Act 5 — FATHER HUBBURD’S TALES; OR, THE ANT AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
Reading edition
549Father Hubburds Tales: or The Ant, and the Nightingale. London Printed by T. C. for William Cotton, and are to be solde at his Shop neare adioyning to Ludgate. 1604. 4to.
The first edition of this tract, in which several verses and the whole of “The Ant’s Tale when he was a scholar” are omitted, made its appearance during the same year in 4to, entitled The Ant and the Nightingale: or Father Hubburds Tales. London Printed by T. C. for Tho: Bushell, and are to be solde by Jeffrey Chorlton, at his Shop at the North doore of Paules. Mr. J. P. Collier (Bridgewater-House Catalogue, p. 199) mentions it as the second edition; but a careful examination of both the impressions has convinced me that it is the first.
Taylor, the water-poet, in a “Preamble” to The Praise of Hempseed (first printed in 1620), thus alludes to the present piece;
“One wrote the Nightingale and lab’ring Ant.”
P. 62—Workes, 1630.
551To the true general patron of all Muses, Musicians, Poets, and Picture-drawers, Sir Christopher Clutchfist, knighted at a very hard pennyworth, neither for eating musk-melons, anchovies, or caviare, but for a costlier exploit and a hundred-pound feat of arms, Oliver Hubburd, brother to the nine waiting-gentlewomen the Muses, wisheth the decrease of his lands and the increase of his legs, that his calves may hang down like gamashoes.[702]
Most guerdonless sir, pinching patron, and the Muses’ bad paymaster, thou that owest for all the pamphlets, histories, and translations that ever have[703] been dedicated to thee since thou wert one and twenty, and couldst make water upon thine own lands: but beware, sir, you cannot carry it away so, I can tell you, for all your copper-gilt spurs and your brood of feathers; for there are certain line-sharkers that have coursed the countries to seek you out already, and they nothing doubt but to find you here this Candlemas-term; which, if it should fall out so—as I hope your worship is wiser than to venture up so soon to the chambers of London—they have plotted together with the best common play-plotter in England to arrest you at the Muses’ suit—though they shoot short of them—and to set one of the sergeants of poetry, or rather the Poultry,[704] to claw you by the back, who, with one clap on your shoulder, will bruise all the taffeta to pieces. 552Now what the matter is between you, you know best yourself, sir; only I hear that they rail against you in booksellers’ shops very dreadfully, that you have used them most unknightly, in offering to take their books, and would never return so much as would pay for the covers, beside the gilding too, which stands them in somewhat, you know, and a yard and a quarter of broad sixpenny ribband; the price of that you are not ignorant of yourself, because you wear broad shoe-string; and they cannot be persuaded but that you pull the strings off from their books, and so maintain your shoes all the year long; and think, verily, if the book be in folio, that you take off the parchment, and give it to your tailor, but save all the gilding together, which may amount in time to gild you a pair of spurs withal. Such are the miserable conceits they gather of you, because you never give the poor Muse-suckers a penny: wherefore, if I might counsel you, sir, the next time they came with their gilded dedications, you should take the books, make your men break their pates, then give them ten groats a-piece, and so drive them away.
Your worship’s,
If you embrace my counsel,
Oliver Hubburd.
553
TO THE READER.
Shall I tell you what, reader?—but first I should call you gentle, courteous, and wise; but ’tis no matter, they’re but foolish words of course, and better left out than printed; for if you be so, you need not be called so; and if you be not so, there were law against me for calling you out of your names:—by John of Paul’s-churchyard,[705] I swear, and that oath will be taken at any haberdasher’s, I never wished this book better fortune than to fall into the hands of a true-spelling printer, and an honest-minded[706] bookseller; and if honesty could be sold by the bushel like oysters, I had rather have one Bushel[707] of honesty than three of money.
Why I call these Father Hubburd’s Tales, is not to have them called in again, as the Tale of Mother Hubburd:[708] the world would shew little judgment 554in that, i’faith; and I should say then, plena stultorum omnia; for I entreat[709] here neither of rugged[710] bears or apes, no, nor the lamentable downfal of the old wife’s platters,—I deal with no such metal: what is mirth in me, is as harmless as the quarter-jacks in Paul’s, that are up with their elbows[711] four times an hour, and yet misuse no creature living; the very bitterest in me is but like a physical frost, that nips the wicked blood a little, and so makes the whole body the wholesomer: and none can justly except at me but some riotous vomiting Kit,[712] or some gentleman-swallowing malkin. Then, to condemn these Tales following because Father Hubburd tells them in the small size of an ant, is even as much as if these two words, God and Devil, were printed both in one line, to skip it over and say that line were naught, because the devil were in it. Sat sapienti; and I hope[713] there be many wise men in all the twelve Companies.[714]
Yours,
If you read without spelling or hacking,
T. M.
555THE ANT AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
The west-sea’s goddess in a crimson robe,
Her temples circled with a coral wreath,
Waited her love, the lightener of earth’s globe:
The wanton wind did on her bosom breathe;
The nymphs of springs did hallow’d[715] water pour;
Whate’er was cold help’d to make cool her bower.
And now the fiery horses of the Sun
Were from their golden-flaming car untrac’d,
And all the glory of the day was done,
Save here and there some light moon-clouds enchas’d,
A parti-colour’d canopy did spread
Over the Sun and Thetis’ amorous bed.
Now had the shepherds folded in their flocks,
The sweating teams uncoupled from their yokes:
The wolf sought prey, and the sly-murdering fox
Attempts to steal; fearless of rural strokes,
All beasts took rest that liv’d by labouring toil;
Only such rang’d as had delight in spoil.
Now in the pathless region of the air
The wingèd passengers had left to soar,
Except the bat and owl, who bode sad care,
And Philomel, that nightly doth deplore,
In soul-contenting tunes, her change of shape,
Wrought first by perfidy and lustful rape.
556This poor musician, sitting all alone
On a green hawthorn from the thunder blest,
Carols in varied notes her antique moan,
Keeping a sharpen’d briar against her breast:
Her innocence this watchful pain doth take,
To shun the adder and the speckled snake.
These two, like her old foe the lord of Thrace,
Regardless of her dulcet-changing song,
To serve their own lust have her life in chase;
Virtue by vice is offer’d endless wrong:
Beasts are not all to blame, for now and then
We see the like attempted amongst men.
Under the tree whereon the poor bird sat,
There was a bed of busy-toiling ants,
That in their summer winter’s comfort gat,
Teaching poor men how to shun after-wants;
Whose rules if sluggards could be learn’d to keep,
They should not starve awake, lie cold asleep.
One of these busy brethren, having done
His day’s true labour, got upon the tree,
And with his little nimble legs did run;
Pleas’d with the hearing, he desir’d to see
What wondrous creature nature had compos’d,
In whom such gracious music was enclos’d.
He got too near; for the mistrustful bird
Guess’d him to be a spy from her known foe:
Suspicion argues not to hear a word:
What wise man fears not that’s inur’d to woe?
Then blame not her she caught him in her beak,
About to kill him ere the worm[716] could speak.
557But yet her mercy was above her heat;
She did not, as a many silken men
Call’d by much wealth, small wit, to judgment’s seat,[717]
Condemn at random; but she pitied then
When she might spoil: would great ones would do so!
Who often kill before the cause they know,
O, if they would, as did this little fowl,
Look on their lesser captives with even ruth,
They should not hear so many sentenc’d howl,
Complaining justice is not friend to truth!
But they would think upon this ancient theme,
Each right extreme is injury extreme.
Pass them to mend, for none can them amend
But heaven’s lieutentant and earth’s justice-king:
Stern will hath will; no great one wants a friend;
Some are ordain’d to sorrow, some to sing;
And with this sentence let thy griefs all close,
Whoe’er are wrong’d are happier than their foes.
So much for such. Now to the little ant
In the bird’s beak and at the point to die:
Alas for woe, friends in distress are scant!
None of his fellows to his help did hie;
They keep them safe; they hear, and are afraid:
’Tis vain to trust in the base number’s aid.
Only himself unto himself is friend:
With a faint voice his foe he thus bespake;
Why seeks your gentleness a poor worm’s end?
O, ere you kill, hear the excuse I make!
I come to wonder, not to work offence:
There is no glory to spoil innocence.
558Perchance you take me for a soothing spy,
By the sly snake or envious adder fee’d:
Alas, I know not how to feign and lie,
Or win a base intelligencer’s meed,
That now are Christians, sometimes Turks, then Jews,
Living by leaving heaven for earthly news.
I am[718] a little emmet, born to work,
Oftimes a man, as you were once a maid:
Under the name of man much ill doth lurk,
Yet of poor me you need not be afraid;
Mean men are worms, on whom the mighty tread;
Greatness and strength your virtue injurèd.
With that she open’d wide her horny bill,
The prison where this poor submissant lay;
And seeing the poor ant lie quivering still,
Go, wretch, quoth she, I give thee life and way;
The worthy will not prey on yielding things,
Pity’s infeoffèd to the blood of kings.
For I was once, though now a feather’d veil
Cover my wrongèd body, queen-like clad;
This down about my neck was erst a rail[719]
Of byss[720] embroider’d—fie on that we had!
Unthrifts and fools and wrongèd ones complain
Rich things were theirs must ne’er be theirs again.
I was, thou know’st, the daughter to a king,
Had palaces and pleasures in my time;
Now mine own songs I am enforc’d to sing,
Poets forget me in their pleasing rhyme;
559Like chaff they fly, toss’d with each windy breath,
Omitting my forc’d rape by Tereus’ death.
But ’tis no matter; I myself can sing
Sufficient strains to witness mine own worth:
They that forget a queen soothe with a king;[721]
Flattery’s still barren, yet still bringeth forth:
Their works are dews shed when the day is done,
But suck’d up dry by the next morning’s[722], sun.
What more of them? they are like Iris’ throne,
Commix’d with many colours in moist time:
Such lines portend what’s in that circle shewn;
Clear weather follows showers in every clime,
Averring no prognosticator lies,
That says, some great ones fall, their rivals rise.
Pass such for bubbles; let their bladder-praise
Shine and sink with them in a moment’s change:
They think to rise when they the riser raise;
But regal wisdom knows it is not strange
For curs to fawn: base things are ever low;
The vulgar eye feeds only on the show.
Else would not soothing glosers oil the son,
Who, while his father liv’d, his acts did hate:
They know all earthly day with man is done
When he is circled in the night of fate;
So the deceasèd they think on no more,
But whom they injur’d late, they now adore.
560But there’s a manly lion now can roar
Thunder more dreaded than the lioness;
Of him let simple beasts his aid implore,
For he conceives more than they can express:
The virtuous politic is truly man,
Devil the atheist politician.
I guess’d thee such a one; but tell thy tale:
If thou be simple, as thou hast exprest,
Do not with coinèd words set wit to sale,
Nor with the flattering world use vain protest:
Sith[723] man thou say’st thou wert, I prithee, tell
While thou wert man what mischiefs thee befell.
Princess, you bid me buried cares revive,
Quoth the poor ant; yet sith by you I live,
So let me in my daily labourings thrive
As I myself do to your service give:
I have been oft a man, and so to be
Is often to be thrall to misery.
But if you will have me my mind disclose,
I must entreat you that I may set down
The tales of my black fortunes in sad[724] prose:
Rhyme is uneven, fashion’d by a clown;
I first was such a one, I till’d the ground;
And amongst rurals verse is scarcely found.
Well, tell thy tales; but see thy prose be good;
For if thou Euphuize, which once was rare,[725]
561And of all English phrase the life and blood,
In those times for the fashion past compare,
I’ll say thou borrow’st, and condemn thy style,
As our new fools, that count all following vile.
Or if in bitterness thou rail, like Nash—
Forgive me, honest soul, that term thy phrase
Railing! for in thy works thou wert not rash,
Nor didst affect in youth thy private praise:
Thou hadst a strife with that Trigemini;[726]
Thou hurt’dst not them till they had injur’d thee.
Thou wast indeed too slothful to thyself,
Hiding thy better talent in thy spleen;
True spirits are not covetous in pelf;
Youth’s wit is ever ready, quick, and keen:
Thou didst not live thy ripen’d autumn-day,
But wert cut off in thy best blooming May:
Else hadst thou left, as thou indeed hast left,
Sufficient test, though now in others’ chests,
Which seems to flow from self-conceiving breasts:
562Thy name they bury, having buried thee;
Drones eat thy honey—thou wert the true bee.
Peace keep thy soul! And now to you, sir ant:
On with your prose, be neither rude nor nice;
In your discourse let no decorum want,
See that you be sententious and concise;
And, as I like the matter, I will sing
A canzonet, to close up every thing.
With this, the whole nest of ants hearing their fellow was free from danger, like comforters when care is over, came with great thanks to harmless Philomel, and made a ring about her and their restored friend, serving instead of a dull audience of stinkards sitting in the penny-galleries of a theatre, and yawning upon the players; whilst the ant began to stalk like a three-quarter sharer,[729] and was not afraid to tell tales out of the villanous school of the world, where the devil is the schoolmaster and the usurer the under-usher, the scholars young dicing landlords, that pass away three hundred acres with three dice in a hand, and after the decease of so much land in money become sons and heirs of bawdy-houses; for it is an easy labour to find heirs without land, but a hard thing indeed to find land without heirs. But for fear I interrupt this small actor in less than decimo sexto,[730] I leave, and give the ant leave to tell his tale.
563The Ant’s Tale when he was a ploughman.
I was sometimes, most chaste lady Nightingale, or rather, queen Philomel the ravished, a brow-melting husbandman: to be man and husband is to be a poor master of many rich cares, which, if he cannot subject and keep under, he must look for ever to undergo as many miseries as the hours of his years contain minutes: such a man I was, and such a husband, for I was linked in marriage: my havings were[731] small and my means less, yet charge came on me ere I knew how to keep it; yet did I all my endeavours, had a plough and land to employ it, fertile enough if it were manured, and for tillage I was never held a truant.
But my destruction, and the ruin of all painful husbandmen about me, began by the prodigal downfal of my young landlord, whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, for many generations had been lords of the town wherein I dwelt, and many other towns near adjoining: to all which belonged fair commons for the comfort of the poor, liberty of fishing, help of fuel by brush and underwood never denied, till the old devourer of virtue, honesty, and good neighbourhood, death, had made our landlord dance after his pipe,—which is so common, that every one knows the way, though they make small account of it. Well, die he did; and as soon as he was laid in his grave, the bell might well have tolled for hospitality and good housekeeping; for whether they fell sick with him and died, and so were buried, I know not; but I am sure in our town they were never seen since, nor, that I can hear of, in any other part; especially 564about us they are impossible to be found. Well, our landlord being dead, we had his heir, gentle enough and fair-conditioned,[732] rather promising at first his father’s virtues than the world’s villanies; but he was so accustomed to wild and unfruitful company about the court and London (whither he was sent by his sober father to practise civility and manners), that in the country he would scarce keep till his father’s body was laid in the cold earth; but as soon as the hasty funeral was solemnised, from us he posted, discharging all his old father’s servants (whose beards were even frost-bitten with age), and was attended only by a monkey and a marmoset;[733] the one being an ill-faced fellow, as variable as New-fangle[734] for fashions; the other an imitator of any thing, however villanous, but utterly destitute of all goodness. With this French page and Italianate serving-man was our young landlord only waited on, and all to save charges in servingmen, to pay it out in harlots: and we poor men had news of a far greater expense within less than a quarter. For we were sent for to London, and found our great landlord in a little room about the Strand; who told us, that whereas we had lived tenants at will, and might in his forefathers’ days [have] been hourly turned out, he, putting on a better conscience to usward, intended to make us leases for years; and for advice ’twixt him and us he had made choice of a lawyer, a mercer, and a merchant, to whom he was much beholding,[735] 565who that morning were appointed to meet in the Temple-church. Temple and church, both one in name, made us hope of a holy meeting; but there is an old proverb, The nearer the church, the farther from God: to approve[736] which saying, we met the mercer and the merchant, that, loving our landlord or his land well, held him a great man in both their books. Some little conference they had; what the conclusion was, we poor men were not yet acquainted with; but being called at their leisure, and when they pleased to think upon us, told us they were to dine together at the Horn in Fleet-street, being a house where their lawyer resorted; and if we would there attend them, we should understand matter much for our good: and in the meantime, they appointed us near the old Temple-Garden to attend their counsellor, whose name was master Prospero, not the great rider of horse[737]—for I heard there was once such a one,—but a more cunning rider, who had rid many men till they were more miserable than beasts, and our ill hap it was to prove his hackneys. Well, though the issue were ill, on we went to await his worship, whose chamber we found that morning fuller of clients than I could ever see suppliants to heaven in our poor parish-church, and yet we had in it three hundred households: and I may tell it with reverence, I never saw more submission done to God than to that great lawyer; every suitor there offered gold to this gowned idol, standing bareheaded 566in a sharp-set morning, for it was in booted[738] Michaelmas-term, and not a word spoke to him but it was with the[739] bowing of the body and the submissive flexure of the knee. Short tale to make, he was informed of us what we were, and of our coming up; when with an iron look and shrill voice, he began to speak to the richest of our number, ever and anon yerking out the word fines, which served instead of a full-point to every sentence.
But that word fines was no fine word, methought, to please poor labouring husbandmen, that can scarce sweat out so much in a twelvemonth as he would demand in a twinkling. At last, to close up the lamentable tragedy of us ploughmen, enters our young landlord, so metamorphosed into the shape of a French puppet, that at the first we started, and thought one of the baboons had marched in in man’s apparel. His head was dressed up in white feathers like a shuttlecock, which agreed so well with his brain, being nothing but cork, that two of the biggest of the guard might very easily have tossed him with battledores, and made good sport with him in his majesty’s great hall. His doublet was of a strange cut; and to shew the fury of his humour, the collar of it rose up so high and sharp as if it would have cut his throat by daylight. His wings,[740] according to the fashion now, were[741] as little and diminutive as a puritan’s ruff, which shewed he ne’er meant to fly out of England, nor do any exploit beyond sea, but live and die about London, though he begged in Finsbury. His breeches, a 567wonder to see, were full as deep as the middle of winter, or the roadway between London and Winchester, and so large and wide withal, that I think within a twelvemonth he might very well put all his lands in them; and then you may imagine they were big enough, when they would outreach a thousand acres: moreover, they differed so far from our fashioned hose[742] in the country, and from his father’s old gascoynes,[743] that his back-part seemed to us like a monster; the roll of the breeches standing so low, that we conjectured his house of office, sir-reverence,[744] stood in his hams. All this while his French monkey bore his cloak of three pounds a-yard, lined clean through with purple velvet, which did so dazzle our coarse eyes, that we thought we should have been purblind ever after, what with the prodigal aspect of that and his glorious rapier and hangers[745] all bost[746] with pillars of gold, fairer in show than the pillars in Paul’s or the tombs at Westminster; beside, it drunk up the price of all my plough-land in very pearl, which stuck as thick upon those hangers as the white measles upon hog’s flesh. When I had well viewed that gay gaudy cloak and those unthrifty wasteful hangers, I muttered thus to myself: That is no cloak for the rain, sure; nor those no hangers for Derrick;[747] when of a sudden, casting mine eyes lower, I beheld a curious pair of boots of king Philip’s[748] leather, in such artificial wrinkles, sets, 568and plaits, as if they had been starched lately and came new from the laundress’s, such was my ignorance and simple acquaintance with the fashion, and I dare swear my fellows and neighbours here are all as ignorant as myself. But that which struck us most into admiration, upon those fantastical boots stood such huge and wide tops, which so swallowed up his thighs, that had he sworn, as other gallants did, this common oath, Would I might sink as I stand! all his body might very well have sunk down and been damned in his boots. Lastly, he walked the chamber with such a pestilent gingle,[749] that his spurs over-squeaked the lawyer, and made him reach his voice three notes above his fee; but after we had spied the rowels of his spurs, how we blest ourselves! they did so much and so far exceed the compass of our fashion, that they looked more like the forerunners of wheelbarrows. Thus was our young landlord accoutred in such a strange and prodigal shape,[750] that it amounted to above two years’ rent in apparel. At last approached[751] the mercer and the merchant, two notable arch-tradesmen, who had fitted my young master in clothes, whilst they had clothed themselves in his acres, and measured him out velvet by the thumb, whilst they received his revenues by handfuls; for he had not so many yards in his suit as they had yards and houses bound for the payment, which now he was forced to pass over to them, or else all his lands should be put to[752] their book and to their forfeiting 569neck-verse;[753] so my youngster was now at his pension, not like a gentleman-pensioner, but like a gentleman-spender. Whereupon entered master Bursebell, the royal scrivener, with deeds and writings hanged, drawn, and quartered, for the purpose: he was a valiant scribe, I remember; his pen lay mounted between his ear like a Tower-gun, but not charged yet till our young master’s patrimony shot off, which was some third part of an hour after. By this time, the lawyer, the mercer, and the merchant, were whispering and consulting together about the writings and passage of the land in very deep and sober conference; but our wiseacres all the while, as one regardless of either land or money, not hearkening or inquisitive after their subtle and politic devices, held himself very busy about the burning of his tobacco-pipe (as there is no gallant but hath a pipe to burn about London), though we poor simple men never heard of the name till that time; and he might very fitly take tobacco there, for the lawyer and the rest made him smoke already. But to have noted the apish humour of him, and the fantastical faces he coined in the receiving of the smoke, it would have made your ladyship have sung nothing but merry jigs[754] for a twelvemonth after,—one time winding the pipe like a horn at the Pie-corner of his mouth, which must needs make him look like a sow-gelder,[755] and another time screwing his face like one of our country players, which must needs make him look like a fool; nay, he had at least his dozen 570of faces, but never a good one amongst them all; neither his father’s face, nor the face of his grandfather, but yet more wicked and riotous faces than all the generation of him. Now their privy whisperings and villanous plots began to be drawn to a conclusion, when presently they called our smoky landlord in the midst of his draught, who in a valiant humour dashed his tobacco-pipe into the chimney-corner: whereat I started, and beckoning his marmoset[756] to me, asked him if those long white things did cost no money? to which the slave replied very proudly, Money! yes, sirrah; but I tell thee, my master scorns to have a thing come twice to his mouth. Then, quoth I, I think thy master is more choice in his mouth than in any member else: it were good if he used that all his body over, he would never have need, as many gallants have, of any sweating physic. Sweating physic! replied the marmoset; what may thy meaning be? why, do not you ploughmen sweat too? Yes, quoth I, most of any men living; but yet there is a difference between the sweat of a ploughman and the sweat of a gentleman, as much as between your master’s apparel and mine, for when we sweat, the land prospers, and the harvest comes in; but when a gentleman sweats, I wot how the gear[757] goes then. No sooner were these words spoken but the marmoset had drawn out his poniard half-way to make a show of revenge, but at the smart voice of the lawyer he suddenly whipt it in again. Now was our young master with one penful of ink doing a far greater exploit than all his forefathers; for what they were a-purchasing all their lifetime, he was now passing 571away in the fourth part of a minute; and that which many thousand drops of his grandfather’s brows did painfully strive for, one drop now of a scrivener’s inkhorn did easily pass over: a dash of a pen stood for a thousand acres: how quickly they were dashed in the mouth by our young landlord’s prodigal fist! it seemed he made no more account of acres than of acorns. Then were we called to set our hands for witnesses of his folly, which we poor men did witness too much already; and because we were found ignorant in writing, and never practised in that black art—which I might very fitly term so, because it conjured our young master out of all—we were commanded, as it were, to draw any mark with a pen, which should signify as much as the best hand that ever old Peter Bales[758] hung out in the Old Bailey. To conclude, I took the pen first of the lawyer, and turning it arsy-versy, like no instrument for a ploughman, our youngster and the rest of the faction burst into laughter at the simplicity of my fingering; but I, not so simple as they laughed me for, drew the picture of a knavish emblem, which was a plough with the heels upward, signifying thereby that the world was turned upside down since the decease of my old landlord, all hospitality and good housekeeping kicked out of doors, all thriftiness and good husbandry tossed into the air, ploughs turned into 572trunks,[759] and corn into apparel. Then came another of our husbandmen to set his mark by mine: he holding the pen clean at the one side towards the merchant and the mercer, shewing that all went on their sides, drew the form of an unbridled colt, so wild and unruly, that he seemed with one foot to kick up the earth and spoil the labours of many toiling beasts, which was fitly alluded to our wild and unbridled landlord, which, like the colt, could stand upon no ground till he had no ground to stand upon.
These marks, set down under the shape of simplicity, were the less marked with the eyes of knavery; for they little dreamed that we ploughmen could have so much satire in us as to bite our young landlord by the elbow. Well, this ended, master Bursebell, the calves’-skin scrivener, was royally handled, that is, he had a royal[760] put in his hand by the merchant. And now I talk of calves’-skin, ’tis great pity, lady Nightingale, that the skins of harmless and innocent beasts should be as instruments to work villany upon, entangling young novices and foolish elder brothers, which are caught like woodcocks in the net of the law; for[761] ’tis easier for one of the greatest fowls to slide through the least hole of a net, than one of the least fools to get from the lappet of a bond. By this time the squeaking lawyer began to re-iterate that cold word fines, which struck so chill to our hearts, that it made them as cold as our heels, which were almost frozen to the floor with standing. Yea, quoth the merchant and the mercer, you are now tenants of 573ours; all the right, title, and interest of this young gentleman, your late landlord, we are firmly possessed of, as you yourselves are witnesses: wherefore this is the conclusion of our meeting; such fines as master Prospero here, by the valuation of the land, shall, out of his proper judgment, allot to us, such are we to demand at your hands; therefore we refer you to him, to wait his answer at the gentleman’s best time and leisure. With that, they stiffled two or three angels[762] in the lawyer’s right hand:—right hand, said I? which hand was that, trow ye? for it is impossible to know which is the right hand of a lawyer, because there are but few lawyers that have right hands, and those few make much of them. So, taking their leaves of my young landlord that was, and that never shall be again, away they marched, heavier by a thousand acres at their parting than they were before at their meeting. The lawyer then, turning his Irish face to usward, willed us to attend his worship the next term, when we should further understand his pleasure. We, poor souls, thanked his worship, and paid him his fee out in legs;[763] when, in sight of us, he embraced our young gentleman (I think, for a fool), and gave him many riotous instructions how to carry himself, which he was prompter to take than the other to put into him; told him he must acquaint himself with many gallants of the Inns-of-Court, and keep rank with those that spend most, always wearing a bountiful disposition about him, lofty and liberal; his lodging must be about the Strand in any case, being remote from the handicraft scent of the city; his eating must be in some famous tavern, as the 574Horn, the Mitre, or the Mermaid;[764] and then after dinner he must venture beyond sea, that is, in a choice pair of noblemen’s oars, to the Bankside,[765] where he must sit out the breaking-up[766] of a comedy, or the first cut of a tragedy; or rather, if his humour so serve him, to call in at the Blackfriars,[767] where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man. This said, our young goose-cap, who was ready to embrace such counsel, thanked him for his fatherly admonitions, as he termed them, and told him again that he should not find him with the breach of any of them, swearing and protesting he would keep all those better than the ten commandments: at which word he buckled on his rapier and hangers,[768] his monkey-face casting on his cloak by the book; after an apish congee or two, passed down stairs, without either word or nod to us his old father’s tenants. Nevertheless we followed him, like so many russet servingmen, to see the event of all, and what the issue would come to; when, of a sudden, he was encountered by a most glorious-spangled gallant, which we took at first to have been some upstart tailor, because he measured all his body with a salutation, from the flow of the 575doublet to the fall of the breeches; but at last we found him to be a very fantastical sponge, that licked up all humours, the very ape of fashions, gesture, and compliment,—one of those indeed, as we learned afterward, that fed upon young landlords, riotous sons and heirs, till either he or the Counter in Wood-street had swallowed them up; and would not stick to be a bawd or pander to such young gallants as our young gentleman, either to acquaint them with harlots, or harlots with them; to bring them a whole dozen of taffeta punks at a supper, and they should be none of these common Molls neither, but discontented and unfortunate gentlewomen, whose parents being lately deceased, the brother ran away with all the land, and they,[769] poor squalls,[770] with a little money, which cannot hold out long without some comings in; but they will rather venture a maidenhead than want a head-tire; such shuttlecocks as these, which, though they are tossed and played withal, go still[771] like maids, all white on the top: or else, decayed gentlemen’s wives, whose husbands, poor souls, lying for debt in the King’s Bench, they go about to make monsters in the King’s-Head tavern; for this is a general 576axiom, all your luxurious[772] plots are always begun in taverns, to be ended in vau[l]ting-houses;[773] and after supper, when fruit comes in, there is small fruit of honesty to be looked for,—for you know that the eating of the apple always betokens the fall of Eve. Our prodigal child, accompanied with this soaking swaggerer and admirable cheater, who had supt up most of our heirs about London like poached eggs, slips into White-Friars’ nunnery,[774] whereas[775] the report went he kept his most delicate drab of three hundred a-year, some unthrifty gentleman’s daughter, who had mortgaged his land to scriveners, sure enough from redeeming again; for so much she seemed by her bringing up, though less by her casting down. Endued she was, as we heard, with some good qualities, though all were converted then but to flattering villanies: she could run upon the lute very well, which in others would have appeared virtuous, but in her lascivious, for her running was rather jested at, because she was a light runner besides: she had likewise the gift of singing very deliciously, able to charm the hearer; which so bewitched away our young master’s money, that he might have kept seven noise[776] of musicians for less charges, and yet they would have stood for 577servingmen too, having blue coats[777] of their own. She had a humour to lisp often, like a flattering wanton, and talk childish, like a parson’s daughter; which so pleased and rapt our old landlord’s lickerish son, that he would swear she spake nothing but sweetmeats, and her breath then sent forth such a delicious odour, that it perfumed his white-satin doublet better than sixteen milliners. Well, there we left him, with his devouring cheater and his glorious cockatrice;[778] and being almost upon dinner-time, we hied us and took our repast at thrifty mother Walker’s, where we found a whole nest of pinching bachelors, crowded together upon forms and benches, in that most worshipful three-halfpenny ordinary,[779] where presently they were boarded[780] with hot monsieur Mutton-and-porridge (a Frenchman by his blowing); and next to them we were served in order, every one taking their degree: and I tell you true, lady, I have known the time when our young landlord’s father hath been a three-halfpenny eater there,—nay more, was the first that acquainted us with that sparing and thrifty ordinary, when his riotous son hath since spent his five pound at a sitting. Well, having discharged our small shot (which was like hail-shot in respect of our young master’s cannon-reckonings in taverns), we plodded home to our ploughs, carrying these heavy news to our wives both of the prodigality of our old landlord’s son, as also of our oppressions to come by the burden of uncharitable fines. And, most musical madam Nightingale, do but imagine now what a sad Christmas we all kept 578in the country, without either carols, wassail-bowls,[781] dancing of Sellenger’s round[782] in moonshine nights about May-poles, shoeing the mare, hoodman-blind, hot-cockles, or any of our old Christmas gambols; no, not so much as choosing king and queen on twelfth night: such was the dulness of our pleasures,—for that one word fines robbed us of all our fine pastimes.
This sour-faced Christmas thus unpleasantly past over, up again we trotted to London, in a great frost, I remember, for the ground was as hard as the lawyer’s conscience; and arriving at the luxurious Strand some three days before the term, we inquired for our bountiful landlord, or the fool in the full, at his neat and curious lodging; but answer was made us by an old chamber-maid, that our gentleman slept not there all the Christmas time, but had been at court, and at least in five masques; marry, now, as she thought, we might find him at master Poops his ordinary, with half-a-dozen of gallants more at dice. At dice? at the devil! quoth I, for that is a dicer’s last throw. Here I began to rail, like Thomas Nash[783] against Gabriel Harvey, if you call that railing; yet I think it was but the running a tilt of wits in booksellers’ shops on both sides of John of Paul’s[784] churchyard; and I wonder how John scaped unhorsing. But when we were 579entered the door of the ordinary, we might hear our lusty gentleman shoot off a volley of oaths some three rooms over us, cursing the dice, and wishing the pox were in their bones, crying out for a new pair of square ones, for the other belike had cogged[785] with him and made a gull of him. When the host of the ordinary coming down stairs met us with this report, after we had named him, Troth, good fellows, you have named now the most unfortunatest gentleman living, at passage[786] I mean; for I protest I have stood by myself as a heavy eye-witness, and seen the beheading of five hundred crowns, and what pitiful end they all made. With that he shewed us his embost girdle and hangers[787] new-pawned for more money, and told us beside, not without tears, his glorious cloak was cast away three hours before overboard, which was, off the table. At which lamentable hearing, we stood still in the lower room, and durst not venture up stairs, for fear he would have laid all us ploughmen to pawn too; and yet I think all we could scarce have made up one throw. But to draw to an end, as his patrimony did, we had not lingered the better part of an hour, but down came fencing[788] his glittering rapier and dagger, as if he had been newly shoulder-clapt by a pewter-buttoned sergeant and his weapons seized upon. At last, after a great peal of oaths on all sides, the court broke up, and the worshipful 580bench of dicers came thundering down stairs, some singing, with such a confusion of humours, that had we not[789] known before what rank of gallants they were, we should have thought the devils had been at dice in an ordinary. The first that appeared to us was our most lamentable landlord, dressed up in his monkey’s livery-cloak, that he seemed now rather to wait upon his monkey than his monkey upon him, which did set forth his satin suit so excellent scurvily, that he looked for all the world like a French lord in dirty boots. When casting his eye upon us, being desirous, as it seemed, to remember us now if we had any money, brake into these fantastical speeches: What, my whole warren of tenants?—thinking indeed to make conies[790] of us,—my honest nest of ploughmen, the only kings of Kent! More dice, ho! i’faith,[791] let’s have another career, and vomit three dice in a hand again. With that I plucked his humour at one side, and told him we were indeed his father’s tenants, but his we were sorry we were not; and as for money to maintain his dice, we had not sufficient to stuff out the lawyer. Then replied our gallant in a rage, tossing out two or three new-minted oaths, These ploughmen are politicians, I think; they have wit, the whorsons; they will be tenants, I perceive, longer than we shall be landlords. And fain he would have swaggered with us, but that his weapons were at pawn: so, marching out like a turned gentleman, the rest of the gallants seemed to cashier him, and throw him out of their company like a blank die—the one having no black 581peeps[792], nor he no white pieces. Now was our gallant the true picture of the prodigal; and having no rents to gather now, he gathered his wits about him, making his brain pay him revenues in villany; for it is a general observation, that your sons and heirs prove seldom wise men till they have no more land than the compass of their noddles. To conclude, within few days’ practice he was grown as[793] absolute in cheating, and as exquisite in pandarism, that he outstripped all Greene’s books[794] Of the Art of Cony-catching; and where[795] before he maintained his drab, he made his drab now maintain him; proved the only true captain of vaulting-houses,[796] and the valiant champion against constables and searchers; feeding upon the sin of White-Friars, Pict-hatch, and Turnboll Street.[797] Nay, there was no landed novice now but he could melt him away into nothing, and in one twelvemonth make him hold all his land between his legs, and yet but straddle easily neither; no wealthy son of the city but within less than a quarter he could make all his stock not worth a Jersey stocking: he was all that might be in dissolute villany, and nothing that should be in his forefathers’ honesty. To speak troth, we did so much blush at his life, and were so ashamed of his base courses, that ever after we loathed to look after them. But returning to our stubble-haired lawyer, who reaped his beard every term-time (the lawyer’s harvest), we found the mercer and the 582merchant crowdd in his study amongst a company of law-books, which they justled so often with their coxcombs, that they were almost together by the ears with them; when at the sight of us they took an habeas corpus, and removed their bodies into a bigger room. But there we lingered not long for our torments; for the mercer and the merchant gave fire to the lawyer’s tongue with a rope of angels,[798] and the word fines went off with such a powder, that the force of it blew us all into the country, quite changed our ploughmen’s shapes, and so we became little ants again.
This, madam Nightingale, is the true discourse of our rural fortunes, which, how miserable, wretched, and full of oppression they were, all husbandmen’s brows can witness, that are fined with more sweat still year by year; and I hope a canzonet of your sweet singing will set them forth to the world in satirical harmony.
The remorseful[799] nightingale, delighted with the ant’s quaint discourse, began to tune the instrument of her voice, breathing forth these lines in sweet and delicious airs.
The Nightingale’s Canzonet.
Poor little ant,
Thou shalt not want
The ravish’d music of my voice!
Thy shape is best,
Now thou art least,
For great ones fall with greater noise:
583And this shall be the marriage of my song,
Small bodies can have but a little wrong.
Now thou art securer,
And thy days far surer;
Thou pay’st no rent upon the rack,
To daub a prodigal landlord’s back,
Or to maintain the subtle running
Of dice and drabs, both one in cunning;
Both pass from hand to hand to many,
Flattering all, yet false to any;
Both are well link’d, for, throw dice how you can,
They will turn up their peeps[800] to every man.
Happy art thou, and all thy brothers,
That never feel’st the hell of others!
The torment to a luxur[801] due,
Who never thinks his harlot true;
Although upon her heels he stick his eyes,
Yet still he fears that though she stands she lies.
Now are thy labours easy,
Thy state not sick or queasy;
All drops thou sweat’st are now thine own;
Great subsidies be as unknown
To thee and to thy little fellow-ants,
Now none of you under that burden pants.
Lo, for example, I myself, poor worms,[802]
That have outworn the rage of Tereus’ storms,
Am ever blest now, in this downy shape,
From all men’s treachery or soul-melting rape;
And when I sing Tereu, Tereu,
Through every town, and so renew
584The name of Tereus, slaves, through fears,
With guilty fingers bolt their ears,
All[803] ravishers do rave and e’en fall mad,
And then such wrong’d souls as myself are glad.
So thou, small wretch, and all thy nest,
Are in those little bodies blest,
Not tax’d beyond your poor degree
With landlord’s fine and lawyer’s fee:
But tell me, pretty toiling worm,
Did that same ploughman’s weary form
Discourage thee so much from others,
That neither thou nor those thy brothers,
In borrow’d shapes, durst once agen[804]
Venture amongst perfidious men?
Ant.
Yes, lady, the poor ant replied,
I left not so; but then I tried
War’s sweating fortunes; not alone
Condemning rash all states for one,
Until I found by proof, and knew by course,
That one was bad, but all the rest were worse.
Nightingale.
Didst thou put on a rugged soldier then?
A happy state, because thou fought’st ’gainst men.
Prithee, discourse thy fortunes, state, and harms;
Thou wast, no doubt, a mighty man-at-arms.
The Ant’s Tale when he was a soldier.
Then thus, most musical and prickle-singing[805] madam (for, if I err not, your ladyship was the first 585that brought up prick-song,[806] being nothing else but the fatal notes of your pitiful ravishment), I, not contented long, a vice cleaving to all worldlings, with this little estate of an ant, but stuffed with envy and ambition, as small as I was, desired to venture into the world again, which I may rather term the upper hell or frigida gehenna, the cold-charitable hell, wherein are all kind of devils too; as your gentle devil, your ordinary devil, and your gallant devil; and all these can change their shapes too, as to-day in cowardly white, to-morrow in politic black, a third day in jealous yellow; for believe it, sweet lady, there are devils of all colours. Nevertheless, I, covetous of more change, leapt out of this little skin of an ant, and hung my skin on the hedge, taking upon me the grisly shape of a dusty soldier. Well made I was, and my limbs valiantly hewn out for the purpose: I had a mazzard,[807] I remember, so well lined in the inside with my brain, it stood me in better stead than a double headpiece; for the brain of a soldier, differing from all other sciences, converts itself to no other[808] use but to line, fur, and even quilt the coxcomb, and so makes a pate of proof: my face was well leavened, which made my looks taste sour, the true relish of a man of war; my cheeks dough-baked, pale, wan, and therefore argued valour and resolution; but my nose somewhat hard-baked, and a little burnt in the oven, a property not amiss in a soldier’s visage, who should scorn to blush but in his nose; my chin was well thatched with a beard, which was a necessary shelter in winter, and a fly-flap in summer, 586so brushy and spreading, that my lips could scarce be seen to walk abroad, but played at all-hid, and durst not peep forth for starting a hair. To conclude, my arms, thighs, and legs, were so sound, stout, and weighty, as if they had come all out of the timber-yard, that my very presence only was able to still the bawlingest infant in Europe. And I think, madam, this was no unlikely shape for a soldier to prove well; here was mettle enough for four shillings a-week to do valiant service till it was bored as full of holes as a skimmer. Well, to the wars I betook me, ranked myself amongst desperate hot shots,—only my carriage put on more civility, for I seemed more like a spy than a follower, an observer rather than a committer of villany. And little thought I, madam, that the camp had been supplied with harlots too as well as the Curtain,[809] and the guarded tents as wicked as garden tenements;[810] trulls passing to and fro in the washed shape of laundresses, as your bawds about London in the manner of starchwomen, which is the most unsuspected habit that can be to train out a mistress. And if your ladyship will not think me much out of the way though I take a running leap from the camp to the Strand again, I will discover a pretty knavery of the same breeding between such a starchwoman and a kind wanton mistress; as there are few of those balassed vessels now-a-days but will have a love and a husband.
The woman crying her ware by the door (a most pitiful cry, and a[811] lamentable hearing that such a stiff thing as starch should want customers), passing 587cunningly and slily by the stall,[812] not once taking notice of the party you wot on, but being by this some three or four shops off, Mass, quoth my young mistress to the weathercock her husband, such a thing I want, you know: then she named how many puffs and purls[813] lay in a miserable case for want of stiffening. The honest plain-dealing jewel her husband sent out a boy to call her (not bawd by her right name, but starchwoman): into the shop she came, making a low counterfeit curtsey, of whom the mistress demanded if the starch were pure gear,[814] and would be stiff in her ruff, saying she had often been deceived before, when the things about her have stood as limber as eelskins. The woman replied as subtilely, Mistress, quoth she, take this paper of starch of my hand; and if it prove not to your mind, never bestow penny with me,—which paper, indeed, was a letter sent to her from the gentleman her exceeding favourite. Say you so? quoth the young dame, and I’ll try it, i’faith. With that she ran up stairs like a spinner upon small cobweb ropes, not to try or arraign the starch, but to conster[815] and parse the letter (whilst her husband sat below by the counter, like one of these brow-bitten catchpolls that wait for one man all day, when his wife can put five in the counter before him), wherein she found many words that pleased her. Withal the gentleman writ unto her for a certain sum of money, which no sooner was read, but was ready to be sent: wherefore, laying up the starch and that, and taking another sheet 588of clean paper in her hand, wanting time and opportunity to write at large, with a penful of ink, in the very middle of the sheet, writ these few quaint monosyllables, Coin, Cares, and Cures, and all C’s else are yours. Then rolling up the white money like the starch in that paper very subtilely and artificially, came tripping down stairs with these colourable words, Here’s goodly starch indeed! fie, fie!—trust me, husband, as yellow as the jaundice; I would not have betrayed my puffs with it for a million:—here, here, here (giving her the paper of money). With that the subtle starchwoman, seeming sorry that it pleased her not, told her, within few days she would fit her turn with that which should like[816] her; meaning indeed more such sweet news from her lover. These and such like, madam, are the cunning conveyances[817] of secret, privy, and therefore unnoted harlots, that so avoid the common finger of the world, when less committers than they are publicly pointed at.
So likewise in the camp, whither now I return, borne on the swift wings of apprehension, the habit of a laundress shadows the abomination of a strumpet; and our soldiers are like glovers, for the one cannot work well, nor the other fight well, without their wenches. This was the first mark of villany that I found sticking upon the brow of war; but after the hot and fiery copulation of a skirmish or two, the ordnance playing like so many Tamburlaines,[818] the muskets and calivers answering like drawers, Anon, anon, sir,[819] I cannot be here and there too,—that is, in the soldier’s hand and in the 589enemy’s belly, I grew more acquainted, and, as it were, entered into the entrails of black-livered policy. Methought, indeed, at first, those great pieces of ordnance should speak English, though now by transportation turned rebels: and what a miserable and pitiful plight it was, lady, to have so many thousands of our men slain by their own countrymen the cannons,—I mean not the harmless canons of Paul’s, but those cannons that have a great singing in their heads! Well, in this onset I remember I was well smoke-dried, but neither arm nor leg perished, not so much as the loss of a petty finger; for when I counted them all over, I missed not one of them; and yet sometimes the bullets came within a hair of my coxcomb, even like a barber scratching my pate, and perhaps took away the left limb of a vermin, and so departed; another time shouldering me like a bailiff against Michaelmas-term, and then shaking me by the sleeve as familiarly as if we had been acquainted seven years together. To conclude, they used me very courteously and gentlemanlike awhile; like an old cunning bowler to fetch in a young ketling[820] gamester, who will suffer him to win one sixpenny-game at the first, and then lurch him in six pounds afterward: and so they played with me, still training me, with their fair promises, into far deeper and deadlier battles, where, like villanous cheating bowlers, they lurched me of two of my best limbs, viz. my right arm and right leg, that so, of a man of war, I became in shew a monster of war; yet comforted in this, because I knew war begot many such monsters as myself in less than a twelvemonth. Now I could discharge no more, having paid the shot dear enough, I think, 590but rather desired to be discharged, to have pay and begone: whereupon I appeared to my captain and other commanders, kissing my left hand, which then stood for both (like one actor that plays two parts), who seemed to pity my unjointed fortunes and plaster my wounds up with words, told me I had done valiant service in their knowledge; marry, as for pay, they must go on the score with me, for all their money was thumped out in powder: and this was no pleasing salve for a green sore, madam; ’twas too much for me, lady, to trust calivers with my limbs, and then cavaliers with my money. Nevertheless, for all my lamentable action of one arm, like old Titus Andronicus,[821] I could purchase no more than one month’s pay for a ten months’ pain and peril, nor that neither, but to convey away my miserable clamours, that lay roaring against the arches of their ears, marry, their bountiful favours were extended thus far,—I had a passport to beg in all countries.
Well, away I was packed; and after a few miseries by the way, at last I set one foot into England again (for I had no more then to set), being my native though unnatural country, for whose dear good I pawned my limbs to bullets, those merciless brokers, that will take the vantage of a minute; and so they were quite forfeited, lost, and unrecoverable. When I was on shore, the people gathered,—which word gathering put me in hope of 591good comfort, that afterward I failed of; for I thought at first they had gathered something for me, but I found at last they did only but gather about me; some wondering at me, as if I had been some sea-monster cast ashore, some jesting at my deformity, whilst others laughed at the jests: one amongst them, I remember, likened me to a sea-crab, because I went all of one side; another fellow vied it,[822] and said I looked like a rabbit cut up and half-eaten, because my wing and leg, as they termed it, were departed. Some began to pity me, but those were few in number, or at least their pity was as pennyless as Pierce,[823] who writ to the devil for maintenance. Thus passing from place to place, like the motion[824] of Julius Cæsar or the City Nineveh, though not altogether in so good clothes, I overtook the city from whence I borrowed my first breath, and in whose defence I spent and laid out my limbs by whole sums to purchase her peace and happiness, nothing doubting but to be well entreated[825] there, my grievous maims tenderly regarded, my poor broken estate carefully repaired, the ruins of my blood built up again with redress and comfort: but woe the while, madam! I was not only unpitied, succourless, and rejected, but threatened with the public stocks, loathsome jails, and common whipping-posts, there to receive my 592pay—a goodly reward for my[826] bleeding service—if I were once found in the city again.
Wherefore I was forced to retire towards the Spital and Shoreditch, which, as it appeared, was the only Cole-harbor[827] and sanctuary for wenches and soldiers; where I took up a poor lodging a’ trust till the Sunday, hoping that then master Alms and mistress Charity would walk abroad and take the air in Finsbury. At which time I came hopping out from my lodging, like old lame Giles of Cripplegate; but when I came there, the wind blew so bleak and cold, that I began to be quite out of hope of charity; yet, like a torn map of misery, I waited my single halfpenny fortunes; when, of a sudden, turning myself about, and looking down the Windmill-hill, I might espy afar off a fine-fashioned dame of the city, with her man bound by indenture before her; whom no sooner I caught in mine eyelids, but I made to with all possible speed, and with a premeditated speech for the nonce,[828] thus, most soldier-like, I accosted her: Sweet lady, I beseech your beauty to weigh the estate of a poor unjointed soldier, that hath consumed the moiety, or the one-half of his limbs, in the dismembering and devouring wars, that have[829] cheated me of my flesh so notoriously, I protest I am not worth at this instant the small revenue of three farthings, beside my lodging unpleased[830] and my diet unsatisfied; and had I ten thousand limbs, I would venture them all in your sweet quarrel, rather than such a beauty as yourself should want the least limb of your desire. 593With that, as one being rather moved by my last words of promise than my first words of pity, she drew her white bountiful hand out of her marry-muff,[831] and quoited a single halfpenny; whereby I knew her then to be cold mistress Charity, both by her chill appearance and the hard, frozen pension she gave me. She was warm[832] lapt, I remember, from the sharp injury of the biting air; her visage was benighted with a taffeta-mask, to fray away the naughty wind from her face, and yet her very nose seemed so sharp with cold, that it almost bored a hole quite through: this was frost-bitten Charity; her teeth chattered in her head, and leaped up and down like virginal-jacks[833] which betrayed likewise who she was: and you would have broke into infinite laughter, madam (though misery made me leaden and pensive), had you been present, to have seen how quickly the muff swallowed her hand again; for no sooner was it drawn forth to drop down her pitiful alms, but, for fear the sun and air should have ravished it, it was extempore whipt up again. This is the true picture of Charity, madam, which is as cold as ice in the middle of July.
Well, still I waited for another fare; but then I bethought myself again, that all the fares went by water a’ Sundays to the bear-baiting,[834] and a’ Mondays to Westminster-hall; and therefore little to be looked for in Moorfields all the week long: wherefore I sat down by the rails there, and fell into these passionate,[835] but not railing speeches: Is this the farthest reward for a soldier? are[836] valour and 594resolution, the two champions of the soul, so slightly esteemed and so basely undervalued? doth reeling Fortune not only rob us of our limbs, but of our living? are soldiers, then, both food for cannon and for misery? But then, in the midst of my passion, calling to memory the peevish turns[837] of many famous popular gallants, whose names were writ even upon the heart of the world—it could not so much as think without them, nor speak but in the discourse of them—I began to outdare the very worst of cruel and disaster chances, and determined to be constant in calamity, and valiant against the battering siege of misery. But note the cross star that always dogged my fortunes: I had not long rested there, but I saw the tweering[838] constable of Finsbury, with his bench of brown-bill-men,[839] making towards me, meaning indeed to stop some prison-hole with me, as your soldiers, when the wars have done with them, are good for nothing else but to stop holes withal; at which sight, I scrambled up of[840] all two, took my skin off the hedge, cozened the constable, and slipt[841] into an ant again.
Nightingale.
O, ’twas a pretty, quaint deceit,
(The Nightingale began to sing,)
To slip from those that lie in wait,
Whose touch is like a raven’s wing,
595Fatal and ominous, which, being spread
Over a mortal, aims him dead.
Alas, poor emmet! thou wast tost
In thousand miseries by this shape;
Thy colour wasted, thy blood lost,
Thy limbs broke with the violent rape
Of hot impatient cannons, which desire
To ravish lives, spending their lust in fire.
O what a ruthful sight it is to see,
Though in a soldier of the mean’st degree,
That right member perish’d
Which the[842] body cherish’d!
That limb dissever’d, burnt, and gone,
Which the best part was borne upon:
And then, the greatest ruth of all,
Returning home in torn estate,
Where he should rise, there most to fall,
Trod down with envy, bruis’d with hate:
Yet, wretch, let this thy comfort be,
That greater worms[843] have far’d like thee.
So here thou left’st, bloodless and wan,
Thy journeys thorough man and man;
These two cross’d shapes, so much opprest,
Did fray thy weakness from the rest.
Ant.
No, madam, once again my spleen did thirst
To try the third, which makes men blest or curst;
That number three many stars wait upon,
Ushering clear hap or black confusion:
596Once more I ventur’d all my hopes to crown,—
But, aye me! leapt into a scholar’s gown.
Nightingale.
A needy scholar! worse than worst,
Less fate in that than both the first:
I thought thou’dst leapt into a law-gown, then
There had been hope t’ have swept up all agen;[844]
But a lank scholar! study how you can,
No academe makes a rich alderman.
Well, with this comfort yet thou may’st discourse,
When fates are worst, then they can be no worse.
The Ant’s Tale when he was a scholar.
You speak oracle, madam; and now suppose, sweet lady, you see me set forth, like a poor scholar, to the university, not on horseback, but in Hobson’s waggon,[845] and all my pack contained in less than a little hood-box, my books not above four in number, and those four were very needful ones too, or else they had never been bought; and yet I was the valiant captain of a grammar-school before I went, endured the assault and battery of many unclean lashes, and all the battles I was in stood upon points[846] much, which, once let down, the enemy the schoolmaster would come rearward, and do such an exploit ’tis a shame to be talked 597of. By this time, madam, imagine me slightly entertained to be a poor scholar and servitor to some Londoner’s son, a pure cockney, that must hear twice a-week from his mother, or else he will be sick ere the Sunday of a university-mulligrub. Such a one, I remember, was my first puling master, by whose peevish service I crept into an old battler’s[847] gown, and so began to be a jolly fellow. There was the first point of wit I shewed in learning to keep myself warm; to the confirming of which, you shall never take your true philosophers without two nightcaps at once and better, a gown of rug with the like appurtenances; and who be your wise men, I pray, but they? Now, as for study and books, I had the use of my young master’s; for he was all day a courtier in the tennis-court, tossing of balls instead of books, and only holding disputation with the court-keeper how many dozen he was in; and when any friend of his would remember him to his book with this old moth-eaten sentence, nulla dies sine linea, True, he would say, I observe it well, for I am no day from the line of the racket-court. Well, in the meantime, I kept his study warm, and sucked the honey of wit from the flowers of Aristotle—steeped my brain in the smart juice of logic, that subtle virtue,—and yet, for all my weighty and substantial arguments, being able indeed to prove any thing by logic, I could prove myself never the richer, make the best syllogism I could: no, although I daily rose before the sun, talked and conversed with midnight, killing many a poor farthing candle, that sometimes was ungently put to death when it might have lived longer, but most times living out the 598full course and hour, and the snuff dying naturally in his bed. Nevertheless, I had entered as yet but the suburbs of a scholar, and sat but upon the skirts of learning: full often I have sighed when others have snorted; and when baser trades have securely rested in their linens, I have forced mine eyes open, and even gagged them with capital letters, stretching them upon the tenters of a broad text-line when night and sleep have hung pound weights of lead upon my eyelids.
How many such black and ghastly seasons have I passed over, accompanied only with a demure watching-candle, that blinked upon Aristotle’s works, and gave even sufficient glimmering to read by, but none to spare! Hitherto my hopes grew comfortable upon the spreading branches of art and learning, rather promising future advancement than empty days and penurious scarcity. But shall I tell you, lady? O, here let me sigh out a full point, and take my leave of all plenteous hours and wealthy hopes! for in the spring of all my perfections, in the very pride and glory of all my labours, I was unfruitfully led to the lickerish study of poetry, that sweet honey-poison, that swells a supple scholar with unprofitable sweetness and delicious false conceits, until he burst into extremities and become a poetical almsman, or at the most, one of the Poor Knights of Poetry, worse by odds than one of the Poor Knights of Windsor. Marry, there was an age once, but, alas, long since dead and rotten, whose dust lies now in lawyers’ sand-boxes! in those golden days, a virtuous writer might have lived, maintained himself better upon poems than many upon ploughs, and might have expended more by the year by the revenue of his verse than any riotous elder brother upon the wealthy quartridges of 599three times three hundred acres, according to the excellent report of these lines:
There was a golden age—who murder’d it?
How died that age, or what became of it?
Then poets, by divinest alchemy,
Did turn their ink to gold; kings in that time
Hung jewels at the ear of every rhyme.
But O, those days are wasted! and behold
The golden age that was is coin’d to gold:
And why Time now is call’d an iron man,
Or this an iron-age, ’tis thus exprest,—
The golden age lies in an iron chest:
Or,
Gold lies now as prisoner in an usurer’s great iron-barred chest, where the prison-grates are the locks and the key-holes, but so closely mewed, or rather dammed up, that it never looks to walk abroad again, unless there chance to come a speedy rot among usurers,—for I fear me the piddling gout will never make them away soon enough; for your rank money-masters live their threescore and ten years as orderly as many honester men: and it is great pity, lady Philomel, that the gout should be such a long courtier in a usurer’s great toe, revelling and domineering above thirty years together in his rammish blood and his fusty flesh; and I wonder much, madam, that gold, being the spirit of the Indies, can couch so basely under wood and iron, two dull slaves, and not muster up his legion of angels,[848] burst through the wide bulk of a coffer, and so march into bountiful and liberal 600bosoms, shake hands with virtuous gentlemen, industrious spirits, and true-deserving worthies, detesting the covetous clutches and loathsome fangs of a goat-bearded usurer, a sable-soul[ed] broker, and an infectious law-fogger.
O, but I chide in vain! for gold wants eyes,
And, like a whore, cares not with whom it lies.
Yet that which makes me most admire his baseness are these verses following, wherein he proudly sets forth his own glory, which he vaunts so much of, that I shame to think any ignoble spirit or copper disposition should fetter his smooth golden limbs in boisterous and sullen iron, but rather be let free to every virtuous, and therefore poor scholar (for poverty is niece to virtue); so should each elegant poem be truly valued, and divine Poesy sit crowned in gold, as she ought, where[849] now she only sits with a paper on her head, as if she had committed some notorious trespass, either for railing against some brawling lawyer, or calling some justice of peace a wise man; and how magnificently Gold sings of his own fame and glory, these his own verses shall stand for witnesses:—
Know, I am Gold,
The richest spirit that breathes in earth or hell,
The soul of kingdoms, and the stamp of souls;
Bright angels[850] wear my livery, sovereign kings
Christen their names in gold, and call themselves
All offices are mine and in my gift;
601I have a hand in all; the statist’s veins
Flow in the blood of gold; the courtier bathes
His supple and lascivious limbs in oil
Which my brow sweats: what lady brightly spher’d
But takes delight to kiss a golden beard?
Those pleaders, forenoon players, act my parts
With liberal[853] tongues and desperate-fighting spirits,
That wrestle with the arms of voice and air;
And lest they should be out, or faint, or cold,
Their innocent clients hist them on with gold:
What holy churchman’s not accounted even,
That prays three times to me ere once to heaven?
Then to let shine the radiance of my birth,
I am th’ enchantment both in hell and earth.
Here’s golden majesty enough, I trow! and, Gold, art thou so powerful, so mighty, and yet snaffled with a poor padlock? O base drudge, and too unworthy of such an angel-like form! much like a fair sleek-faced courtier, without either wit or virtue; thou that throwest the earthen bowl of the world, with the bias the wrong way, to peasantry, baseness, ingentility, and never givest desert his due, or shakest thy yellow wings in a scholar’s study! But why do I lose myself in seeking thee, when thou art found of few but illiterate hinds, rude boors, and hoary penny-fathers,[854] that keep thee in perpetual durance, in vaults under false boards, subtle-contrived walls, and in horrible dark dungeons bury thee most unchristian-like, without amen, or the least noise of a priest or clerk, and make thee rise again at their pleasures many a thousand time before doomsday; and yet 602will not all this move thee once to forsake them, and keep company with a scholar that truly knows how to use thee?
By this time I had framed an elaborate poetical building—a neat, choice, and curious poem,—the first-fruits of my musical-rhyming study, which was dispersed into a quaint volume fairly bound up in principal vellum, double-filleted with leaf-gold, strung most gentlemanlike with carnation silk riband; which book, industriously heaped with weighty conceits, precious phrases, and wealthy numbers, I, Oliver Hubburd, in the best fashion I might, presented to Sir Christopher Clutchfist, whose bountiful virtue I blaze in my first epistle.[855] The book he entertained but, I think, for the cover’s sake, because it made such a goodly show on the backside: and some two days after, returning for my remuneration, I might espy—O lamentable sight, madam!—my book dismembered very tragically; the cover ript off, I know not for what purpose, and the carnation silk strings pulled out and placed in his Spanish-leather shoes; at which ruthful prospect I fell down and sounded;[856] and when I came to myself again, I was an ant, and so ever since I have kept me.
Nightingale.
There keep thee still;
Since all are ill,
Venture no more;
’Tis better be a little ant
Than a great man and live in want,
And still deplore:
603So rest thee now
From sword, book, or plough.
By this the day began to spring,
And seize upon her watchful eyes,
When more tree-quiristers did sing,
And every bird did wake and rise:
Which was no sooner seen and heard,
But all their pretty chat was marr’d;
And then she said,
We are betray’d,
The day is up, and all the birds
And they abroad will blab our words.
With that she bade the ants farewell,
And all they likewise Philomel:
Away she flew,
Crying Tereu!
And all the industrious ants in throngs
Fell to their work and held their tongues.
605