durst have ventur’d so heroically; or whether your pitiful emperors of Germany, your mechanick kings of England and Sweden, or your lousy States of Holland, have courage enough to write after so illustrous a copy.

Thus, Sir, you may see with what zeal I appear in your majesty’s behalf, and that I omit no opportunity of magnifying your great exploits to the utmost of my poor abilities. At the same time I must freely own to you, that I have met with some rough-hewn sawcy rascals, that have stopp’d me in my full career, when I have been expatiating upon your praises, and have so dumbfounded me with their villainous objections, that I could not tell how to reply to them.

Some few days ago it was my fortune to affirm, in a full assembly, that since the days of Charlemagne, France was never bless’d with so renown’d, so victorious, and so puissant a prince as your majesty. You lame, gouty coxcomb, says a sawcy butter-box of a Dutchman to me, don’t give yourself these airs in our company; Lewis, the greatest prince that France ever had! Why, I tell thee, he has no more title to that crown, than I have to the Great Mogul’s; and Lewis the thirteenth was no more his father than the Pope of Rome is thine. I bless’d myself to hear the fellow deliver this with so serious a mien, when a countryman of his taking up the cudgels; ’Tis true, says he, your mighty monarch has no right to the throne he possesses; the late king had no hand in the begetting of him, but a lusty proper young fellow, one le Grand by name, and an Apothecary by profession, was employ’d by cardinal Mazarine, who had prepar’d the queen’s conscience for the taking of such a dose, to strike an heir for France out of her majesty’s body; by the same token that this scarlet agent of hell, got him fairly poison’d as soon as he had done the work, for fear of telling tales. If you ever read Virgil’s life written by Donatus, cries a third to me, you’ll find that Augustus having rewarded that famous poet for some little services done him, with a parcel of loaves, had the curiosity once to enquire of him who he thought was his father? to which question of the emperor, Virgil fairly answer’d, that he believ’d him to be a Baker’s son, because he still paid him in a Baker’s manufacture, viz. bread. And thus, were there no other proofs to confirm it, yet any one would swear that Lewis le Grand is an Apothecary’s son, because he has acted all his life-time the part of an Apothecary.

Imprimis, He has given so many strong purges to his own kingdom, that he has empty’d it of half its people and money. Item, He apply’d costives to Genoa and Brussels, when he bombarded both those cities. Item, He gave a damn’d clyster to the Hollanders with a witness, when he fell upon the rear of their provinces, in the year 72. Item, He lull’d king Charles the second asleep with female opiates. Item, He forced Pope Innocent the eleventh, to swallow the unpalatable draught of the Franchises. Item, He administrated a restorative cordial to Mahumetanisme, when he enter’d into an alliance with the Grand Turk against the emperor. Item, He would have bubbled the prince of Orange with the gilded pill of sovereignty, but his little cousin was wiser than to take it. And lastly, If he had restor’d king James to his crown again, he would have brought the people of England a most conscientious Apothecary’s bill for his waiting and attending. In short, shake this mighty monarch in a bag, turn him this way, and that way, and t’other way, sursum, deorsum, quaquaversum, I’ll engage you’ll find him nothing but a meer Apothecary; and I hope the emperor and king of England will play the Apothecary too in their turn, and make him vomit up all those provinces and kingdoms he has so unrighteously usurp’d. Prince Eugene of Savoy has work’d him pretty well this last summer, and ’tis an infallible prognostic, that he’s reduced to the last extremities, when his spiritual physicians apply pigeons to the soles of his feet; I mean prayers and masses, and advise him to reconcile himself to that Heaven he has so often affronted with his most execrable perjuries.

’Tis impossible for me to tell your majesty, what a surprize I was in to hear this graceless Netherlander blaspheme your glorious name after this insufferable rate. But to see how one persecution treads upon the heels of another! I was hardly recover’d out of my astonishment, when a son of a whore of a German, advancing towards me, was pleas’d to explain himself as follows:

You keep a pother and noise here about your mighty monarch, says he to me, but what has this mighty monarch, and be damn’d to you, done to merit any body’s good word? I say, what one generous noble exploit has he been guilty of in his whole reign, as long as it is, to deserve so much incense and flattery, so many statues and triumphal arches, which a pack of mercenary, nauseous, fulsome slaves have bestow’d upon him? For my part, continues he, when I first heard his historians and poets, his priests and courtiers, talk such wonderful things of him, I fancy’d that another Cyrus or Alexander had appeared upon the stage; but when I observed him more narrowly, and by a truer light, I found this immortal man, as his inscriptions vainly stile him, to be a little, tricking, pilfering Fripon, that watch’d the critical minute of stealing towns, as nicely as your rogues of an inferior sphere do that of nimming cloaks; and tho’ he had the fairest opportunity of erecting a new western monarchy that ever any prince cou’d boast of, since the declension of the Roman empire; yet to his eternal disgrace be it said, no man could have made a worse use of all those wonderful advantages, that fortune, and the stupid security of his neighbours conspir’d to put into his hands. To convince you of the truth of this, let us only consider what posture the affairs of France were in at his accession to that crown, and several years after, as likewise how all the neighbouring princes and states about him stood affected: to begin then with the former, he found himself master of the best disciplin’d troops in the universe, commanded by the most experienced generals that any one age had produc’d, and spirited by a long train of victories, over a careless, desponding, lazy enemy. All the great men of his kingdom so depressed and humbled by the fortunate artifices of Richlieu and Mazarine, that they were not capable of giving him any uneasiness at home, the sole power of raising money entirely in his own hands, and his parliaments so far from giving a check to his daily encroachments upon their liberties, that they were made the most effectual instruments of his tyranny: In short, his clergy as much devoted, and the whole body of his people as subservient to him as a prince cou’d wish. As far his neighbours, he who was best able of any to put a stop to his growing greatness, I mean the king of England, either favour’d his designs clandestinely, or was so enervated by his pleasure, that provided he cou’d enjoy an inglorious effeminacy at home, he seem’d not to lay much to heart what became of the rest of Christendom.

The emperor was composing anthems for his chapel at Vienna, when he shou’d have appeared at the head of his troops on the Rhine. The princes of Germany were either divided from the common interest by the underhand management of France, or not at all concerned at the impending storm that threatned them. The Hollanders within an ace of losing their liberty by the preposterous care they took to secure it; I mean, by diverting that family of all power in their government, which, as it had formerly erected their republick, so now was the only one that cou’d help to protect it.

The little states and principalities of Italy, looking on at a distance, and not daring to declare themselves in so critical a conjuncture, when the two keys of their country, Pignerol and Casal hung at the girdle of France. In short, the dispeopl’d monarchy of Spain, governed by a soft unactive prince, equally unfit for the cabinet and the field; his counsellors, who manag’d all under him, taking no care to lay up magazines, and put their towns in a posture of defence, but wholly relying as for that, upon their neighbours; like some inconsiderate spend-thrift thrown into a jail by his creditors, that smoakes and drinks, and talks merrily all the while, but never advances one step to make his circumstances easy to him, leaving the burthen of that affair to his friends and relations, whom perhaps he never obliged so far in his prosperity, as to deserve it from their hands.

Here now, says he, was the fairest opportunity that ever presented itself for a prince of gallantry and resolution, for a Tamerlane and a Scanderbeg, to have done something eminently signal in his generation; and if in the last century, a little king of Sweden, with a handful of men, cou’d force his way from the Baltick to the Rhine, and fill all Germany with terror and consternation, what might we not have expected from a powerful king of France, in the flower of his youth, and at the head of two hundred thousand effective men, especially when there was no visible power to oppose him? But this wonderful monarch of yours, instead of carrying his arms beyond the Danube, and performing any one action worthy for his historians to record in the annals of his reign, has humbly contented himself, now and then, in the beginning of the year, when he knew his neighbours were unprepared for such a visit, to invest some little market-town in Flanders, with his invincible troops; and when a parcel of silly implicit fools had done the business for him; then, forsooth, he must appear at the head of his court harlots and minstrels, and make a magnificent entry thro’ the breach: And after this ridiculous piece of pageantry is over, return back again to Versailles, with the fame equipage, order’d new medals, operas, and sonnets to be made upon the occasion; and what ought by no means to be omitted, our most trusty and well-beloved counsellor and cousin, the archbishop of Paris, must immediately have a letter sent him, to repair forthwith, at the head of his ecclesiastick myrmidons, to Nôtre Dame, and there to thank God for the success of an infamous robbery, which an honest moral pagan would have blush’d at. So that when the next fit of his fistula in ano shall send this immortal town-stealer, this divine village-lifter, this heroic pilferer of poor hamlets and their dependancies, down to these subterranean dominions, don’t imagine that he’ll be allowed to keep company with the Pharamonds and Charlemagnes of France, the Edwards and Henries of England, the Williams of the Nassovian family, or the Alexanders and Cæsars of Greece and Rome. No, shou’d he have the impudence to shew his head among that illustrious assembly, they wou’d soon order their footmen to drub him into better manners: Neither, cries a surly Englishman, clapping his sides, and interrupting him, must he expect the favour to appear even among our holyday heroes, and custard stormers of Cheapside, those merry burlesques of the art military in Finsbury-fields, who, poor creatures! never meant the destruction of any mortal thing, but transitory roast-beaf and capon: no, friend, says he, Lewis le Grand must expect to take up his habitation in the most infamous quarter of Hell, among a parcel of house-breakers and shop-lifters, rogues burnt in the cheek for petty-larceny and burglary, brethren of the moon, gentlemen of the horn-thumb, pillagers of the hedges and henroosts, conveyers of silver spoons, and camblet cloaks, and such like enterprising heroes, whose famous actions are faithfully register’d in our sessions-papers and dying-speeches, transmitted to posterity by the Ordinary of Newgate; a much more impartial historian than your Pelissons and Boileaus. However, as I was inform’d last week by an understrapper at court; Pluto, in consideration of the singular services your royal master has done him, will allow him a brace of fiddlers to scrape and sing to him wherever he goes, since he takes such a delight to hear his own praises.

I must confess, says another leering rogue, a countryman of his, that since the grand monarch we have been speaking of, who has all along done more by his bribing and tricking, than by the conduct of his generals, or the bravery of his troops, who has plaid at fast and loose with his neighbours ever since he came to the crown, who has surprised abundance of towns in his time, and at the next treaty been forced to spue up those very places he ordered Te Deum to be sung for a few months before. I must confess, says he, that since in conjunction with a damn’d mercenary priest, he has forg’d a will for his brother-in-law of Spain, and plac’d his grandson upon that throne, I should think the rest of Christendom in a very bad condition indeed, if he should be suffered to go on quietly with his show a few years more: Then for all I know, he might bid fair to set up a new empire in the west, which he has been aiming at so long: But if the last advice from the other world don’t deceive us: If the parliament of England goes on as unanimously as they have begun, to support their prince in so pious and necessary a war; in short, if the emperor, the Dutch, and the other allies, act with that vigour and resolution as it becomes them upon this pressing occasion, I make no question to see this mighty hero plunder’d like the jay in the fable, of all the fine plumes he has borrow’d, and reduc’d to so low an ebb, that he shall not find it in his power, tho’ he has never so much in his will, to disturb the peace of the christian world any more. And this, continues he, is as favourable an opportunity as we could desire, to strip him of all his usurpations; for heaven be praised, Spain at present is a burthen to him, and by grasping at too much, he’s in a fair way to lose every farthing. Besides, this late forgery of the will has pluck’d off his old mask, and shews that ’tis an universal monarchy he intends, and not the repose of Europe, which has been so fortunate a sham to him in all his other treaties; so that the devil’s in the allies now, if they don’t see thro’ those thin pretences he so often bubbled them with formerly; or lay down their arms, till they have made this French bustard, who is all feathers, and no substance, as bare and naked as a skeleton; and effectually spoil his new trade of making wills for other people. And this they may easily bring about, continues he, if they lay hold on the present opportunity, for as I observed to you before, he has taken more business upon his hands than he’ll ever be able to manage, and by grasping at too much, is in the direct road to lose all. For my part, I never think of him, but he puts me in mind of a silly foolish fellow I knew once in London, who was a common knife-grinder about the streets, and having in this humble occupation gathered a few straggling pence, must needs take a great house in Fleetstreet, and set up for a sword-cutler; but before quarter-day came, finding the rent too bulky for him, he very fairly rubb’d off with all his effects, and left his landlord the key under the door. Without pretending to the spirit of Nostradamus, or Lilly, this I foresee, will be the fate of Lewis le Grand; therefore when you write next to your glorious monarch, pray give my respects to him, and bid him remember the sad destiny of the poor knife-grinder of London.

Thus you see, Sir, how I am daily plagu’d and harrass’d by a parcel of brawny impudent rascals, and all for espousing your quarrel, and crying up the justice of your arms. For Pluto’s sake let me conjure your majesty to lay your commands upon Boileau, Racine, or any of your panegyrists, to instruct me how I may stop the mouths of these impertinent babblers for the future, who make Hell ten times more insupportable than otherwise it would be, and threaten to toss me in a blanket the next time I come unprovided for your defence into their company. In the mean time, humbly desiring your majesty to present my love to the quondam wife of my bosom, I mean the virtuous madam Maintenon, who, in conjunction with your most christian majesty, now governs all France; and put her in mind of sending me a dozen of new shirts by the next pacquet, I remain,

Your Majesty’s most obedient, and most obliged Subject and Servant,

Scarron.