THE
                                  POEMS
                                   OF
                             RICHARD CORBET,
                  LATE BISHOP OF OXFORD AND OF NORWICH.

                           THE FOURTH EDITION,
                      With considerable Additions.

                         TO WHICH ARE NOW ADDED,
                  “ORATIO IN FUNUS HENRICI PRINCIPIS,”
                         FROM ASHMOLE’S MUSEUM,
             _Biographical Notes, and a Life of the Author_,
                                   BY
                       OCTAVIUS GILCHRIST, F.S.A.

                                 London:
               PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME,
                            PATERNOSTER-ROW.
                                  1807.

                Invidebam devio ac solo loco
                  Opes camœnarum tegi:
                At nunc frequentes, atque claros, nee procul,
                  Quum floreas inter viros.

                                                    AUSONIUS.

                      R. TAYLOR, and Co. Shoe Lane.




TO MY FRIEND THOMAS BLORE, ESQ. THIS VOLUME, UNDERTAKEN AT HIS
SUGGESTION, AND PROMOTED BY HIS ASSISTANCE, IS INSCRIBED BY THE EDITOR.




THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.


The public interest has been of late years so strongly manifested in
favour of the poets of the seventeenth century, that little apology
appears necessary for the republication of the following Poems. It
would, however, be equally vain and foolish in the editor to claim for
the author a place among the higher class of poets, or to exalt his due
praise by depreciating the merits of his contemporaries.—Claiming only
for Cæsar what to Cæsar is due, it may without arrogance be presumed
that these pages will not be found inferior to the poems of others which
have been fortunately republished, or familiarised to the generality of
readers through the popular medium of selections.

The author of the following poems (an account of whose life may be
considered as a necessary appendage to these pages) is said to have
descended from the antient family of the Corbets in Shropshire. It
were too laborious and pedantic in a work of this nature to trace his
pedigree, but I should be pleased to find any proofs of their attachment
to him: yet as the bishop did not usually “conceal his love,” I suspect
he received no mark of their regard, at least till his elevation
conferred rather than received obligation by acknowledgment.

Richard Corbet, successively bishop of Oxford and Norwich, was born at
the village of Ewell in Surrey, in the year 1582: he was the only son
of Bennet, or Benedicta, and Vincent Corbet, who, from causes which I
have not discovered, assumed the name of Poynter. His father, a man of
some eminence for his skill in gardening, and who is celebrated by Ben
Jonson in an elegy[1] alike honourable to the subject, the poet, and
the friend, for his many amiable virtues, resided at Whitton, a hamlet
in the parish of Twickenham, where the poet passed his declining days.
Under the will of his father[2] he inherited sundry freehold lands and
tenements lying in St. Augustine’s parish, Watling-street, London, and
five hundred pounds in money, which was directed to be paid him by
Bennet, the father’s wife and sole executrix, upon his attaining the
age of twenty-five years. After receiving the rudiments of education at
Westminster School, he entered in Lent term 1597-8 at Broadgate Hall,
and the year following was admitted a student of Christ-Church College,
Oxford. In 1605 he proceeded Master of Arts, and became celebrated as a
wit and a poet.

The following early specimen of his humour is preserved in a collection
of “Mery Passages and Jeastes,” Harl. MS. No. 6395: “Ben Jonson was at a
tavern, and in comes bishop Corbet (but not so then) into the next room.
Ben Jonson calls for a quart of _raw_ wine, and gives it to the tapster.
‘Sirrah!’ says he, ‘carry this to the gentleman in the next chamber, and
tell him I sacrifice my service to him.’ The fellow did, and in those
terms. ‘Friend!’ says bishop Corbet, ‘I thank him for his love; but
pr’ythee tell him from me that he is mistaken, for sacrifices are always
burnt.’”

In 1612, upon the death of the amiable and accomplished Henry Prince of
Wales,

    “The expectancy and rose of the fair state,”

and the theme of many a verse; the University, overwhelmed with grief,
more especially as he had been a student of Magdalen College under the
tutorage of Mr. John Wilkinson, (“afterwards the unworthy president of
that house,”) and desirous of testifying their respect for his memory,
deputed Corbet, then one of the proctors, to pronounce a funeral oration;
“who,” to use the words of Antony Wood, “very oratorically speeched it in
St. Maries church, before a numerous auditory[3].” On the 13th of March
in the following year he performed a similar ceremony in the Divinity
School on the interment of sir Thomas Bodley, the munificent founder of
the library known by his name.

Amid the religious dissensions at this period, encouraged and increased
by James’s suspected inclination to popery, it was scarcely possible to
avoid giving offence to the supporters of the various doctrinal opinions
which in this confusion of faiths divided the people. At the head of the
Church was Dr. George Abbott, a bigoted and captious Puritan: opposed
to this disciple of Calvin was Laud, then growing into fame, who boldly
supported the opinions of Arminius. With the latter Corbet coincided: but
the undisguised publication of his faith had nearly proved fatal to his
future prospects; for, “preaching the Passion sermon at Christ-Church,
(1613,) he insisted on the article of Christ’s descending into hell,
and therein grated upon Calvin’s manifest perverting of the true sense
and meaning of it: for which, says Heylyn, he was so rattled up by the
Repetitioner, (Dr. Robert Abbott, brother of the archbishop,) that if
he had not been a man of a very great courage, it might have made him
afraid of staying in the University. This, it was generally conceived,
was not done without the archbishop’s setting on; but the best was, adds
Heylyn, that none sunk under the burthen of these oppressions, if (like
the camomile) they did not rise the higher by it[4].”

When James, in 1605[5], visited Oxford in his summer progress, the wits
of the sister University vented their raillery at the entertainment
given to the royal visitor[6]. Cambridge, which had long solicited the
same honour, was in the year 1614-5 indulged with his presence. Many
students from Oxford witnessed the ceremonial of his reception; and the
local histories of the two Universities at that period, are replete
with pasquinades and ballads sufficiently descriptive of their mutual
animosities. An eye-witness declares, “Though I endured a great deal of
penance by the way for this little pleasure, yet I would not have missed
it, for that I see thereby the partiality of both sides—the Cambridge men
pleasing and applauding themselves in all, and the Oxford men as fast
condemning and detracting all that was done; wherein yet I commended
Corbet’s modesty, whilst he was there; who being seriously dealt withal
by some friends to say what he thought, answered, that he had left
his malice and judgment at home, and came there only to commend[7].”
Notwithstanding this conciliatory declaration, the opportunity of
retorting upon the first assailants was too tempting to Corbet’s wit to
be slighted; and immediately upon his return he composed the ballad, page
13, “To the tune of Bonny Nell.”—This humorous narrative excited several
replies; the most curious of which was the one, in Latin and English,
(at page 24,) written, perhaps, by sir Thomas Lake, afterwards secretary
of state, who performed the part of Trico in the Cambridge play of
Ignoramus, and who had a ring bequeathed him by the author, Ruggles[8].

Corbet appears, says Headley[9], to have been of that poetical party
who, by inviting Ben Jonson to come to Oxford, rescued him from the arms
of a sister University, who has long treated the Muses with indignity,
and turned a hostile and disheartening eye on those who have added most
celebrity to her name[10].

We do not find that Ben expressed any regret at the change of his
situation: companions whose minds and pursuits were similar to his own,
are not always to be found in the gross atmosphere of the muddy Cam,
though easily met with on the more genial banks of the Isis:

    Largior hic campos æther.

In 1616 he was recommended by the Convocation as a proper person to be
elected to the college which Dr. Matthew Surtclyve, dean of Exeter,
had lately erected at Chelsea, for maintaining polemical Divines to be
employed in opposing the doctrines of Papists and Sectaries. Whether he
obtained his election I have not learned: nor is it of much moment; for
the establishment, as might be naturally foreseen from the circumstances
of the times, soon declined from its original purpose[11].

Being now in a situation to indulge his inclinations, he in 1618 made
a trip to France, from whence he wrote an “epistle to sir Thomas
Aylesbury,” in which he gently laughs at his friend’s astronomical
fondness; and composed a metrical description of his journey, from which
we may conclude that he returned less disgusted with his native country,
and less enamoured of the manners and habits of his new acquaintance,
than is usual with the modern visitors of our transmarine neighbours.

He was now in holy orders; and, in the language of Antony Wood, “became
a quaint preacher, and therefore much followed by ingenious men.” None
of Corbet’s sermons are, I believe, in existence: the modesty that
withheld his poems from the press, during his life, prevented his adding
to the multitude of devotional discourses with which the country was
at this period infested[12]. Those who are at all acquainted with
the ecclesiastical oratory of James’s reign, will be at no loss to
comprehend “honest Antony’s” description; but to those who are not, it
may be sufficient to observe, that, of its peculiar excellencies and
demerits, the sermons of bishop King, his contemporary, (which have been
republished) are a complete “picture in little.”

About this time he appears, from the following characteristic letter[13],
to have solicited promotion at the hands of Villiers duke of Buckingham:

    “May it please your Grace

    “To consider my two great losses this weeke: one in respect of
    his Majesty to whom I was to preach; the other in respect of my
    patron whom I was to visit. Yf this bee not the way to repare
    the later of my losses, I feare I am in danger to bee utterly
    undon. To press too neere a greate man is a meanness; to be put
    by, and to stand too far off, is the way to be forgotten: so
    Ecclesiasticus. In which mediocrity, could I hitt it, would I
    live and dy, my lord. I would neather press neere, nor stand
    far off; choosing rather the name of an ill courtier than a
    sawsy scholer.

                 “I am your Grace’s most humble servant,

                                                  “RICHARD CORBET.”

    Christ’s Church, this 26 Feb.

“Heer are newes, my noble lord, about us, that, in the point of
alledgeance now in hand, all the Papists are exceeding orthodox; the only
recusants are the Puritans.”

Of the nature of the object thus supplicated, my inquiries have not
informed me: he was now dean of Christ-Church, vicar of Cassington near
Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and prebendary of Bedminster secunda in the
church of Sarum: it was, perhaps, the appointment of chaplain to the
King, which he received about this time; and if to this period may be
assigned the gratulatory poem at page 83, it should seem that Buckingham
was not solicited in vain.

In 1619 he sustained a great loss in the decease of his amiable father,
at a very advanced age; whose praise he has celebrated in the most
honourable terms, and whose death he has lamented in the language of
rational and tender regret.

When James paid a second visit to Oxford in 1621, Corbet, in his office
of chaplain, preached before the monarch[14], who had presented him
(as it seems) with a token of his favour, such as flattered in no
small degree the vanity of the dean. The progress of the court and its
followers is thus ludicrously described in an anonymous poem transcribed
from Antony Wood’s papers[15] in Ashmole’s Museum:

      The king and the court,
      Desirous of sport,
    Six days at Woodstock did lie;
      Thither went the doctors,
      And sattin-sleev’d proctors,
    With the rest of the learned fry;

      Whose faces did shine
      With beere and with wine,
    So fat, that it may be thought
      University cheere,
      With college strong beere,
    Made them far better fed than taught.

      A number beside,
      With their wenches did ride,
    (For scholars are always kind)
      And still evermore,
      While they rode before,
    They were kissing their wenches behind.

      A number on foot,
      Without cloak or boot,
    And yet with the court go they would;
      Desirous to show
      How far they could go
    To do his high mightiness good.

      The reverend Dean,
      With his band starch’d clean,
    Did preach before the King;
      A ring was his pride
      To his bandstrings tied,
    Was not this a pretty thing?

      The ring, without doubt,
      Was the thing put him out,
    And made him forget what was next;
      For every one there
      Will say, I dare swear,
    He handled it more than his text.

With poetical badinage of this complexion the wits of the University of
Oxford, with Corbet at their head, “who loved this boy’s play to the
last,” abounded. While many of the pasquinades are lost, many, however,
are still preserved among Ashmole’s papers: on most occasions Corbet
was at least a match for his opponents, but this misfortune of the ring
became a standing jest against him: it is alluded to at page 233; and it
is demanded in another poem[16], if

    He would provoke court wits to sing
    The _second_ part of bandstrings and the ring.

Upon the evening of the same Sunday, the students of Christ-Church,
willing to show their respect for the royal visitor, obtained leave to
present a play before the King; and they chose, with no great display of
taste, Barten Holyday’s ΤΕΧΝΟΓΑΜΙΑ, or “The Marriage of the Arts,” which
had been acted in Christ-Church hall the 13th of February, 1617. The play
was so little relished, that the king was with difficulty persuaded to
sit till its conclusion: the “enactors” became subjects of ridicule to
the University; and, though Corbet and King rhymed in their favour, the
laugh went against them.

Indeed the Oxonians were not more unfortunate in their theatrical
representations on this than on former occasions. Upon the visit of
James, in 1605, two out of three dramatic exhibitions, prepared at great
expense and performed by the students, were, according to the testimony
of an eye-witness, received with tædium, and rewarded with unconcealed
disgust[17].

The writers of the poet’s life are silent as to the period of his
marriage; and if I am unable to communicate any information on this
point, it will not, I trust, be attributed to any parsimony of research,
or indifference as to fact when conjecture can be substituted. Those who
have made literary biography their study, know that it is frequently much
easier to write many pages than to ascertain a date, and hence but too
frequently ingenuity supplies the place of labour and inquiry: in the
present instance, every record that suggested a probability of containing
any memorial relative to the family of the subject of this biography has
been inspected personally; but before the passing of the Marriage Act,
nothing is more uncertain than the probable place of the celebration of
that ceremony[18].

In this dearth of fact as to dates, I shall presume to suppose he married
about 1625 Alice the only daughter of his fellow-collegian Dr. Leonard
Hutton, a man of some eminence in his day as a divine and an antiquary,
and whose character is thus drawn by Antony Wood with a felicity that
rarely accompanies his pencil: “His younger years were beautified with
all kind of polite learning, his middle with ingenuity and judgment, and
his reverend years with great wisdom in government, having been often
subdean of his college.”

This union of wit and beauty was not looked upon with indifference, nor
was their epithalamium unsung, or the string touched by the hand of an
unskilful master:

    Come, all ye Muses, and rejoyce
    At this your nursling’s happy choyce;
    Come, Flora, strew the bridemaid’s bed,
    And with a garland crown her head;
    Or, if thy flowers be to seek,
    Come gather roses at her cheek.
    Come, Hymen, light thy torches, let
    Thy bed with tapers be beset,
    And if there be no fire by,
    Come light thy taper at her eye:
    In that bright eye there dwells a starre,
    And wise-men by it guided are[19].

The offspring of this marriage were a daughter named Alice, and a son
born the 10th of November, 1627, towards whom the beautiful poem at page
150 is an undecaying monument of paternal affection.

Of these descendants of the bishop I lament that I have discovered so
little: if this volume should be fortunate enough to excite attention to
its author, the loss may at some future period be supplied: they were
both living when their grandmother, Anne Hutton, made her will in 1642,
and the son administered to the testament in 1648.

In 1628 Corbet suffered a severe privation in the loss of his patron
Villiers duke of Buckingham, assassinated by Felton on the 23d of
August, who, whatever were his political crimes, was, like his amiable
and indulgent master, a liberal promoter of literature and science, and
to his death an encourager of Corbet’s studies. If, however, this event
checked his hopes of promotion for a season, it did not leave him without
a patron; for, upon the translation of Hewson to the see of Durham,
(to make way for Dr. Duppa to be dean of that church,) he was elected
bishop of Oxford the 30th of July, was consecrated at Lambeth the 19th of
October, and installed the 3d of November, 1629; “though,” in the opinion
of Wood, “in some respects unworthy of such an office[20].”

Warned by the many petulant remarks on the poetical character scattered
throughout the account of Oxford writers, one is little surprised at
this churlish remark on the part of honest Antony, who seems to have
considered all poetry as

    ... inopes rerum, nugæque canoræ,

and its indulgence inconsistent with the clerical profession. Corbet was
certainly no “precisian,” and perhaps his only fault was possessing a
species of talent to which Antony had no pretension.

The bishopric of Oxford he held but a short time, being translated to
a more active see, that of Norwich, in the month of April 1632; when a
dispute arose as to his right of claim to the glebe sown previous to his
vacating the vicarage: the opinion of the attorney-general, (Noy,) which
is preserved in the Harleian collection of manuscripts[21], was in his
favour, _in as much as the translation was not his own act merely_.

On the 9th of March, 1633, he preached before the king at Newmarket[22].

Scarcely was he seated in the episcopal chair of Norwich when Abbott
died, and Laud, who had long exercised the authority of metropolitan,
was two days afterwards (August 6th, 1633) preferred to the see of
Canterbury. Having now “no rival near his throne,” in the warmth of
his zeal he immediately applied himself to reform abuses and exact
a conformity to the established church, the discipline of which had
exceedingly relaxed during the ascendancy of his calvinistic predecessor.
For this purpose Laud issued certain orders and instructions to the
several bishops, insisting upon a strict examination into the state of
religion and its ceremonies in their several dioceses; the result of
which was transmitted to that prelate, and by him laid before the King.
These representations, many of which are curious, are printed in the
nineteenth volume of Rymer’s Fœdera. On his part, Corbet certified that
he had suppressed the lectures of some factious men, and particularly
that he had suspended one Bridges, curate of St. George’s parish,
Norwich; but, upon submission, he had taken off his suspension. Among
others, he had heard complaint of Mr. Ward[23], of Ipswich, for words in
some sermons of his, for which he was called before the High Commission.

From the following conciliating epistle I conclude that Ward submitted,
and was restored to his cure:

                       “Salutem in Christo.

    “My worthie friend,

    “I thank God for your conformitie, and you for your
    acknowledgment: stand upright to the church wherein you
    live; be true of heart to her governours; think well of
    her significant ceremonyes; and be you assured I shall
    never displace you of that room which I have given you in
    my affection; proove you a good tenant in my hart, and noe
    minister in my diocese hath a better landlord. Farewell! God
    Almightie blesse you with your whole congregation.

    “From your faithful friend to serve you in Christ Jesus,

                                              “RICH. NORWICH[24].”

    Ludham Hall, the 6 of Oct. 1633.

The zeal of Laud did not rest here: he set sedulously about suppressing
the Dutch and Walloon congregations, of which there were several in
London, Norwich, and other places.

It will be perhaps necessary to observe, that the Dutch, the Walloons,
and the French, who had continued to refuge in England from the reign
of Edward the Sixth, had obtained many privileges from former kings,
and among others, the liberty of celebrating divine service after
their own, that is, the presbyterian, manner. Their congregations were
scattered over the kingdom; and at this period there was at Norwich one
of the Dutch, and one of the Walloons, the latter of which carried on
an extensive manufacture of woollen cloths, for the vending of which,
they in 1564 obtained a lease of the chapel of St. Mary the Less, which
they fitted up as a hall or market-place for that purpose. Where they
performed divine service before the year 1619 I know not, but in that
year Samuel Harsnet licensed the Walloon congregation to use during his
pleasure the Bishop’s chapel, or chapel of the Virgin Mary[25]. This
indulgence was continued during the government of his successor, Francis
White. But the intolerance of Laud would be content with nothing short
of conformity; Corbet consequently prepared to dislodge them by the
following characteristic letter:

         “To the minister and elders of the French church,
                        in Norwich, these:

                       “Salutem in Christo.

    “You have promised me from time to time to restore my stolen
    bell, and to glaze my lettice windows. After three yeeres
    consultation (bysides other pollution) I see nothing mended.
    Your discipline, I know, care not much for a consecrated place,
    and anye other roome in Norwiche that hath but bredth and
    length may serve your turne as well as the chappel: wherefore I
    say unto you, without a miracle, _Lazare, prodi foras!_ Depart,
    and hire some other place for your irregular meetings: you
    shall have time to provide for yourselves betwixte this and
    Whitsontide. And that you may not think I mean to deale with
    you as Felix dyd with St. Paul, that is, make you afraid, to
    get money, I shall keepe my word with you, which you did not
    with me, and as neer as I can be like you in nothinge.

    “Written by me, Richard Norwich, with myne own hand, Dec. 26,
    anno 1634.”

The congregation remonstrated to Laud, in the February following,
against the commands of their poetical pastor; but the archbishop
insisted that his instructions should stand, and obedience be yielded to
his injunctions[26].

While, under the direction of the Archbishop, he was thus severe with
the heterodox, he was equally zealous in supporting the establishment
of which he was a dignitary: exertions were now making by the King, the
Clergy, and indeed all orders of people, for the restoring Saint Paul’s
cathedral, which had remained in ruins since its second destruction by
fire, early in Elizabeth’s reign. In 1631 a special commission was
issued by the King, for the purpose of collecting money, to be applied
to this purpose. The subscription went on tardily till Laud contributed
a hundred pounds, to be renewed annually, and “Corbet bishop of Norwich
(then almoner to the king) giving four hundred pounds, multitudes of
others, says Stowe, for eleven years together brought in their monies
very plentifully[27].” Nor did his liberality stop here: Wood says[28]
that in addition to this contribution, which at the time we speak of was
an enormous bounty, he gave money to many needy ministers, thereby to
excite the donations of their wealthier brethren; and he pronounced the
following admonitory, persuasive and satirical address[29] to the clergy
of his diocese:

“Saint Paul’s church! One word in the behalf of Saint Paul; he hath
spoken many in ours: he hath raised our inward temples. Let us help to
requite him in his outward. We admire commonly those things which are
oldest and greatest: old monuments, and high buildings, do affect us
above measure: and what is the reason? Because what is oldest cometh
nearest God for antiquity: and what is greatest, comes nearest his works
for spaciousness and magnitude: so that in honouring these we honour
God, whom old and great do seem to imitate. Should I commend Paul’s to
you for the age, it were worth your thought and admiration. A thousand
years, though it should fall now, were a pretty climacterical. See the
bigness, and your eye never yet beheld such a goodly object. It’s worth
the reparation, though it were but for a land mark; but, beloved, it is a
church, and consecrated to God. From Charles to Ethelbert she hath been
the joy of princes. It was once dedicated to Diana (at least some part of
it); but the idolatry lasted not long. And see a mystery in the change:
Saint Paul confuting twice the idol, there in person, where the cry was,
‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians!’ and here: by proxy. Paul installed,
where Diana is thrust out. It did magnify the creation, it was taken
out of the darkness: light is not the clearer for it, but stronger and
more wonderful: and it doth beautify this church, because it was taken
from pollution. The stones are not the more durable, but the happier
for it. It is worthy the standing for the age, the time since it was
built, and for the structure, so stately an edifice is it: it is worthy
to stand for a memorial of it from which it is redeemed, but chiefly for
his house that dwells therein. We are bound to do it, for the service
sake that is done in it. Are we not beholden to it, every man, either to
the body, or the choir: for a walk or a warbling note: for a prayer or
a thorough-path? Some way or other, there is a topick may make room for
your benevolence.

“It hath twice suffered Martyrdom: and both by fire, in the time of Henry
the Sixth and the third of Elizabeth.

“Saint Paul complained of Stoning twice; his church of firing: stoning
she wants, indeed, and a good stoning would repair her.

“Saint Faith holds her up, I confess. Oh that works were sainted to
keep her upright! The first way of building churches was by ways of
benevolence; but then there needed no petition: men came on so fast that
they were commanded to be kept back, but repairing now, needs petition.
Benevolence was a fire once had need to be quenched: it is a spark, now
and needs blowing on it: blow it hard, _and put it out_. Some petitions
there are, for pulling down of such an isle, or changing lead for thack:
so far from reparation, that our suit is to demolish. If to deny this
be persecution, if to repair churches be innovation, I’ll be of that
religion too.

“I remember a tale in Henry Steevens, in his Apology for Herodotus, or
in some of the Colloquies of Erasmus, which would have us believe that
times were so depraved in popery, that all œconomical discipline was lost
by observing the œcumenical; that if an ingenious person would ask his
father’s blessing, he must get a dispensation and have a licence from the
bishop.

“Believe me when I match this tale with another. Since Christmas I was
sued to (and I have it under the hands of the minister and the whole
parish) that I would give way to the adorning of the church within and
without, to build a stone wall about the church-yard which till now
had but a hedge. I took it for a flout at first, but it proved a suit
indeed; they durst not mend a fault of forty years, without a licence.
Churchwardens, though they say it not, yet I doubt me most of them think
it, that foul spirits in the Gospel said, ‘O thou Bishop or Chancellor,
what! art thou come to torment us before the time, that all is come down
to the ground?’ The truth went out once in this phrase: ‘Zelus domûs tuæ
exedit ossa mea,’ but now vice versa, it is, ‘Zelus meus exedit domum
tuam.’ I hope I gall none here.

“Should Christ say that to us now which he said once to the Jews,
‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again:’ we
would quickly know his meaning not to be the material temple. Three years
can scarce promoove three foot.

“I am verily persuaded, were it not for the pulpit and the pews, (I do
not now mean the altar and the font for the two sacraments, but for the
pulpit and the stools as you call them;) many churches had been down
that stand. Stately pews are now become tabernacles, with rings and
curtains to them. There wants nothing but beds to hear the word of God
on; we have casements, locks and keys, and cushions; I had almost said,
bolsters and pillows: and for those we love the church. I will not guess
what is done within them, who sits, stands, or lies asleep, at prayers,
communion, &c., but this I dare say, they are either to hide some vice or
to proclaim one; to hide disorder, or proclaim pride.

“In all other contributions justice precedes charity. For the King,
or for poor, as you are rated you must give and pay. It is not so in
benevolence. Here Charity rates herself; her gift is arbitrary, and her
law is the conscience. He that stays till I persuade him, gives not all
his own money: I give half that have procured it. He that comes persuaded
gives his own; but takes off more than he brought, God paying use for
nothing. But now comes your turn to speak, or God in you by your hands:
for so he useth to speak many times by the hands of Moses and Aaron,
and by the hands of Esay and Ezekiel, and by the hands of you his minor
prophets. Now prosper, O Lord! the works of these hands! O prosper Thou
our handy work! Amen.”

He was not fated, however, to witness the elevation of the temple in
favour of which he was thus active and benevolent; indeed he was then
consuming with lingering disorders. “Corbet, bishop of Norwich,” says the
garrulous correspondent of lord Strafford, “is dying; the best poet of
all the bishops in England. He hath incurable diseases upon him, and hath
been said to be dead[30].” This was written on the 30th of July, 1635,
and he had rested from his labours two days preceding. He was buried in
the cathedral church of his diocese, where a large stone was laid over
his remains, to which a brass plate was affixed, bearing his arms and the
following inscription:

    Ricardus Corbet, Theologiæ Doctor,
    Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Christi Oxoniensis
    Primum Alumnus, deinde Decanus, exinde
    Episcopus, illinc huc translatus, et
    Hinc in cœlum Jul. 28. An. 1635.

By his will “he commits and commends the nurture and maintenance of his
son and daughter to the faythful and loving care of his mother-in-law
Anne Hutton;” from which, and the total silence as to his wife, I
conclude he outlived her—and with a legacy of one thousand pounds to his
daughter Alice, to be paid at her attaining the age of seventeen, or
upon her marriage, he enjoins her not to marry without the consent of her
grandmother. By the further provisions of his testament, his son was to
be joined with Anne Hutton in the administration upon his attaining the
age of seventeen; and in case of the decease of both, the whole was to
devolve upon his daughter Alice.

Such was the end of this learned and ingenious prelate and poet, of whose
works I have undertaken the revision, and in collecting the scattered
memorials for whose biography,

    et etiam disjecta membra poetæ,

I have, I hope not unprofitably to myself or others, employed some
leisure hours.

His person, if we may rely upon a fine portrait of him in the hall of
Christ-Church, Oxford, was dignified, and his frame above the common
size: one of his companions[31] says he had

    A face that might heaven to affection draw:

and Aubrey says, he had heard that “he had an admirable grave and
venerable aspect.”

In no record of his life is there the slightest trace of malevolence or
tyranny: “he was,” says Fullers[32], “of a courteous carriage, and no
destructive nature to any who offended him, counting himself plentifully
repaired with a jest upon him.” Benevolent, generous and spirited in his
public character; sincere, amiable, and affectionate in private life;
correct, eloquent, and ingenious as a poet; he appears to have deserved
and enjoyed through life the patronage and friendship of the great, and
the applause and estimation of the good.

Apology is not necessary for his writings, or it might be urged that
they were not intended for publication by their author. “His merits are
disclosed,” and, at the distance of near a century and a half, are now
again submitted to the censure of the public.

His panegyric is liberal without grossness, and complimentary without
servility: his satires on the Puritans, a pestilent race which Corbet
fortunately did not live to see ascendant, and which soon after his
decease sunk literature and the arts in “the Serbonian bog” of ignorance
and fanaticism, evince his skill in severe and ludicrous reproof; and
the addresses to his son and his parents, while they are proofs of his
filial and parental regard, bear testimony to his command over the finer
feelings. But the predominant faculty of his mind was wit, which he
employed with most success when directed ironically: of this the address
“to the Ghost of Wisdome,” and “the Distracted Puritane,” are memorable
examples. Indeed he was unable to overcome his talent for humour, even
when circumstance and character concurred to repress its indulgence. Of
this propensity the following anecdotes, copied _verbatim_ from Aubrey’s
MSS. in Mus. Ashmole[33], are curious proofs, and may not improperly
close this account of a character which they tend forcibly to illustrate.

“After he was doctor of divinity, he sang ballads at the Crosse at
Abingdon; on a market-day he and some of his comrades were at the taverne
by the Crosse, (which, by the way, was then the finest of England; I
remember it when I was a freshman; it was admirable curious Gothicque
architecture, and fine figures in the nitches; ’twas one of those built
by king ... for his queen.) The ballad-singer complayned he had no
custome—he could not put off his ballads. The jolly Doctor puts off his
gowne, and puts on the ballad-singer’s leathern jacket, and being a
handsome man, and a rare full voice, he presently vended a great many,
and had a great audience.

“After the death of Dr. Goodwin, he was made deane of Christ-Church. He
had a good interest with great men, as you may finde in his poems; and
that with the then great favourite the duke of Bucks, his excellent wit
ever ’twas of recommendation to him. I have forgot the story; but at the
same time Dr. Fell thought to have carried it, Dr. Corbet put a pretty
trick on him to let him take a journey to London for it, when he had
alreadie the graunt of it.

“His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. Stubbins was one of his
cronies; he was a jolly fat doctor, and a very good housekeeper. As
Dr. Corbet and he were riding in Lob-lane in wet weather, (’tis an
extraordinary deepe dirty lane,) the coach fell, and Corbet said, that
Dr. S. was up to the elbows in mud, and he was up to the elbows in
Stubbins.

“A. D. 1628, he was made bishop of Oxford; and I have heard that he had
an admirable grave and venerable aspect.

“One time as he was confirming, the country people pressing in to see
the ceremonie, said he, ‘Beare off there! or I’ll confirm ye with my
staffe.’—Another time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man very
bald, he turns to his chaplaine, and said, ‘Some dust, Lushington,’ to
keepe his hand from slipping.—There was a man with a great venerable
beard; said the bishop, ‘You, behind the beard!’

“His chaplaine, Dr. Lushington, was a very learned and ingenious man, and
they loved one another. The Bishop would sometimes take the key of the
wine-cellar, and he and his chaplaine would go and lock themselves in
and be merry; then first he layes down his episcopal hood, ‘There layes
the doctor;’ then he putts off his gowne, ‘There layes the bishop;’ then
’twas, ‘Here’s to thee, Corbet;’—‘Here’s to thee, Lushington.’”

One word on the subject of the former editions; which bear dates 1647,
1648, and 1672. The first and last impressions correspond in their
contents, and the publisher of the latter has also copied, for the most
part, the errors of his predecessor, which are so numerous as to render
the poems not unfrequently unintelligible. I must observe, however,
from the information of Mr. Park, that many copies of the first edition
conclude at page 53. The additions extend the volume to 85 pages. The
only impression with any pretension to accuracy is that of 1648, which,
from its internal evidence, I suspect was published under the eye of the
Bishop’s family; I have therefore retained the Preface. It contains only
twenty-four poems.

An edition bearing the date of 1663 is cited in Willis’s Cathedrals; but,
it is believed, through mistake.




CONTENTS.


[_Additions to the former Impressions of Corbet’s Poems are distinguished
by an Asterisk, thus_: *]

                                                                    Page

  * Life of the Author                                                 v

    Preface to the Edition of 1648                                 lxiii

  * Commendatory Poems                                               lxv

    An Elegie on Dr. Ravis                                             3

  * Thomæ Coriato de Odcombe                                           9

    To Thomas Coryate                                                 11

    A certaine Poem, &c. to the tune of “Bonny Nell”                  13

  * An Answer to the former Song, &c.                                 22

  * Responsio, &c.                                                    25

  * Additamenta superiori Cantico                                     42

    On the Lady Arabella Stuart                                       43

    Upon Mistriss Mallet; an unhandsome gentlewoman who made love
      unto him                                                        47

    In quendam Anniversariorum Scriptorem                             52

    An Answer to the same, by Dr. Price                               54

    In Poetam exauctoratum et emeritum                                56

  * On Francis Beaumont, then newly dead                              58

    An Elegie on the late Lord William Howard of Effingham            59

    To the Lord Mordaunt, upon his returne from the North             66

  * To the Prince                                                     82

    A Newe-Years Gift to my Lorde Duke of Buckingham                  83

    A Letter to Sir Thomas Aylesbury                                  65

    Dr. Corbet’s Journey into France                                  94

    An Exhortation to Mr. John Hamon                                 103

    An Elegie upon the Death of Queen Anne                           112

    An Elegie upon the Death of his owne Father                      118

    An Elegie upon the Death of the Lady Haddington                  123

    On the Christ-Church Play at Woodstock                           131

    A Letter to the Duke of Buckingham, being with the Prince
      in Spaine                                                      134

    On the Earle of Dorset’s Death                                   142

    To the Newe-born Prince                                          146

    On the Birth of the young Prince Charles                         148

    To his Son Vincent Corbet                                        149

    An Epitaph on Dr. Donne, Dean of Pauls                           152

  * Certain few Woordes spoken concerninge one Benet Corbett after
      her decease                                                    154

    Iter Boreale                                                     156

    On Mr. Rice, the Manciple of Christ-Church in Oxford             205

    On Henry Bollings                                                206

    On John Dawson, Butler of Christ-Church                          207

    On Great Tom of Christ-Church                                    209

    R.C.                                                             212

    A proper new Ballad, entituled The Faeryes Farewell              213

  * A Non Sequitur                                                   218

    Nonsence                                                         220

  * The Country Life                                                 222

    To the Ghost of Robert Wisdome                                   228

    An Epitaph on Thomas Jonce                                       230

    To the Ladies of the New Dresse                                  232

  * The Ladies’ Answer                                               233

  * Corbet’s Reply                                                   234

    On Fairford Windows                                              235

  * Another on the same                                              239

    The Distracted Puritane                                          243

  * Oratio in Funus Henrici Principis                                249

  * In Obitum Domini Thomæ Bodleii                                   260




TO THE READER.

(From Edition 1648.)


READER,

I heere offer to view a collection of certaine peices of poetry, which
have _flowne_ from hand to hand, these many yeares, in _private_ papers,
but were never _fixed_ for the _publique_ eie of the worlde to looke
upon, till now[34]. If that witt which runnes in every veyne of them
seeme somewhat _out of fashion_, because tis neither _amorous_ nor
_obscene_, thou must remember that the author, although scarse a _Divine_
when many of them were written, had not only so _masculine_ but even so
_modest_ a witt also, that he would lett nothing fall from his pen but
what he himselfe might owne, and never blush, when he was a _bishop_;
little imagining the age would ever come, when his calling should prove
more out of fashion than his witt could. As concerning any thing else to
be added in commendation of the author, I shall never thinke of it; for
as for those men who did _knowe him_, or ever _heard of him_, they need
none of _my good opinion_: and as for those who _knew him not_, and never
so much as _heard of him_, I am sure he needs none of _theirs_.

Farewell.




COMMENDATORY POEMS.


TO THE DEANE,

(From Flower in Northamptonshire, 1625,)

NOW THE WORTHY BISHOP OF NORWICH.

BY ROBERT GOMERSALL[35].

    Still to be silent, or to write in prose,
    Were alike sloth, such as I leave to those
    Who either want the grace of wit, or have
    Untoward arguments: like him that gave
    Life to the flea, or who without a guest
    Would prove that famine was the only feast;
    Self tyrants, who their braines doubly torment,
    Both for their matter and their ornament.
    If these do stutter sometimes, and confesse
    That they are tired, we could expect no lesse.
      But when my matter is prepared and fit,
    When nothing’s wanting but an equal wit,
    I need no Muse’s help to ayde me on,
    Since that my subject is my Helicon.
      And such are you: O give me leave, dear sir,
    (He that is thankful is no flatterer,)
    To speak full truth: Wherever I find worth,
    I shew I have it if I set it forth:
    You read yourself in these; here you may see
    A ruder draft of Corbet’s infancy.
      For I professe, if ever I had thought
    Needed not blush if publish’d, were there ought
    Which was call’d mine durst beare a critic’s view,
    I was the instrument, but the author you.
    I need not tell you of our health, which here
    Must be presum’d, nor yet shall our good cheare
    Swell up my paper, as it has done me,
    Or as the Mayor’s feast does Stowe’s History:
    Without an early bell to make us rise,
    Health calls us up and novelty; our eyes
    Have divers objects still on the same ground,
    As if the Earth had each night walk’d her round
    To bring her best things hither: ’tis a place
    Not more the pride of shires then the disgrace,
    Which I’de not leave, had I my Dean to boot,
    For the large offers of the cloven-foot
    Unto our Saviour, but you not being here
    ’Tis to me, though a rare one, but a shire;
    A place of good earth, if compared with worse,
    Which hath a lesser part in Adam’s curse:
    Or, for to draw a simile from the High’st,
    Tis like unto salvation without Christ,
    A fairly situate prison: When again
    Shall I enjoy that friendship, and that braine?
    When shall I once more hear, in a few words,
    What all the learning of past times affords?
    Austin epitomiz’d, and him that can
    To make him clear contract Tertullian.
      But I detain you from them: Sir, adieu!
    You read their works, but let me study you.


ON DR. CORBET’S MARRIAGE.

(From “Wit Restored,” 8vo. 1658.)

    Come all yee Muses and rejoice
    At your Apolloe’s happy choice;
    Phœbus has conquer’d Cupid’s charme;
    Fair Daphne flys into his arm.
    If Daphne be a tree, then mark,
    Apollo is become the barke.
    If Daphne be a branch of bay,
    He weares her for a crowne to-day:
    O happy bridegroom! which dost wed
    Thyself unto a virgin’s bed.
    Let thy love burne with hot desire,
    She lacks no oil to feed the fire.
    You know not poore Pigmalion’s lot,
    Nor have you a mere idol got.
    You no Ixion, you no proud
    Juno makes embrace a cloud.
    Looke how pure Diana’s skin
    Appeares as it is shadow’d in
    A chrystal streame; or look what grace
    Shines in fair Venus’ lovely face,
    Whilst she Adonis courts and woos;
    Such beauties, yea and more than those,
    Sparkle in her; see but her soul,
    And you will judge those beauties foul.
    Her rarest beauty is within,
    She’s fairest where she is not seen;
    Now her perfection’s character
    You have approv’d, and chosen her.
      O precious! she at this wedding
    The jewel weares—the marriage ring.
    Her understanding’s deep: like the
    Venetian duke, you wed the sea;
    A sea deep, bottomless, profound,
    And which none but yourself may sound.
      Blind Cupid shot not this love-dart;
    Your reason chose, and not your heart;
    You knew her little, and when her
    Apron was but a muckender,
    When that same coral which doth deck
    Her lips she wore about her neck:
    You courted her, you woo’d her, not
    Out of a window, she was got
    And born your wife; it may be said
    Her cradle was her marriage-bed.
    The ring, too, was layd up for it
    Untill her finger was growne fit:
    You once gave her to play withal
    A babie, and I hope you shall
    This day your ancient gift renew,
    So she will do the same for you:
    In virgin wax imprint, upon
    Her breast, your own impression;
    You may (there is no treason in ’t)
    Coine sterling, now you have a mint.
    You are now stronger than before,
    Your side hath in it one ribb more.
      Before she was akin to me
    Only in soul and amity;
    But now we are, since shee’s your bride,
    In soul and body both allyde:
    ’Tis this has made me less to do,
    And I in one can honour two.
    This match a riddle may be styled,
    Two mothers now have but one child;
    Yet need we not a Solomon,
    Each mother here enjoyes her own.
      Many there are I know have tried
    To make her their own lovely bride;
    But it is Alexander’s lot
    To cut in twaine the Gordian knot:
    Claudia, to prove that she was chast,
    Tyed but a girdle to her wast,
    And drew a ship to Rome by land:
    But now the world may understand
    Here is a Claudia too; fair bride,
    Thy spotlesse innocence is tried;
    None but thy girdle could have led
    Our Corbet to a marriage bed.
      Come, all ye Muses, and rejoice
    At this your nurslings happy choice:
    Come, Flora, strew the bridemaid’s bed,
    And with a garland crowne her head;
    Or if thy flowers be to seek,
    Come gather roses at her cheek.
      Come, Hymen, light thy torches, let
    Thy bed with tapers be beset,
    And if there be no fire by,
    Come light thy taper at her eye;
    In that bright eye there dwells a starre,
    And wise men by it guided are.
      In those delicious eyes there be
    Two little balls of ivory:
    How happy is he then that may
    With these two dainty balls goe play.
    Let not a teare drop from that eye,
    Unlesse for very joy to cry.
    O let your joy continue! may
    A whole age be your wedding-day!
      O happy virgin! is it true
    That your deare spouse embraceth you?
    Then you from heaven are not farre,
    But sure in Abraham’s bosom are.
      Come, all ye Muses, and rejoyce
    At your Apollo’s happy choice.


VERSES IN HONOUR OF BISHOP CORBET,

Found in a blank leaf of his Poems in MS.

    If flowing wit, if verses writ with ease,
    If learning void of pedantry can please;
    If much good-humour joined to solid sense,
    And mirth accompanied with innocence,
    Can give a poet a just right to fame,
    Then Corbet may immortal honours claim;
    For he these virtues had, and in his lines
    Poetic and heroic spirit shines;
    Though bright yet solid, pleasant but not rude,
    With wit and wisdom equally endued.
    Be silent, Muse, thy praises are too faint,
    Thou want’st a power this prodigy to paint,
    At once a poet, prelate, and a saint.

                                              J. C.


UPON MY GOOD LORD THE BISHOP OF NORWICHE, RICHARD CORBET, _WHO DYED JULY
28, 1635_, AND LYES BURIED IN HIS CATHEDRAL CHURCHE.

[By Mr. JOHN TAYLOR of NORWICH: From the Cabinet, published there in
1795.]

    Ye rural bardes who haunte the budding groves,
    Tune your wilde reeds to sing the wood-larkes loves,
    And let the softe harpe of the hawthorn vale
    Melt in sweete euloge to the nightingale;
    Yet haplie, Drummond, well thy muse might raise
    Aires not earth-born to suit my _raven’s_ praise.

    Raven he was, yet was no gloomie fowle,
    Merrie at hearte, though innocente of soule;
    Where’er he perkt, the birds that came anighe
    Constrayned caught the humour of his eye:
    Under that shade no spights and wrongs were spred,
    Care came not nigh with his uncomlie head.

    Somewhile the thicke embranching trees amonge,
    Where Isis doth his waters leade alonge,
    Kissinge with modeste lippe the holie soyle,
    Reflecting backe each hallowed grove the while;
    Here did my raven trie his dulcive note,
    Charming old Science with his mellow throat.

    Sometimes with scholiasts deep in anciente lore,
    Through learnings long defyles he would explore;
    Then with keene wit untie the perplext knot
    Of Aristotle or the cunning Scot;
    Anon loud laughter shook the arched hall,
    For mirth stood redy at his potente call.

    Oxforde, thou couldst not binde his outspred wing,
    My raven flew where bade his princelye king;
    Norwiche must honours give he did not crave,
    Norwiche must lend his palace and his grave:
    And that kinde hearte which gave such vertue birth
    Must here be shrouded in the greedie earth.

    Ofte hath thy humble lay-clerke led along,
    When thou wert by, the eve or matin song;
    And oftimes rounde thy marble shall he strole,
    To chaunte sad requiems to thy soothed soul;—
    Sleep on, till Gabriel’s trump shall break thy sleep,
    And thou and I one heavenlie holiday shall keep.




Bp. Corbet’s Poems.




DR. THOMAS RAVIS.


In the following tribute to the memory of a fellow-collegian, and
predecessor in the deanery of Christ Church, it will not be too much to
conjecture that Corbet was urged by gratitude for kindness experienced
while the latter was young. The “Elegie” was evidently written
immediately upon the interment of its subject, as towards its conclusion
he complains that no tomb was raised over his remains; a complaint which
was soon after obviated, when a fair monument was erected, bearing the
following inscription, which contains all that is necessary to be told
here of the circumstances of his life and character:

                         “MEMORIÆ SACRUM.

    Thomas Ravis, claris natalibus Mauldenæ in Suthreia natus,
    Regius Alumnus in Schola Westmonasteriensi educatus, in
    Academiam Oxoniensem adscitus, omnes academicos honores
    consequutus, et magistratibus perfunctus, Decanus Ecclesiæ
    Christi ibidem constitutus, et bis Academiæ Pro-Cancellarius.
    Unde ob doctrinam, gravitatem, et spectatam prudentiam, à Rege
    Jacobo, primum ad Episcopatum Glocestrensem provectus, deinde
    ad Londinensem translatus, et demum à Christo, dum Ecclesiæ,
    Patriæ, Principi vigilaret, in cœlestem patriam evocatus,
    placide pieque emigravit, et quod mortale fuit, certa spe
    resurgendi, hic deposuit, die 14 Decembris, An. salutis 1609.”




AN ELEGIE WRITTEN UPON THE DEATH OF DR. RAVIS, BISHOP OF LONDON.


    When I past Paules, and travell’d in that walke
    Where all oure Brittaine-sinners sweare and talk[36];
    Ould Harry-ruffians, bankerupts, southsayers,
    And youth, whose cousenage is as ould as theirs;
    And then beheld the body of my lord
    Trodd under foote by vice that he abhorr’d;
    It wounded me the Landlord of all times
    Should let long lives and leases to their crimes,
    And to _his_ springing honour did afford
    Scarce soe much time as to the prophet’s gourd.
    Yet since swift flights of virtue have apt ends,
    Like breath of angels, which a blessing sends,
    And vanisheth withall, whilst fouler deeds
    Expect a tedious harvest for bad seeds;
    I blame not fame and nature if they gave,
    Where they could give no more, their last, a grave.
    And wisely doe thy greived freinds forbeare
    Bubbles and alabaster boyes to reare
    On thy religious dust: for men did know
    Thy life, which such illusions cannot show:
    For thou hast trod among those happy ones
    Who trust not in their superscriptions,
    Their hired epitaphs, and perjured stone,
    Which oft belyes the soule when shee is gon;
    And durst committ thy body, as it lyes,
    To tongues of living men, nay unborne eyes.
    What profits thee a sheet of lead? What good
    If on thy coarse a marble quarry stood?
    Let those that feare their rising purchase vaults,
    And reare them statues to excuse their faults;
    As if, like birds that peck at painted grapes,
    Their judge knew not their _persons_ from their _shapes_.
    Whilst thou assured, through thy easyer dust
    Shall rise at first; they would not though they must.
    Nor needs the Chancellor boast, whose pyramis
    Above the host and altar reared is[37];
    For though thy body fill a viler roome,
    Thou shalt not change _deedes_ with him for his _tombe_.




THOMÆ CORIATO DE ODCOMBE.


The following panegyric on the hero of Odcombe, Thomas Coryate, a
pedantic coxcomb, with just brains enough to be ridiculous, to whom the
world is much more indebted for becoming “the whetstone of the wits”
than for any doings of his own, and the particulars of whose life and
peregrinations may be found in every collection of biography, is printed
in the Odcombian Banquet, 1611, 4to. sign. I. 3.

The Latin lines have been omitted in the former impressions of Bishop
Corbet’s poems.




SPECTATISSIMO, PUNCTISQUE OMNIBUS DIGNISSIMO, THOMÆ CORIATO DE ODCOMBE,
PEREGRINANTI, PEDESTRIS ORDINIS, EQUESTRISQUE FAMÆ.


    Quod mare transieris, quod rura urbesque pedester,
      Jamque colat reduces patria læta pedes:
    Quodque idem numero tibi calceus hæret, et illo
      Cum _corio_ redeas, quo _Coriatus_ abis:
    Fatum omenque tui miramur nominis, ex quo
      Calcibus et soleis fluxit aluta tuis.
    Nam quicunque cadem vestigia tentat, opinor
      Excoriatus erit, ni _Coriatus_ eat.


IN LIBRUM SUUM.

    De te pollicitus librum es, sed in te
    Est magnus tuus hic liber libellus.




TO THOMAS CORYATE.


    I do not wonder, Coryate, that thou hast
    Over the Alpes, through France and Savoy past,
    Parch’d on thy skin, and founder’d in thy feete,
    Faint, thirstie, lowsy, and didst live to see ’t.
    Though these are Roman sufferings, and do shew
    What creatures back thou hadst could carry so,
    All I admire is thy returne, and how
    Thy slender pasterns could thee beare, when now
    Thy observations with thy braine ingendered,
    Have stuft thy massy and voluminous head
    With mountaines, abbies, churches, synagogues,
    Preputial offals, and Dutch dialogues:
    A burthen far more grievous then the weight
    Of wine or sleep; more vexing than the freight
    Of fruit and oysters, which lade many a pate,
    And send folks crying home from Billingsgate.
    No more shall man with mortar on his head
    Set forwards towards Rome: No! thou art bred
    A terror to all footmen, and all porters,
    And all laymen that will turne Jews exhorters,
    To flie their conquered trade. Proud England then
    Embrace this luggage[38], which the Man of men
    Hath landed here, and change thy well-a-day!
    Into some homespun welcome roundelay.
    Send of this stuffe thy territories thorough
    To Ireland, Wales, and Scottish, Eddenborough.
    There let this booke be read and understood,
    Where is no theame nor writer halfe so good.




A CERTAIN POEM,

_As it was presented in Latine by Divines and others before His Majesty
in Cambridge, by way of Enterlude, styled ~Liber novus de Adventu Regis
ad Cantabrigiam~. Faithfully done into English, with some liberal
Additions. Made rather to be sunge than read, to the Tune of Bonny Nell._

(The Notes are from a MS. copy in the Editor’s possession.)


    It is not yet a fortnight since
    Lutetia[39] entertain’d our prince,
    And vented hath a studied toy
    As long[40] as was the siege of Troy:
    And spent herself for full five days
    In speeches, exercise, and plays.

    To trim the town, great care before
    Was tane by th’ lord vice-chancellor;
    Both morn and even he cleans’d the way,
    The streets he gravelled thrice a day:
    One strike of March-dust for to see
    No proverb[41] would give more than he.

    Their colledges were new be-painted,
    Their founders eke were new be-sainted;
    Nothing escap’d, nor post, nor door,
    Nor gate, nor rail, nor bawd, nor whore:
    You could not know (Oh strange mishap!)
    Whether you saw the _town_ or _map_.

    But the pure house of _Emanuel_[42]
    Would not be like proud _Jesabel_,
    Nor shew her self before the king
    An hypocrite, or _painted_ thing:
    But, that the ways might all prove fair,
    Conceiv’d a tedious mile of prayer.

    Upon the look’d-for seventh[43] of _March_,
    Outwent the townsmen all in starch,
    Both band and beard, into the field,
    Where one a speech could hardly wield;
    For needs he would begin his stile,
    The king being from him half a mile.

    They gave the king a piece of plate,
    Which they hop’d never came too late;
    But cry’d, Oh! look not in, great king,
    For there is in it just nothing:
    And so prefer’d with tune and gate,
    A speech as empty as their plate.

    Now, as the king came neer the town,
    Each one ran crying up and down,
    Alas poor _Oxford_, thou’rt undone,
    For now the king’s past _Trompington_,
    And rides upon his brave gray dapple,
    Seeing the top of _Kings-Colledge_ chappel.

    Next rode his lordship[44] on a nag,
    Whose coat was blue[45], whose ruff was shag,
    And then began his reverence
    To speak most eloquent non-sense:
    See how (quoth he) most mighty prince,
    For very joy my horse doth wince.

    What cryes the town? What we? (said he)
    What cryes the University?
    What cry the boys? What ev’ry thing?
    Behold, behold, yon comes the king:
    And ev’ry period he bedecks
    With _En & Ecce venit Rex_.

    Oft have I warn’d (quoth he) our dirt
    That no silk stockings should be hurt;
    But we in vain strive to be fine,
    Unless your graces sun doth shine;
    And with the beams of your bright eye,
    You will be pleas’d our streets to dry.

    Now come we to the wonderment
    Of _Christendom_, and eke of _Kent_,
    The _Trinity_; which to surpass,
    Doth deck her spokesman[46] by a glass:
    Who, clad in gay and silken weeds,
    Thus opes his mouth, hark how he speeds.

    I wonder what your grace doth here,
    Who have expected been twelve year,
    And this your son, fair _Carolus_,
    That is so _Jacobissimus_[47]:
    Here’s none, of all, your grace refuses,
    You are most welcome to our Muses.

    Although we have no bells to jangle,
    Yet can we shew a fair quadrangle,
    Which, though it ne’re was grac’d with king,
    Yet sure it is a goodly thing:
    My warning’s short, no more I’le say,
    Soon you shall see a gallant play.

    But nothing was so much admir’d,
    As were their plays so well attir’d;
    Nothing did win more praise of mine,
    Then did their actors most divine[48]:
    So did they drink their healths divinely;
    So did they dance and skip so finely.

    Their plays had sundry grave wise factors,
    A perfect diocess of actors
    Upon the stage; for I am sure that
    There was both bishop, pastor, curat:
    Nor was their labour light, or small,
    The charge of some was pastoral.

    Our plays were certainly much worse,
    For they had a brave hobby-horse,
    Which did present unto his grace
    A wondrous witty ambling pace:
    But we were chiefly spoyl’d by that
    Which was six hours of _God knows what_[49].

    His lordship then was in a rage,
    His lordship lay upon the stage,
    His lordship cry’d, All would be marr’d:
    His lordship lov’d a-life the guard,
    And did invite those mighty men,
    To what think you? Even to a _Hen_.

    He knew he was to use their might
    To help to keep the door at night,
    And well bestow’d he thought his hen,
    That they might Tolebooth[50] _Oxford_ men:
    He thought it did become a lord
    To threaten with that bug-bear word.

    Now pass we to the civil law,
    And eke the doctors of the spaw,
    Who all perform’d their parts so well,
    Sir _Edward Ratcliff_[51] bore the bell,
    Who was, by the kings own appointment,
    To speak of spells, and magick oyntment.

    The doctors of the civil law
    Urg’d ne’re a reason worth a straw;
    And though they went in silk and satten,
    They _Thomson_-like[52] clip’d the kings Latine;
    But yet his grace did pardon then
    All treasons against _Priscian_.

    Here no man spake ought to the point,
    But all they said was out of joint;
    Just like the chappel ominous
    I’ the colledge called _God with us_:
    Which truly[53] doth stand much awry,
    Just north and south, _yes verily_.

    Philosophers did well their parts,
    Which prov’d them masters of their arts;
    Their moderator was no fool,
    He far from _Cambridge_ kept a school:
    The country did such store afford,
    The proctors might not speak a word.

    But to conclude, the king was pleas’d,
    And of the court the town was eas’d:
    Yet _Oxford_ though (dear sister) hark yet,
    The king is gone but to _New-market_,
    And comes again e’re it be long,
    Then you may make another song.

    The king being gone from _Trinity_,
    They make a scramble for degree;
    Masters of all sorts, and all ages,
    Keepers, subcizers, lackeyes, pages,
    Who all did throng to come aboard,
    With _Pray make me_ now, _Good my lord_.

    They prest his lordship wondrous hard,
    His lordship then did want the guard;
    So did they throng him for the nonce,
    Until he blest them all at once,
    And cryed, _Hodiissimè_:
    _Omnes Magistri estote_.

    Nor is this all which we do sing,
    For of your praise the world must ring:
    Reader, unto your tackling look,
    For there is coming forth a book
    Will spoyl _Joseph Barnesius_
    The sale of _Rex Platonicus_.




AN ANSWER TO THE FORMER SONG, IN LATIN AND ENGLISH, BY ⸺ LAKES.

(From an Autograph in the Editor’s possession.)


    A ballad late was made,
      But God knowes who ’es the penner,
    Some say the rhyming sculler,
      And others say ’twas Fenner[54]:
    But they that know the style
      Doe smell it by the collar,
    And do maintaine it was the braine
      Of some yong Oxford scholler.

    And first he rails on Cambridge,
      And thinkes her to disgrace,
    By calling her _Lutetia_,
      And throws dirt in her face:
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      For all the world must grant,
    If Oxford be thy mother,
      Then Cambridge is thy aunt.

    Then goes he to the town,
      And puts it all in starch,
    For other rhyme he could not find
      To fit the seventh of March:
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      For I must vail the bonnet,
    And cast the caps at Cambridge
      For making song and sonnet.

    Thence goes he to their present,
      And there he doth purloyne,
    For looking in their plate
      He nimmes away their coyne:
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      For ’tis a dangerous thing
    To steal from corporations
      The presents of a king.

    Next that, my lord vice-chancellor
      He brings before the prince,
    And in the face of all the court
      He makes his horse to wince.
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      For sure that jest did faile,
    Unless you clapt a nettle
      Under his horse’s taile.

    Then aimes he at our orator,
      And at his speech he snarles,
    Because he forced a word, and called
      The prince “most Jacob-Charles.”
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      For he did it compose
    That puts you down as much for tongue
      As you do him for nose.

    Then flies he to our comedies,
      And there he doth professe
    He saw among our actors
      A perfect diocess.
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      ’Twas no such witty fiction,
    For since you leave the vicar out,
      You spoile the jurisdiction.

    Next that he backes the hobby-horse,
      And with a scholler’s grace,
    Not able to endure the trott,
      He’d bring him to the pase:
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      For you will hardly do it,
    Since all the riders in your muse
      Could never bring him to it.

    Polonia land can tell,
      Through which he oft did trace,
    And bore a fardell at his back,
      He nere went other pace.
    But leave him, scholler, leave him,
      He learned it of his sire,
    And if you put him from his trott
      Hee’l lay you in the myre.

    Our horse has thrown his rider;
      But now he meanes to shame us,
    And in the censuring of our play
      Conspires with Ignoramus.
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      And call ’t not “God knows what,”
    Your head was making ballads
      When you should mark the plot.

    His fantasie, still working,
      Finds out another crotchet;
    Then runs he to the bishop,
      And rides upon his rotchet.
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      And take it not in snuff,
    For he that weares no picadell
      By law may weare a ruffe.

    Next that he goes to dinner,
      And, like an hardy guest,
    When he had cramm’d his belly full
      He railes against the feast.
    But leave it, scholler, leave it;
      For, since you eat his roast,
    It argues want of manners
      To raile upon the host.

    Now listen, masters, listen,
      That tax us for our riot,
    For here two men went to a ken,
      So slender was the diet.
    Then leave him, scholler, leave him,
      He yieldes himself your debtor,
    And next time he’s vice-chancellor
      Your table shall be better.

    Then goes he to the Regent-house,
      And there he sits and sees
    How lackeys and subsisers press
      And scramble for degrees.
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      ’Twas much against our mind,
    But when the prison doors are ope
      Noe thief will stay behind.

    Behold, more anger yet:
      He threatens us ere long,
    When as the king comes back againe,
      To make another song.
    But leave it, scholler, leave it,
      Your weakness you disclose;
    For “Bonny Nell” doth plainly tell
      Your wit lies all in prose.

    Nor can you make the world
      Of Cambridge praise to singe,
    A mouth so foul no market eare
      Will stand to hear it sing.
    Then leave it, scholler, leave it,
      For yet you cannot say,
    The king did go from you in March
      And come again in May.




RESPONSIO, &c. PER ⸺ LAKES.


    Facta est cantilena,
      Sed nescio quo autore;
    An fluxerit ex remige,
      An ex Fenneri ore.
    Sed qui legerunt, contendunt,
      Esse hanc tenelli
    Oxoniensis nescio cujus
      Prolem cerebelli.

    Nam primò Cantabrigiam
      Convitiis execravit,
    Quod vocitat Lutetiam,
      Et luto conspurcavit.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Nam istud nihil moror,
    Quum hujus academiæ
      Oxonia sit soror.

    Tunc oppidanos miseros
      Horrendo cornu petit,
    De quibus dixit, nescio quid,
      Et rythmum sic effecit.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Bardos Oxonienses
    In canticis non vicimus
      Jam Cantabrigienses.

    Jam inspicit cratera
      Quæ regi dono datur,
    Et aurum ibi positum
      Subripere conatur.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Nam scelus istud lues,
    Si fraudes sodalitia,
      Ad crucem cito rues.

    Dein pro-cancellarium
      Produxit equitantem,
    In equum valde agilem
      Huc et illuc saltantem:
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Nam tibi vix credetur
    Si non sub ejus cauda,
      Urtica poneretur.

    Tunc evomit sententiam
      In ipsum oratorem
    Qui dixit Jacobissimum,
      Præter Latinum morem.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Orator exit talis
    Qui magis pollet lingua
      Quam ipse naso vales.

    Adibat ad comœdiam
      Et cuncta circumspexit,
    Actorum diocesin
      Completam hic detexit
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Hæc cogitare mente
    Non valet jurisdictio
      Vicario absente.

    Fictitio equo subdidit
      Calcaria, sperans fore
    Ut eum ire cogeret
      Gradu submissiore:
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Hoc non efficietur
    Si iste stabularius
      Habenis moderetur.

    Testis est Polonia,
      Quam sæpe is transivit,
    Et oneratus sarcina
      Eodem gradu ivit.
    Tam parce, precor, parcito,
    Et credas hoc futurum,
    Si Brutum regat Asinus
      Gradatim non iturum.

    Comœdiam Ignoramus
      Eum spectare libet,
    Et hujus delicatulo
      Structura non arridet.
    At parce, precor, parcito,
      Tum aliter versatus
    In faciendis canticis
      Fuisti occupatus.

    Tum pergit maledicere
      Cicestriensi patri,
    Et vestes etiam vellicat
      Episcopi barbati.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Et nos tu sales pone,
    Ne tanti patris careas
      Benedictione.

    Tum cibo se ingurgitans
      Abunde saginatur,
    Et venter cum expletus est,
      Danti convitiatur.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Nam illud verum erit,
    Quicquid ingrato infecerit
      Oxoniensi, perit.

    At ecce nos videmur
      Tenaces nimis esse,
    Gallinam unam quod spectasset
      Duos comedisse.
    O parce, precor, parcito,
      Hæc culpa corrigetur
    Cum rursus Cantabrigia
      Episcopo regetur.

    Sed novo in sacello
      Pedissequos aspexit,
    Quos nostra Academia
      Honoribus erexit.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Nam ipse es expertus,
    Effugiunt omnes protinus
      Cum carcer est apertus.

    At nobis minitatur,
      Si rex sit rediturus,
    Tunc iste (Phœbo duce) est
      Tela resumpturus.
    Sed parce, precor, parcito,
      Piscator ictus sapit,
    Fugatus namque miles iners
      Arma nunquam capit.

    Et Cantabrigiam non
      Lædi hinc speramus,
    Ex ore tam spurcidico
      Nil damni expectamus.
    O parce, ergo, parcito,
      Oxonia nunquam dicit,
    Cum Martio princeps abiens
      In Maio nos revisit.




ADDITAMENTA SUPERIORI CANTICO.


    Ingenij amplitudinem
      Jam satis ostendisti,
    Et eloquentiæ fructus
      Abundè protulisti:
    Sed parce, tibi, parcito,
      Ne omne absumatur,
    Ne tandem tibi arido
      Nil suavi relinquatur.

    Jam satis oppugnasti,
      O Polyphemi proles!
    Et tanquam taurus gregis
      Nos oppugnare soles.
    Sed parce, tandem, parcito,
      Tuis laudatus eris,
    Et nunc inultus tanquam stultus
      A nobis dimitteris.




LADY ARABELLA STUART.


The circumstances of the life of this accomplished and persecuted lady,

    “From kings descended, and to kings allied,”

are familiar to every reader of biographical history. In Lodge’s
Illustrations of British History are some letters which convey an exalted
idea of her mental abilities; and the editor has proved, in opposition to
the assertion of the authors of the Biographia Britannica, that she was
far from deficient in personal beauty.

She was the only child of Charles Stuart, fifth earl of Lennox, (uncle to
James the First, and great-grandson to Henry VII.) by Elizabeth, daughter
of sir William Cavendish, of Hardwick; was born about the year 1578, and
brought up in privacy under the care of her grandmother, the old countess
of Lennox, who had for many years resided in England. Her double
relation to royalty was equally obnoxious to the jealousy of Elizabeth
and the timidity of James, and they secretly dreaded the supposed danger
of her leaving a legitimate offspring. The former, therefore, prevented
her from marrying Esme Stuart, her kinsman, and heir to the titles and
estates of her family, and afterwards imprisoned her for listening to
some overtures from the son of the earl of Northumberland: the latter,
by obliging her to reject many splendid offers of marriage, unwarily
encouraged the hopes of inferior pretenders. Thus circumscribed, she
renewed a childish connection with William Seymour, grandson to the
earl of Hertford, which was discovered in 1609; when both parties were
summoned to appear before the privy council, and received a severe
reprimand. This mode of proceeding produced the very consequence which
James meant to avoid; for the lady, sensible that her reputation had
been wounded by this inquiry, was in a manner forced into a marriage;
which becoming publicly known in the course of the next spring, she was
committed to close custody in the house of sir Thomas Parry, at Lambeth,
and Mr. Seymour to the Tower. In this state of separation, however, they
concerted means for an escape, which both effected on the same day, June
3, 1611; and Mr. Seymour got safely to Flanders: but the poor lady was
re-taken in Calais road, and imprisoned in the Tower; where the sense of
these undeserved oppressions operating too severely on her high spirit,
she became a lunatic, and languished in that wretched state, augmented by
the horrors of a prison, till her death on the 27th Sept. 1615.[55]




ON THE LADY ARABELLA.


    How do I thanke thee, Death, and blesse thy power
    That I have past the guard, and scaped the Tower!
    And now my _pardon_ is my _epitaph_,
    And a small coffin my poore carkasse hath.
    For at thy charge both soule and body were
    Enlarged at last, secured from hope and feare;
    That among saints, this amongst kings is laid,
    And what my birth did claim, my death hath paid.




UPON MISTRIS MALLET[56], AN UNHANDSOME GENTLEWOMAN, WHO MADE LOVE UNTO
HIM.


    Have I renounc’t my faith, or basely sold
    Salvation, and my loyalty, for gold?
    Have I some forreigne practice undertooke
    By poyson, shott, sharp-knife, or sharper booke
    To kill my king? have I betrayd the state
    To fire and fury, or some newer fate,
    Which learned murderers, those grand destinies,
    The Jesuites, have nurc’d? if of all these
    I guilty am, proceed; I am content
    That Mallet take mee for my punishment.
    For never sinne was of so high a rate,
    But one nights hell with her might expiate.
    Although the law with Garnet[57], and the rest,
    Dealt farr more mildly; hanging’s but a jest
    To this immortall torture. Had shee bin then
    In Maryes torrid dayes engend’red, when
    Cruelty was witty, and Invention free
    Did live by blood, and thrive by crueltye,
    Shee would have bin more horrid engines farre
    Than fire, or famine, racks, and halters are.
    Whether her witt, forme, talke, smile, tire I name,
    Each is a stock of tyranny, and shame;
    But for her breath, spectatours come not nigh,
    That layes about; God blesse the company!
    The man, in a beares skin baited to death,
    Would chose the doggs much rather then her breath;
    One kisse of hers, and eighteene wordes alone
    Put downe the _Spanish Inquisition_.
    Thrice happy wee (quoth I thinking thereon)
    That see no dayes of persecution;
    For were it free to kill, this grisly elfe
    Wold martyrs make in compass of herselfe:
    And were shee not prevented by our prayer,
    By this time shee corrupted had the aire.
      And am I innocent? and is it true,
    That thing (which poet Plinye never knew,
    Nor Africk, Nile, nor ever Hackluyts eyes
    Descry’d in all his _East, West-voyages_;
    That thing, which poets were afrayd to feigne,
    For feare her shadowe should infect their braine;
    This spouse of Antichrist, and his alone,
    Shee’s drest so like the Whore of Babylon;)
    Should doate on mee? as if they did contrive
    The devill and she, to damne a man alive.
    Why doth not _Welcome_ rather purchase her,
    And beare about this rare familiar?
    Sixe markett dayes, a wake, and a fayre too ’t,
    Would save his charges, and the ale to boot.
    No tyger’s like her; shee feedes upon a man
    Worse than a tygresse or a leopard can.
    Let mee go pray, and thinke upon some spell,
    At once to bid the devill and her farwell.




HENRY PRINCE OF WALES.


Upon the death of the promising Henry (Nov. 6, 1612), a prince, according
to Arthur Wilson[58], as eminent in nobleness as in blood, and who fell
not without suspicion of foul play, the poets his cotemporaries, whom he
liberally patronised, poured forth by reams their tributary verses.

Corbet, as it has been before observed, pronounced his funeral oration at
Oxford.

Nor was this all: while his bones were perishing and his flesh was
rottenness, Dr. Daniel Price, his chaplain during his life, continued to
commemorate his dissolution by preaching an anniversary sermon. Neither
the practice nor its execution was agreeable to Corbet, who, after a
triennial repetition, thus attacked the anniversarist.




IN QUENDAM ANNIVERSARIORUM SCRIPTOREM.

    Ter circum Iliacos raptaverat Hectora muros.

                               VIRG. Æn. 1. 483.


    Even soe dead Hector thrice was triumph’d on
    The walls of Troy, thrice slain when Fates had done:
    So did the barbarous Greekes before their hoast
    Torment his ashes and profane his ghost:
    As Henryes vault, his peace, his sacred hearse,
    Are torne and batter’d by thine Anniverse.
    Was ’t not enough Nature and strength were foes,
    But thou must yearly murther him in prose?
    Or dost thou thinke thy raving phrase can make
    A lowder eccho then the Almanake?
    Trust mee, November doth more ghastly looke
    In Dade and Hopton’s[59] pennyworth then thy booke;
    And sadder record their fixt figure beares
    Then thy false-printed and ambitious teares.
    For were it not for Christmas, which is nigh,
    When spice, fruit eaten, and digested pye
    Call for waste paper; no man could make shift
    How to employ thy writings to his thrift.
    Wherefore forbear, for pity or for shame,
    And let some richer penne redeeme his fame
    From rottennesse. Thou leave him captive; since
    So vile a PRICE ne’ere ransom’d such a Prince.




AN ANSWER, BY DR. PRICE[60].


    So to dead Hector boys may do disgrace,
    That durst not look upon his living face;
    So worst of men behind their betters’ back
    May stretch mens names and credit on the rack.
    Good friend, our general tie to him that’s gone
    Should love the man that yearlie doth him moane:
    The author’s zeal and place he now doth hold,
    His love and duty makes him be thus bold
    To offer this poor mite, his anniverse
    Unto his good great master’s sacred hearse;
    The which he doth with privilege of name,
    Whilst others, ’midst their ale, in corners blame.
    A pennyworth in print they never made,
    Yet think themselves as good as Pond or Dade.
    One anniverse, when thou hast done thus twice,
    Thy words among the best will be of PRICE.




IN POETAM EXAUCTORATUM ET EMERITUM.


    Nor is it griev’d, grave youth, the memory
    Of such a story, such a booke as hee,
    That such a copy through the world were read;
    _Henry yet lives, though he be buried_.
    It could be wish’d that every eye might beare
    His eare good witnesse that he still were here;
    That sorrowe ruled the yeare, and by that sunne
    Each man could tell you how the day had runne:
    O ’twere an honest boast, for him could say
    I have been busy, and wept out the day
    Remembring him. An epitaph would last
    Were such a trophee, such a banner placed
    Upon his corse as this: _Here a man lyes_
    _Was slaine by Henrye’s dart, not Destinie’s_.
    Why this were med’cinable, and would heale,
    Though the whole languish’d, halfe the commonweale.
    But for a _Cobler_ to goe burn his cappe,
    And cry, The Prince, the Prince! O dire mishappe!
    Or a Geneva-bridegroom, after grace,
    To throw his spouse i’ th’ fire; or scratch her face
    To the tune of the Lamentation; or delay
    His _Friday_ capon till the _Sabbath_ day:
    Or an old Popish lady half vow’d dead
    To fast away the day in gingerbread:
    For him to write such annals; all these things
    Do open laughter’s and shutt up griefe’s springs.
    Tell me, what juster or more congruous peere
    Than Ale, to judge of workes begott of beere?
    Wherefore forbeare—or, if thou print the next,
    Bring better notes, or take a meaner text.




ON MR. FRANCIS BEAUMONT, THEN NEWLY DEAD.


(The following lines, which have hitherto been omitted in the bishop’s
poems, are found in the collected dramas of the

                                      “twin stars that run
    Their glorious course round Shakespeare’s honoured sun.”

Beaumont was born 1585, and was buried the ninth of March 1615, in the
entrance of St. Bennet’s chapel, Westminster abbey.)

    He that hath such acuteness and such wit
    As would aske ten good heads to husband it;
    He that can write so well, that no man dare
    Refuse it for the best, let him beware:
    Beaumont is dead! by whose sole death appears
    Wit’s a disease consumes men in few yeares.




WILLIAM LORD HOWARD, OF EFFINGHAM,


the subject of the succeeding poem, was the eldest son of Charles Howard,
earl of Nottingham, (lord high admiral of England, and defeater of the
Spanish Armada in the reign of Elizabeth, a nobleman of high estimation
during greater part of the reign of her successor,) by Catharine,
daughter of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon; celebrated for concealing the ring
by which the life of the earl of Essex might have been saved, and upon
whose death-bed discovery of the concealment Elizabeth told her, “God may
forgive you, but I never can.”

Lord Howard makes no conspicuous figure in the page of history: he was
summoned by writ to several parliaments during his father’s life, whom
he accompanied on his embassy to the court of Spaine (1604), but died
before him 10th Dec. 1615, and was buried at Chelsea.

He married in 1597 Anne, daughter and sole heiress to John lord St. John
of Bletsoe, by whom he left one daughter, who became the wife of John
lord Mordaunt, afterwards earl of Peterborough.




AN ELEGIE[61] ON THE LATE LORD WILLIAM HOWARD, BARON OF EFFINGHAM.


    I did not know thee, lord, nor do I strive
    To win access, or grace, with lords alive:
    The dead I serve, from whence nor faction can
    Move me, nor favour; nor a greater man.
    To whom no vice commends me, nor bribe sent,
    From whom no penance warns, nor portion spent;
    To these I dedicate as much of me,
    As I can spare from my own husbandry:
    And till ghosts walk as they were wont to do,
    I trade for some, and do these errands too.
    But first I do enquire, and am assur’d,
    What tryals in their journeys they endur’d;
    What certainties of honour and of worth
    Their most uncertain life-times have brought forth;
    And who so did least hurt of this small store,
    He is my patron, dy’d he rich or poor.
    First I will know of Fame (after his peace,
    When flattery and envy both do cease)
    Who rul’d his actions: Reason, or my lord?
    Did the whole man rely upon a word,
    A badge of title? or, above all chance,
    Seem’d he as ancient as his cognizance?
    What did he? Acts of mercy, and refrain
    Oppression in himself, and in his train?
    Was his essential table full as free
    As boasts and invitations use to be?
    Where if his russet-friend did chance to dine,
    Whether his satten-man would fill him wine?
    Did he think perjury as lov’d a sin,
    Himself forsworn, as if his slave had been?
    Did he seek regular pleasures? Was he known
    Just husband of one wife, and she his own?
    Did he give freely without pause, or doubt,
    And read petitions ere they were worn out?
    Or should his well-deserving _client_ ask,
    Would he bestow a tilting, or a masque
    To keep need vertuous? and that done, not fear
    What lady damn’d him for his absence there?
    Did he attend the court for no man’s fall?
    Wore he the ruine of no hospital?
    And when he did his rich apparel don,
    Put he no widow, nor an orphan on?
    Did he love simple vertue for the thing?
    The king for no respect but for the king?
    But, above all, did his religion wait
    Upon God’s throne, or on the chair of state?
    He that is guilty of no _quæry_ here,
    Out-lasts his epitaph, out-lives his heir.
    But there is none such, none so little bad;
    Who but this negative goodness ever had?
    Of such a lord we may expect the birth,
    He’s rather in the womb, than on the earth.
    And ’twere a crime in such a public fate,
    For one to live well and degenerate:
    And therefore I am angry, when a name
    Comes to upbraid the world like _Effingham_.
    Nor was it modest in thee to depart
    To thy eternal home, where now thou art,
    Ere thy reproach was ready; or to die,
    Ere custom had prepar’d thy calumny.
    Eight days have past since thou hast paid thy debt
    To sin, and not a libel stirring yet;
    Courtiers that scoff by patent, silent sit,
    And have no use of slander or of wit;
    But (which is monstrous) though against the tyde,
    The watermen have neither rayl’d nor ly’d.
    Of good or bad there’s no distinction known,
    For in thy praise the good and bad are one.
    It seems, we all are covetous of fame,
    And, hearing what a purchase of good name
    Thou lately mad’st, are careful to increase
    Our title, by the holding of some lease
    From thee our landlord, and for that th’ whole crew
    Speak now like tenants, ready to renew.
    It were too sad to tell thy pedegree,
    Death hath disordered all, misplacing thee;
    Whilst now thy herauld, in his line of heirs,
    Blots out thy name, and fills the space with tears.
    And thus hath conqu’ring Death, or Nature rather,
    Made thee prepostrous ancient to thy father,
    Who grieves th’ art so, and like a glorious light
    Shines ore thy hearse.
                      He therefore that would write
    And blaze thee throughly, may at once say all,
    _Here lies the anchor of our admiral_.
    Let others write for glory or reward,
    Truth is well paid, when she is sung and heard.




LORD MORDAUNT.


The lord Mordaunt to whom this poem is addressed was John fifth baron
Mordaunt of Turvey, in the county of Bedford, who was afterwards (in
1628) created earl of Peterborough by king Charles the First. He married
Elizabeth, daughter and heir of William baron Howard of Effingham, (son
and heir apparent of Charles earl of Nottingham,) by Anne his wife,
daughter and heir of John baron St. John of Bletsoe. He was brought up
in the Roman Catholic religion, but converted to that of the established
church by a disputation at which he was present between a Jesuit and
the celebrated Dr. Usher, (afterwards) bishop of Armagh. In 1642 he was
general of the ordnance, and colonel of a regiment of foot in the army,
raised for the service of the Parliament, commanded by the earl of
Essex, and died the same year.

In order to understand the following poem, it will be necessary to
remember, that James, in the year 1617, paid a visit to his native
country, whither the lord Mordaunt accompanied him; and the ceremony of
installing the knights of the garter was consequently deferred from St.
George’s day to that of Holyrood.




TO THE LORD MORDANT, UPON HIS RETURNE FROM THE NORTH.


    My lord, I doe confesse at the first newes
    Of your returne towards home, I did refuse
    To visit you, for feare the northerne winde
    Had peirc’t into your manners and your minde;
    For feare you might want memory to forget
    Some arts of Scotland which might haunt you yet.
    But when I knew you were, and when I heard
    You were at Woodstock seene, well sunn’d and air’d,
    That your contagion in you now was spent,
    And you were just lord Mordant, as you went,
    I then resolv’d to come; and did not doubt
    To be in season, though the bucke were out.
    Windsor the place; the day was Holy roode;
    Saint George my muse: for be it understood,
    For all Saint George more early in the yeare
    Broke fast and eat a bitt, hee dined here:
    And though in Aprill in redd inke he shine,
    Know twas September made him redd with wine.
    To this good sport rod I, as being allow’d
    To see the king, and cry him in the crowd;
    And at all solemne meetings have the grace
    To thrust, and to be trodde on, by my place.

    Where when I came, I saw the church besett
    With tumults, as if all the Brethren mett
    To heare some silenc’t teacher of that quarter
    Inveigh against the order of the garter:
    And justly might the weake it grieve and wrong,
    Because the garter prayes in a strange tongue;
    And doth retaine traditions yet, of Fraunce,
    In an old _Honi soit qui mal y pense_.
    Whence learne, you knights that order that have t’ane,
    That all, besides the buckle, is profane.
    But there was noe such doctrine now at stake,
    Noe starv’d precisian from the pulpit spake:
    And yet the church was full; all sorts of men,
    Religions, sexes, ages, were there then:
    Whilst he that keepes the quire together locks
    Papists and Puritans, the Pope and Knox:
    Which made some wise-ones feare, that love our nation,
    This mixture would beget a toleration;
    Or that religions should united bee,
    When they stay’d service, these the letany.
    But noe such hast; this dayes devotion lyes
    Not in the hearts of men, but in their eyes;
    They that doe see St. George, heare him aright;
    For hee loves not to parly, but to fight.
    Amongst this audience (my lord) stood I,
    Well edified as any that stood by;
    And knew how many leggs a knight letts fall,
    Betwixt the king, the offering, and his stall:
    Aske mee but of their robes, I shall relate
    The colour and the fashion, and the state:
    I saw too the procession without doore,
    What the poore knightes, and what the prebends wore.
    All this my neighbors that stood by mee tooke,
    Who div’d but to the garment, and the looke;
    But I saw more, and though I have their fate
    In face and favour, yet I want their pate:
    Mee thought I then did those first ages know,
    Which brought forth knightes soo arm’d and looking soe,
    Who would maintaine their oath, and bind their worde
    With these two seales, an altar and a sworde.
    Then saw I George new-sainted, when such preists
    Wore him not only on, but in their breasts.
    Oft did I wish that day, with solemne vow,
    O that my country were in danger now!
    And twas no treason; who could feare to dye,
    When he was sure his rescue was so nigh?

    And here I might a just digression make,
    Whilst of some foure particular knightes I spake,
    To whome I owe my thankes; but twere not best,
    By praysing two or three, t’ accuse the rest;
    Nor can I sing that order, or those men,
    That are aboue the maistery of my pen;
    And private fingers may not touch those things
    Whose authors princes are, whose parents kings:
    Wherefore unburnt I will refraine that fire,
    Least, daring such a theame, I should aspire
    T’ include my king and prince, and soe rehearse
    Names fitter for my prayer then my verse:
    “Hee that will speake of princes, let him use
    More grace then witt, know God’s aboue his muse.”
    Noe more of councell: Harke! the trumpetts sound,
    And the grave organ’s with the antheme drown’d
    The Church hath said amen to all their rites,
    And now the Trojan horse sets loose his knightes;
    The triumph moues: O what could added bee,
    Save your accesse, to this solemnitye?
    Which I expect, and doubt not but to see ’t,
    When the kings favour and your worth shall meete.
    I thinke the robes would now become you soe,
    St. George himselfe could scarce his owne knights know
    From the lord Mordant: Pardon mee that preach
    A doctrine which king James can only teach;
    To whome I leaue you, who alone hath right
    To make knightes lords, and then a lord a knight.
    Imagine now the sceane lyes in the hall;
    (For at high noone we are recusants all)
    The church is empty, as the bellyes were
    Of the spectators, which had languish’d there:
    And now the favorites of the clarke of th’ checke,
    Who oft haue yaun’d, and strech’t out many a neck
    Twixt noone and morning; the dull feeders on
    Fresh patience, and raisins of the sunne,
    They, who had liv’d in th’ hall seaven houres at least,
    As if twere an arraignment, not a feast;
    And look’t soe like the hangings they stood nere,
    None could discerne which the true pictures were;
    These now shall be refresh’t, while the bold drumme
    Strikes up his frollick, through the hall they come.
    Here might I end, my lord, and here subscribe
    Your honours to his power: But Oh, what bribe,
    What feare or mulct can make my muse refraine,
    When shee is urg’d of nature and disdaine?
    Not all the guard shall hold mee, I must write,
    Though they should sweare and lye how they would fight,
    If I procede: nay, though the captaine say,
    Hold him, or else you shall not eate to day;
    Those goodly yeomen shall not scape my pen;
    ’Twas dinner-time, and I must speake of men;
    So to the hall made I, with little care
    To praise the dishes, or to tast the fare;
    Much lesse t’ endanger the least tart, or pye
    By any waiter there stolne, or sett by;
    But to compute the valew of the meate,
    Which was for glory, not for hunger eate;
    Nor did I feare, (stand back) who went before
    The presence, or the privy-chamber doore.
    And woe is mee, the guard, those men of warre,
    Who but two weapons use, beife, and the barre,
    Began to gripe mee, knowing not in truth,
    That I had sung John Dory in my youth;
    Or that I knew the day when I could chaunt
    Chevy, and Arthur, and the Seige of Gaunt.
    And though these be the vertues which must try
    Who are most worthy of their curtesy,
    They profited mee nothing: for no notes
    Will move them now, they’re deafe in their new coates:
    Wherefore on mee afresh they fall, and show
    Themselves more active then before, as though
    They had some wager lay’d, and did contend
    Who should abuse mee furthest at armes end.
    One I remember with a grisly beard,
    And better growne then any of the heard;
    One, were he well examin’d, and made looke
    His name in his owne parish and church booke,
    Could hardly prove his christendome; and yet
    It seem’d he had two names, for there were writt
    On a white canvasse doublett that he wore,
    Two capitall letters of a name before;
    Letters belike which hee had spew’d and spilt,
    When the great bumbard leak’t, or was a tilt.
    This Ironside tooke hold, and sodainly
    Hurled mee, by judgment of the standers by,
    Some twelve foote by the square; takes mee againe,
    Out-throwes it halfe a bar; and thus wee twaine
    At this hot exercise an hower had spent,
    Hee the feirce agent, I the instrument.
    My man began to rage, but I cry’d, Peace,
    When he is dry or hungry he will cease:
    Hold, for the Lords sake, Nicholas, lest they take us,
    And use us worse then Hercules us’d Cacus.

    And now I breath, my lord, now have I time
    To tell the cause, and to confesse the crime:
    I was in black; a scholler straite they guest;
    Indeed I colour’d for it at the least.
    I spake them faire, desir’d to see the hall,
    And gave them reasons for it, this was all;
    By which I learne it is a maine offence,
    So neere the clark of th’ check to utter sense:
    Talk of your emblemes, maisters, and relate
    How Æsope hath it, and how Alciate;
    The Cock and Pearle, the Dunghill and the Jemme,
    This passeth all to talke sence amongst them.
    Much more good service was committed yet,
    Which I in such a tumult must forget;
    But shall I smother that prodigious fitt,
    Which pass’d Heons invention, and pure witt?
    As this: A nimble knave, but something fatt,
    Strikes at my head, and fairly steales my hatt:
    Another breakes a jest, (well, Windsor, well,
    What will ensue thereof there’s none can tell,
    When they spend witt, serve God) yet twas not much,
    Although the clamours and applause were such,
    As when salt Archy or Garret doth provoke them[62],
    And with wide laughter and a cheat-loafe choake them.
    What was the jest doe you aske? I dare repeate it,
    And put it home before you shall entreat it;
    He call’d mee Bloxford-man: confesse I must
    ’Twas bitter; and it griev’d mee, in a thrust
    That most ungratefull word (Bloxford) to heare
    From him, whose breath yet stunk of Oxford beere:
    But let it passe; for I have now passd throw
    Their halberds, and worse weapons, their teeth, too:
    And of a worthy officer was invited
    To dine; who all their rudeness hath requited:
    Where wee had mirth and meat, and a large board
    Furnish’t with all the kitchin could afford.
    But to conclude, to wipe of from before yee
    All this which is noe better then a story;
    Had this affront bin done mee by command
    Of noble Fenton[63], had their captaines hand
    Directed them to this, I should beleive
    I had no cause to jeast, but much to greive:
    Or had discerning Pembrooke[64] seene this done,
    And thought it well bestow’d, I would have run
    Where no good man had dwelt, nor learn’d would fly,
    Where noe disease would keepe mee company,
    Where it should be preferment to endure
    To teach a schoole, or else to starve a cure.

    But as it stands, the persons and the cause
    Consider well, their manners and their lawes,
    Tis no affliction to mee, for even thus
    Saint Paul hath fought with beasts at Ephesus,
    And I at Windsor. Let this comfort then
    Rest with all able and deserving men:
    Hee that will please the guard, and not provoke
    Court-witts, must suite his learning by a cloake:
    “For at all feasts and masques the doome hath bin,
    “A man thrust out and a gay cloake let in.”

    _Quid immerentes hospites vexas canis,_
    _Ignavus adversus lupos?_




TO THE PRINCE.

(AFTERWARDS CHARLES THE FIRST.)

Born at Dumferling, November the 19th, 1600; crowned 27th March 1625;
beheaded 30th January 1648-9.

(From a Manuscript in Ashmole’s Museum.)


    For ever dear, for ever dreaded prince,
    You read some verse of mine a little since,
    And so pronounced each word and every letter
    Your gratious reading made my verse the better:
    Since that your highness doth by gifte exceeding
    Make what you read the better for your reading,
    Let my poor muse thus far your grace importune
    To leave to reade my verse, and read my fortune.




A NEW-YEARES GIFT TO MY LORDE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

(Born 28th August 1592; assassinated by Felton, 23d August 1628.)


    When I can pay my parents, or my king,
    For life, or peace, or any dearer thing;
    Then, dearest lord, expect my debt to you
    Shall bee as truly paid, as it is due.
    But, as no other price or recompence
    Serves them, but love, and my obedience;
    So nothing payes my lord, but whats above
    The reach of hands, ’tis vertue, and my love.
    “For, when as goodnesse doth so overflow,
    “The conscience bindes not to restore, but owe:”
    Requitall were presumption; and you may
    Call mee ungratefull, while I strive to pay.
    Nor with a morall lesson doe I shift,
    Like one that meant to save a better gift;
    Like very poore, or counterfeite poore men,
    Who, to preserve their turky or their hen,
    Doe offer up themselves: No; I have sent
    A kind of guift, will last by being spent,
    Thankes sterling: far above the bullion rate
    Of horses, hangings, jewells, or of plate.
    O you that know the choosing of that one,
    Know a true diamond from a Bristow stone:
    You know, those men alwaies are not the best
    In their intent, that lowdest can protest:
    But that a prayer from the convocation,
    Is better than the commons protestation.
    Trust those that at the test their lives will lay,
    And know no arts, but to deserve, and pray:
    Whilst they, that buy preferment without praying,
    Begin with broyles, and finish with betraying.




SIR THOMAS AYLESBURY,


A Londoner born, was second son of William Aylesbury by Anne his wife,
daughter of John Poole, esq., and from Westminster School removed to
Christ-Church, Oxford, in 1598, where he became a fellow-student with
Corbet, and where, on the 9th of June 1605, they took the degree of
master of arts together.

Aylesbury, after he had left Oxford, became secretary to Charles Howard,
earl of Nottingham, lord high admiral of England, and in 1618, when the
latter resigned his office, was continued in the same employment under
Howard’s successor, George Villiers, then marquis, and afterwards duke
of Buckingham. Under the patronage of Villiers he was appointed one of
the masters of the requests, and on the 19th of April 1627 created a
baronet, and soon afterwards obtained the office of master of the mint.
He retained his places until the breaking out of the civil wars in 1642,
and faithfully adhering to the cause of Charles the First, retired with
his family, in 1649, after the execution of that unfortunate monarch, to
Antwerp in Brabant, and continued there until 1652, when he removed to
Breda, where he died in 1657, aged 81, and was buried in the great church.

He was “a learned man, and as great a lover and encourager of learning
and learned men, especially of mathematicians, (he being one himself) as
any man in his time.”

He had a son, William, who was a man of learning, and tutor to the two
sons of his father’s patron, Villiers, but died issueless in Jamaica in
the service of Cromwell in the same year with his father: and a daughter,
Frances, (sole heir of her father and brother) who, in 1634, became the
wife of Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, and was grandmother to
queen Mary the Second, and to queen Anne.

I have been the more particular in noticing what relates to sir Thomas
Aylesbury, since bishop Corbet’s advancement at court followed, though
it trode close upon the heels of, that of Aylesbury, which leads me to
presume that the latter was in some degree Corbet’s patron as well as
friend and companion.




A LETTER SENT FROM DR. CORBET TO SIR THOMAS AILESBURY, December the 9th,
1618. ON THE OCCASION OF A BLAZING STAR.


    My brother and much more, hadst thou been mine,
    Hadst thou in one rich present of a line
    Inclos’d sir Francis, for in all this store
    No gift can cost thee less, or binde me more;
    Hadst thou (dear churle) imparted his return,
    I should not with a tardy welcome burn;
    But had let loose my joy at him long since,
    Which now will seem but studied negligence:
    But I forgive thee, two things kept thee from it,
    First such a friend to gaze on, next a comet;
    Which comet we discern, though not so true
    As you at Sion, as long tayl’d as you;
    We know already how will stand the case,
    With Barnavelt[65] of universal grace,
    Though Spain deserve the whole star, if the fall
    Be true of Lerma duke and cardinal[66]:
    Marry, in France we fear no blood, but wine;
    Less danger’s in her sword, than in her vine.
    And thus we leave the blazers coming over,
    For our portents are wise, and end at Dover:
    And though we use no forward censuring,
    Nor send our learned proctors to the king,
    Yet every morning when the star doth rise,
    There is no black for three hours in our eyes;
    But like a Puritan dreamer, towards this light
    All eyes turn upward, all are zeal and white:
    More it is doubtful that this prodigy
    Will turn ten schools to one astronomy:
    And the analysis we justly fear,
    Since every art doth seek for rescue there;
    Physicians, lawyers, glovers on the stall,
    The shopkeepers speak mathematics all;
    And though men read no gospels in these signes,
    Yet all professions are become divines;
    All weapons from the bodkin to the pike,
    The masons rule and taylors yard alike
    Take altitudes, and th’ early fidling knaves
    On fluits and hoboyes made them Jacobs-staves;
    Lastly of fingers, glasses we contrive,
    And every fist is made a prospective:
    Burton to Gunter cants[67], and Burton hears
    From Gunter, and th’ exchange both tongue and ears
    By carriage: thus doth mired Guy complain,
    His waggon in their letters bears Charles-Wain,
    Charles-Wain, to which they say the tayl will reach;
    And at this distance they both hear and teach.
    Now, for the peace of God and men, advise
    (Thou that hast where-withal to make us wise)
    Thine own rich studies, and deep Harriots mine[68],
    In which there is no dross, but all refine:
    O tell us what to trust to, lest we wax
    All stiff and stupid with his parallax:
    Say, shall the old philosophy be true?
    Or doth he ride above the moon, think you?
    Is he a meteor forced by the sun?
    Or a first body from creation?
    Hath the same star been object of the wonder
    Of our forefathers? Shall the same come under
    The sentence of our nephews? Write and send,
    Or else this star a quarrel doth portend.




DR. CORBET’S JOURNEY INTO FRANCE.


    I went from England into France,
    Nor yet to learn to cringe nor dance,
              Nor yet to ride or fence;
    Nor did I go like one of those
    That do return with half a nose
              They carried from hence.

    But I to Paris rode along,
    Much like John Dory in the song[69],
              Upon a holy tide.
    I on an ambling nag did jet,
    I trust he is not paid for yet;
              And spur’d him on each side.

    And to Saint Dennis fast we came,
    To see the sights of Nostre Dame,
              The man that shews them snaffles:
    Where who is apt for to beleeve,
    May see our Ladies right-arm sleeve,
              And eke her old pantofles;

    Her breast, her milk, her very gown
    That she did wear in Bethlehem town,
              When in the inn she lay.
    Yet all the world knows that’s a fable,
    For so good clothes ne’re lay in stable
              Upon a lock of hay.

    No carpenter could by his trade
    Gain so much coyn as to have made
              A gown of so rich stuff.
    Yet they, poor fools, think, for their credit,
    They may believe old Joseph did it,
              ’Cause he deserv’d enough.

    There is one of the crosses nails,
    Which whoso sees, his bonnet vails,
              And if he will, may kneel.
    Some say ’twas false, ’twas never so,
    Yet, feeling it, thus much I know,
              It is as true as steel.

    There is a lanthorn which the Jews,
    When Judas led them forth, did use,
              It weighs my weight downright:
    But to believe it, you must think
    The Jews did put a candle in ’t,
              And then ’twas very light.

    There’s one saint there hath lost his nose;
    Another’s head, but not his toes,
              His elbow and his thumb.
    But when that we had seen the rags
    We went to th’ inn and took our nags,
    And so away did come.

    We came to Paris on the Seine,
    ’Tis wondrous fair, ’tis nothing clean,
              ’Tis Europes greatest town.
    How strong it is I need not tell it,
    For all the world may easily smell it,
              That walk it up and down.

    There many strange things are to see,
    The Palace and great Gallery,
              The Place Royal doth excel:
    The New Bridge, and the Statues there,
    At Nostre Dame, Saint Q. Pater,
              The Steeple bears the bell.

    For learning, th’ Universitie;
    And for old clothes, the Frippery;
              The House the Queen did build.
    Saint Innocents, whose earth devours
    Dead corps in four and twenty hours,
              And there the King was kill’d:

    The Bastile and Saint Dennis-street,
    The Shafflenist, like London-Fleet,
              The Arsenal, no toy.
    But if you’ll see the prettiest thing,
    Go to the court and see the King,
              O ’tis a hopeful boy.

    He is of all his dukes and peers
    Reverenc’d for much wit at ’s years,
              Nor must you think it much;
    For he with little switch doth play,
    And make fine dirty pyes of clay,
              O never king made such!

    A bird that can but kill a fly,
    Or prate, doth please his majesty,
              ’Tis known to every one.
    The duke of Guise gave him a parret,
    And he had twenty cannons for it
              For his new galeon.

    O that I ere might have the hap
    To get the bird which in the map
              Is called the Indian Ruck!
    I’de give it him, and hope to be
    As rich as Guise, or Livine,
              Or else I had ill luck.

    Birds round about his chamber stand,
    And he them feeds with his own hand;
              ’Tis his humility.
    And if they do want any thing,
    They need but whistle for their king,
              And he comes presently.

    But now then, for these parts he must
    Be enstiled Lewis the Just[70],
              Great Henry’s lawful heir;
    When to his stile to add more words,
    They’d better call him King of Birds,
              Than of the great Navarre.

    He hath besides a pretty quirk,
    Taught him by Nature, how to work
              In iron with much ease.
    Sometimes to the forge he goes,
    There he knocks, and there he blows,
              And makes both locks and keys:

    Which puts a doubt in every one,
    Whether he be Mars or Vulcan’s son,
              Some few believe his mother.
    But let them all say what they will,
    I came resolv’d, and so think still,
              As much the one as th’ other.

    The people, too, dislike the youth,
    Alledging reasons, for, in truth,
              Mothers should honour’d be:
    Yet others say, he loves her rather
    As well as ere she lov’d his father,
              And that’s notoriously.

    His queen, a pretty little wench,
    Was born in Spain, speaks little French,
              She’s nere like to be mother:
    For her incestuous house could not
    Have children which were not begot
              By uncle or by brother.

    Now why should Lewis, being so just,
    Content himself to take his lust
              With his Lucina’s mate;
    And suffer his little pretty queen,
    From all her race that yet hath been,
              So to degenerate?

    ’Twere charity for to be known
    To love others children as his own,
              And why? It is no shame;
    Unless that he would greater be
    Than was his father Henery,
              Who, men thought, did the same.




JOHN HAMMON.


John Hammon, M.A., to whom the following “Exhortation” is addressed,
was instituted to the rectory of Bibbesford and chapel of Bewdley in
Worcestershire the 2d of March 1614, on the presentation of sir William
Cook. The new zeal with which he was inspired arose most probably from
the intrusion of the “Book of Sports,” by James, in 1618[71], in which
the king’s pleasure is declared, “that, after the end of divine service,
our good people be not disturbed, letted or discouraged from any lawfull
recreation; such as dauncing, either men or women; archerie for men,
leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmlesse recreation; nor from
having of May games, Witson ales, and Morris dances, and the _setting up
of Maypoles and other sports therein used_; and that women shall have
leave to carry rushes to the church for the decoring of it, according to
their old custome.”




AN EXHORTATION TO MR. JOHN HAMMON, MINISTER IN THE PARISH OF BEWDLY,

_For the battering downe of the Vanityes of the Gentiles, which are
comprehended in a Maypole_.

Written by a Zealous Brother from the Black-fryers.


    The mighty zeale which thou hast new put on,
    Neither by prophet nor by prophetts sonne
    As yet prevented, doth transport mee so
    Beyond my selfe, that, though I ne’re could go
    Farr in a verse, and all rithmes have defy’d
    Since Hopkins and old Thomas Sternhold dy’de,
    (Except it were that little paines I tooke
    To please good people in a prayer-booke
    That I sett forth, or so) yet must I raise
    My spirit for thee, who shall in thy praise
    Gird up her loynes, and furiously run
    All kinde of feet, save Satans cloven one.
    Such is thy zeale, so well dost thou express it,
    That, (wer ’t not like a charme,) I’de say, Christ blesse it.
    I needs must say ’tis a spirituall thing
    To raile against a bishopp, or the king;
    Nor are they meane adventures wee have bin in,
    About the wearing of the churches linnen;
    But these were private quarrells: this doth fall
    Within the compass of the generall.
    Whether it be a pole painted, and wrought
    Farr otherwise, then from the wood ’twas brought,
    Whose head the idoll-makers hand doth croppe,
    Where a lew’d bird, towring upon the topp,
    Lookes like the calfe at Horeb; at whose roots
    The unyoak’t youth doth exercise his foote;
    Or whether it reserve his boughes, befreinded
    By neighb’ring bushes, and by them attended:
    How caust thou chuse but seeing it complaine,
    That Baalls worship’t in the groves againe?
    Tell mee how curst an egging, what a sting
    Of lust do their unwildy daunces bring?
    The simple wretches say they meane no harme,
    They doe not, surely; but their actions warme
    Our purer blouds the more: for Sathan thus
    Tempts us the more, that are more righteous.
    Oft hath a Brother most sincerely gon,
    Stifled in prayer and contemplation,
    When lighting on the place where such repaire,
    He viewes the nimphes, and is quite out in ’s prayer.
    Oft hath a Sister, grownded in the truth,
    Seeing the jolly carriage of the youth,
    Bin tempted to the way that’s broad and bad;
    And (wert not for our private pleasures) had
    Renounc’t her little ruffe, and goggle eye,
    And quitt her selfe of the Fraternity.
    What is the mirth, what is the melody,
    That setts them in this Gentiles vanity?
    When in our sinagogue wee rayle at sinne,
    And tell men of the faults which they are in,
    With hand and voice so following our theames,
    That wee put out the side-men from their dreames.
    Sounds not the pulpett, which wee then be-labour,
    Better, and holyer, then doth the tabour?
    Yet, such is unregenerate mans folly,
    Hee loves the wicked noyse, and hates the holy.
    Routes and wilde pleasures doe invite temptation,
    And this is dangerous for our damnation;
    Wee must not move our selves, but, if w’ are mov’d,
    Man is but man; and therefore those that lov’d
    Still to seeme good, would evermore dispence
    With their owne faults, so they gave no offence.
    If the times sweete entising, and the blood
    That now begins to boyle, have thought it good
    To challenge Liberty and Recreation,
    Let it be done in holy contemplation:
    Brothers and Sisters in the feilds may walke,
    Beginning of the Holy Worde to talke,
    Of David, and Uriahs lovely wife,
    Of Thamar, and her lustfull brothers strife;
    Then, underneath the hedge that woos them next,
    They may sitt down; and there act out the text.
    Nor do wee want, how ere wee live austeere,
    In winter Sabbath-nights our lusty cheere;
    And though the pastors grace, which oft doth hold
    Halfe an howre long, make the provision cold,
    Wee can be merry; thinking ’t nere the worse
    To mend the matter at the second course.
    Chapters are read, and hymnes are sweetly sung,
    Joyntly commanded by the nose and tongue;
    Then on the Worde wee diversly dilate,
    Wrangling indeed for heat of zeale, not hate:
    When at the length an unappeased doubt
    Feircely comes in, and then the light goes out;
    Darkness thus workes our peace, and wee containe
    Our fyery spiritts till we see againe.
    Till then, no voice is heard, no tongue doth goe,
    Except a tender Sister shreike, or so.
    Such should be our delights, grave and demure,
    Not so abominable, not so impure,
    As those thou seek’st to hinder, but I feare
    Satan will bee too strong; his kingdome’s here:
    Few are the righteous now, nor do I know
    How wee shall ere this idoll overthrow;
    Since our sincerest patron is deceas’t,
    The number of the righteous is decreast.
    But wee do hope these times will on, and breed
    A faction mighty for us; for indeede
    Wee labour all, and every Sister joynes
    To have regenerate babes spring from our loynes:
    Besides, what many carefully have done,
    Getting the unrighteous man, a righteous sonne.
    Then stoutly on, let not thy flocke range lewdly
    In their old vanity, thou lampe of Bewdly.
    One thing I pray thee; do not too much thirst
    After Idolatryes last fall; but first
    Follow this suite more close, let it not goe
    Till it be thine as thou would’st have ’t: for soe
    Thy successors, upon the same entayle,
    Hereafter, may take up the Whitson-ale.




ANNE, WIFE OF JAMES THE FIRST,

Daughter of Frederick the Second, king of Denmark, died of a dropsy the
2d of March 1619.


On the 18th of November 1618, a comet (as alluded to in a foregoing poem)
was seen in Libra, which continued visible till the 16th of December; and
the vulgar, who think

    Nunquam futilibus excanduit ignibus æther,

considered it indicative of great misfortunes; and the death of the queen
which closely followed, the first object of its portentous mission.

“The queen was in her great condition,” says Wilson, “a good woman, not
tempted from that height she stood on to embroyl her spirit much with
things below her, only giving herself content in her own house with such
recreations as might not make time tedious unto her; and though great
persons’ actions are often pried into, and made envy’s mark, yet nothing
could be fixed upon her that left any great impression, but that she may
have engraven upon her monument a character of virtue.”




AN ELEGY UPON THE DEATH OF QUEENE ANNE.


    Noe; not a quatch, sad poets; doubt you,
    There is not greife enough without you?
    Or that it will asswage ill newes,
    To say, Shee’s dead, that was your muse?
    Joine not with Death to make these times
    More grievous then most grievous rimes.

    And if ’t be possible, deare eyes,
    The famous Universityes,
    If bold your eyes bee matches, sleepe;
    Or, if you will be loyall, weepe:
    For-beare the press, there’s none will looke
    Before the mart for a new booke.

    Why should you tell the world what witts
    Grow at New-parkes, or Campus-pitts?
    Or what conceipts youth stumble on,
    Taking the ayre towards Trumpington?
    Nor you, grave tutours, who doe temper
    Your long and short with _que_ and _semper_;
    O doe not, when your owne are done,
    Make for my ladyes eldest sonne
    Verses, which he will turne to prose,
    When he shall read what you compose:
    Nor, for an epithite that failes,
    Bite off your unpoëticke nailes.
    Unjust! Why should you in these vaines,
    Punish your fingers for your braines?

    Know henceforth, that griefes vitall part
    Consists in nature, not in art:
    And verses that are studied
    Mourne for themselves, not for the dead.

    Heark, the Queenes epitaph shall bee
    Noe other then her pedigree:
    For lines in bloud cutt out are stronger
    Then lines in marble, and last longer:
    And such a verse shall never fade,
    That is begotten, and not made.

    “Her father, brother, husband, ... kinges;
    Royall relations! from her springes
    A prince and princesse; and from those
    Faire certaintyes, and rich hope growes.”
    Here’s poetry shall be secure
    While Britaine, Denmarke, Rheine endure:
    Enough on earth; what purchase higher,
    Save heaven, to perfect her desire?
    And as a straying starr intic’t
    And governd those wise-men to Christ,
    Ev’n soe a herauld-starr this yeare
    Did beckon to her to appeare:
    A starr which did not to our nation
    Portend her death, but her translation:
    For when such harbingers are seene,
    God crownes a saint, not kills a queene.




VINCENT CORBET,


Who, from causes which I have not conclusively ascertained, assumed the
name of Poynter, was one of those by whose experience and information
sir Hugh Platt, at a period when the horticultural arts in this country
were in their infancy, was enabled to publish his “Garden Of Eden.” The
beautiful “Epitaph” of Ben Jonson, and the following “Elegy,” are high
testimonials of his amiable and virtuous disposition.

His father’s name I have not learned; but his mother, whose name was
Rose, was buried at Twickenham, September the 13th, 1611, and the
register of the same parish proves that her son pursued her path the 29th
April, 1619.

Among other legacies, he bequeathed to the poor of Twickenham forty
shillings, to be paid immediately after his decease; and four loads
of charcoal, to be distributed at the discretion of the churchwardens.
These bequests are overlooked by Ironside and Lysons, and I am happy
in recording the father of bishop Corbet as a benefactor to my native
village.

    Nescis quâ natale solum dulcedine captos
      Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui.




AN ELEGIE UPON THE DEATH OF HIS OWNE FATHER.


    Vincent Corbet, farther knowne
    By Poynters name, then by his owne,
    Here lyes ingaged till the day
    Of raising bones, and quickning clay.
    Nor wonder, reader, that he hath
    Two surnames in his epitaph;
    For this one did comprehend
    All that two familyes could lend:
    And if to know more arts then any
    Could multiply one into many,
    Here a colony lyes, then,
    Both of qualityes and men.
    Yeares he liv’d well nigh fourscore;
    But count his vertues, he liv’d more;
    And number him by doeing good,
    He liv’d their age beyond the Flood.
    Should wee undertake his story,
    Truth would seeme fain’d, and plainesse glory:
    Beside, this tablet were too small,
    Add to the pillers and the wall.
    Yet of this volume much is found,
    Written in many a fertill ground;
    Where the printer thee affords
    Earth for paper, trees for words.
    He was Natures factour here,
    And legier lay for every sheire;
    To supply the ingenious wants
    Of some spring-fruites, and forraigne plants.
    Simple he was, and wise withall;
    His purse nor base, nor prodigall;
    Poorer in substance then in freinds;
    Future and publicke were his endes;
    His conscience, like his dyett, such
    As neither tooke nor left too much:
    Soe that made lawes were uselesse growne
    To him, he needed but his owne.
    Did he his neighbours bid, like those
    That feast them only to enclose?
    Or with their rost meate racke their rents,
    And cozen them with their consents?
    Noe; the free meetings at his boord
    Did but one litterall sence afforde;
    Noe close or aker understood,
    But only love and neighbourhood.
    His alms were such as Paul defines,
    Not causes to be said, but signes;
    Which alms, by faith, hope, love, laid down,
    Laid up what now he wears ... a crown.
    Besides his fame, his goods, his life,
    He left a greiv’d sonne, and a wife;
    Straunge sorrow, not to be beleiv’d,
    Whenas the sonne and heire is greiv’d.
      Reade then, and mourne, what ere thou art
      That doost hope to have a part
      In honest epitaphs; least, being dead,
      Thy life bee written, and not read.




THE LADY HADDINGTON


Was first wife of John Ramsey, viscount Haddington in Scotland, and
daughter of Robert Radcliffe, earl of Sussex. Her marriage was celebrated
by Ben Jonson, in a masque presented at court on the Shrove-Tuesday at
night (1608)[72]; and here is her monody by Corbet.

She had two sons, Charles and James, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who all
died young. Her father died without surviving issue, September 22d, 1629.

Her husband, who was a great favourite with king James, survived her,
and was created baron of Kingston upon Thames, and earl of Holderness,
22 Jan. 1620-1. He had a second wife, daughter of sir William Cockayne,
alderman of London[73]:

But his first lady, the subject of the present article, was evidently
dead before his elevation to the English peerage.




AN ELEGIE UPON THE DEATH OF THE LADY HADDINGTON, WHO DYED OF THE SMALL
POX.


    Deare losse, to tell the world I greive were true,
    But that were to lament my selfe, not you;
    That were to cry out helpe for my affaires,
    For which nor publick thought, nor private, cares:
    No, when thy fate I publish amongst men,
    I should have power, and write with the States pen:
    I should in naming thee force publicke teares,
    And bid their eyes pay ransome for their cares.
    First, thy whole life was a short feast of witt,
    And Death th’ attendant which did waite on it:
    To both mankind doth owe devotion ample,
    To that their first, to this their last example.
    And though ’twere praise enough (with them whose fame
    And vertue’s nothing but an ample name)
    That thou wert highly borne, (which no man doubtes)
    And so mightst swath base deedes in noble cloutes;
    Yet thou thy selfe in titles didst not shroud,
    And being noble, wast nor foole, nor proud;
    And when thy youth was ripe, when now the suite
    Of all the longing court was for thy fruit,
    How wisely didst thou choose! Foure blessed eyes,
    The kings and thine, had taught thee to be wise.
    Did not the best of men thee virgin give
    Into his handes, by which himselfe did live?
    Nor didst thou two yeares after talke of force,
    Or, lady-like, make suit for a divorce:
    Who, when their owne wilde lust is falsely spent,
    Cry out, “My lord, my lord is impotent.”
    Nor hast thou in his nuptiall armes enjoy’d
    Barren imbraces, but wert girl’d and boy’d:
    Twice-pretty-ones thrice worthier were their youth
    Might shee but bring them up, that brought them forth:
    Shee would have taught them by a thousand straines,
    (Her bloud runns in their manners, not their veines)
    That glory is a lye; state a grave sport;
    And country sicknesse above health at court.
    Oh what a want of her loose gallants have,
    Since shee hath chang’d her window for a grave;
    From whence shee us’d to dart out witt so fast,
    And stick them in their coaches as they past!
    Who now shall make well-colour’d vice looke pale?
    Or a curl’d meteor with her eyes exhale,
    And talke him into nothing? Who shall dare
    Tell barren braines they dwell in fertill haire?
    Who now shall keepe ould countesses in awe,
    And, by tart similyes, repentance draw
    From those, whome preachers had given ore? Even such
    Whome sermons could not reach, her arrowes touch.
    Hereafter, fooles shall prosper with applause,
    And wise men smile, and no man aske the cause:
    Hee of fourescore, three night capps, and two haires,
    Shall marry her of twenty, and get heyres
    Which shall be thought his owne; and none shall say
    But tis a wondrous blessing, and he may.
    Now (which is more then pitty) many a knight,
    Which can doe more then quarrell, less then fight,
    Shall choose his weapons, ground; draw seconds thither,
    Put up his sword, and not be laught at neyther.
    Oh thou deform’d unwoeman-like disease,
    That plowst up flesh and bloud, and there sow’st pease,
    And leav’st such printes on beauty, that dost come
    As clouted shon do on a floore of lome;
    Thou that of faces hony-combes dost make,
    And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake
    Thy deadly trade; thou now art rich, give ore,
    And let our curses call thee forth no more.
    Or, if thou needs will magnify thy power,
    Goe where thou art invoked every houre
    Amongst the gamsters, where they name thee thicke
    At the last maine, or the last pocky nicke.
    Get thee a lodging neare thy clyent, dice,
    There thou shalt practice on more then one vice.
    There’s wherewithall to entertaine the pox,
    There’s more then reason, there’s rime for ’t, the box.
    Thou who hast such superfluous store of game,
    Why struckst thou one whose ruine is thy shame?
    O, thou hast murdred where thou shouldst have kist;
    And, where thy shaft was needfull, there it mist.
    Thou shouldst have chosen out some homely face,
    Where thy ill-favour’d kindnesse might adde grace,
    That men might say, How beauteous once was shee!
    Or, What a peece, ere shee was seaz’d by thee!
    Thou shouldst have wrought on some such ladyes mould
    That ne’re did love her lord, nor ever could
    Untill shee were deform’d, thy tyranny
    Were then within the rules of charity.
    But upon one whose beauty was above
    All sort of art, whose love was more then love,
    On her to fix thy ugly counterfett,
    Was to erect a pyramide of jett,
    And put out fire to digg a turfe from hell,
    And place it where a gentle soule should dwell:
    A soule which in the body would not stay,
    When twas noe more a body, nor good clay,
    But a huge ulcer. O thou heav’nly race,
    Thou soule that shunn’st th’ infection of thy case,
    Thy house, thy prison, pure soule, spotless, faire,
    Rest where no heat, no cold, no compounds are!
    Rest in that country, and injoy that ease,
    Which thy frayle flesh deny’de, and her disease!




ON THE CHRIST-CHURCH PLAY.


The failure of success in the representation of this play has been
detailed in the Life of the Bishop: indeed it seems to have subjected
the Oxonians to much ridicule, which the elegant bishop King[74] joined
with Corbet in retorting. One of the numerous banters on this occasion is
recorded by Wood, and deserves to be preserved:

    “At Christ-Church ‘Marriage,’ done before the king,
    Lest that those mates should want an offering,
    The king himself did offer—What? I pray.
    He offer’d twice or thrice to go away.”




ON CHRIST-CHURCH PLAY AT WOODSTOCK.


    If wee, at Woodstock, have not pleased those,
    Whose clamorous judgments lye in urging noes,
    And, for the want of whifflers, have destroy’d
    Th’ applause, which wee with vizards hadd enjoy’d,
    Wee are not sorry; for such witts as these
    Libell our windowes oft’ner then our playes;
    Or, if their patience be moov’d, whose lipps
    Deserve the knowledge of the proctorships,
    Or judge by houses, as their howses goe,
    Not caring if their cause be good or noe;
    Nor by desert or fortune can be drawne
    To credit us, for feare they loose their pawne;
    Wee are not greatly sorry; but if any,
    Free from the yoake of the ingaged many,
    That dare speake truth even when their head stands by,
    Or when the seniors spoone is in the pye;
    Nor to commend the worthy will forbeare,
    Though he of Cambridge, or of Christ-church were,
    And not of his owne colledge; and will shame
    To wrong the person, for his howse, or name;
    If any such be greiv’d, then downe proud spirit;
    If not, know, number never conquer’d merit.




THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.


Of the romantic expedition to Spain of “Baby Charles and Stennie” an
account is given by Clarendon, and a more minute narrative by Arthur
Wilson in his Life of James. The voyage was conducted with great secrecy,
and very few attendants: but it is worthy remark, that Archee “the
princes fool-man” was one of the party. Howell, who was at Madrid at the
time, says, “Our cousin Archy hath more privilege than any, for he often
goes with his fool’s-coat where the _Infanta_ is with her Meninas and
ladies of honour, and keeps a blowing and blustering amongst them, and
flurts out what he list.” One of his “flurts” at the Spaniards is related
in the same page[75].

The poem, as far as it describes the various rumours during the absence
of the parties, a period of great consternation, is curious: the report
of Buckingham’s “difference with the Cond’ Olivares” rests upon better
authority than the then opinion of the poet.

They left the court Feb. 17th, and returned to England the 5th Oct. 1623.




A LETTER TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, BEING WITH THE PRINCE IN SPAINE.


    I’ve read of ilands floating and remov’d
    In Ovids time, but never heard it prov’d
    Till now: that fable, by the prince and you,
    By your transporting England, is made true.
    Wee are not where wee were; the dog-starr raignes
    No cooler in our climate, then in Spaines;
    The selfe-same breath, same ayre, same heate, same burning,
    Is here, as there; will be, till your returning:
    Come, e’re the card be alter’d, lest perhaps
    Your stay may make an errour in our mapps;
    Lest England should be found, when you shall passe,
    A thousand miles more southward then it was.
    Oh that you were, my lord, oh that you were
    Now in Blackfryers, in a disguis’d haire;
    That you were Smith againe, two houres to bee
    In Paules next Sunday, at full sea at three;
    There you should heare the legend of each day,
    The perills of your inne, and of your way;
    Your enterprises, accidents, untill
    You did arrive at court, and reach Madrill.
    There you should heare how the State-grandees flout you,
    With their twice-double diligence about you;
    How our environ’d prince walkes with a guard
    Of Spanish spies, and his owne servants barr’d;
    How not a chaplaine of his owne may stay
    When hee would heare a sermon preach’d, or pray.
    You would be hungry, having din’d, to heare
    The price of victuailes, and the scarcity, there;
    As if the prince had ventur’d there his life
    To make a famine, not to fetch a wife.
    Your eggs (which might be addle too) are deare
    As English capons; capons as sheepe, here;
    No grasse neither for cattle; for they say
    It is not cutt and made, grasse there growes hay:
    That ’tis soe seething hott in Spaine, they sweare
    They never heard of a raw oyster there:
    Your cold meate comes in reaking, and your wine
    Is all burnt sack, the fire was in the vine;
    Item, your pullets are distinguish’t there
    Into foure quarters, as wee carve the yeare,
    And are a weeke a wasting: Munday noone
    A wing; at supper something with a spoone;
    Tuesday a legg, and soe forth; Sunday more,
    The liver and a gizard betweene foure:
    And for your mutton, in the best houshoulder
    ’Tis felony to cheapen a whole shoulder.
    Lord! how our stomackes come to us againe,
    When wee conceive what snatching is in Spaine!
    I, whilst I write, and doe the newes repeate,
    Am forc’t to call for breakfast in, and eate:
    And doe you wonder at the dearth the while?
    The flouds that make it run in th’ middle ile,
    Poets of Paules, those of duke Humfryes messe,
    That feede on nought but graves and emptinesse.
    But heark you, noble sir, in one crosse weeke
    My lord hath lost a thowsand pound at gleeke;
    And though they doe allow but little meate,
    They are content your losses should be great.
    False, on my deanery! falser then your fare is;
    Or then your difference with _Cond’ de Olivares_,
    Which was reported strongly for one tyde,
    But, after six houres floating, ebb’d and dyde.
    If God would not this great designe should be
    Perfect and round without some knavery,
    Nor that our prince should end this enterprize,
    But for soe many miles, soe many lyes:
    If for a good event the Heav’ns doe please
    Mens tongues should become rougher then the seas,
    And that th’ expence of paper shall be such,
    First written, then translated out of Dutch:
    Corantoes, diets, packets, newes, more newes,
    Which soe much innocent whitenesse doth abuse;
    If first the Belgicke[76] pismire must be seene,
    Before the Spanish lady be our queene;
    With such successe, and such an end at last,
    All’s wellcome, pleasant, gratefull, that is past.
    And such an end wee pray that you should see,
    A type of that which mother Zebedee
    Wisht for her sonnes in heav’n; the prince and you
    At either hand of James, (you need not sue)
    Hee on the right, you on the left, the king
    Safe in the mids’t, you both invironing.
    Then shall I tell my lord, his word and band
    Are forfeit, till I kisse the princes hand;
    Then shall I tell the duke, your royall friend
    Gave all the other honours, this you earn’d;
    This you have wrought for; this you hammer’d out
    Like a strong Smith, good workman and a stout.
    In this I have a part, in this I see
    Some new addition smiling upon mee:
    Who, in an humble distance, claime a share
    In all your greatnesse, what soe ere you are.




RICHARD, THE THIRD EARL OF DORSET,


Is described by his wife, the celebrated lady Anne Clifford, daughter of
George earl of Cumberland, in the manuscript memoirs of her life, as a
man “in his own nature of a just mind, of a sweet disposition, and very
valiant in his own person. He had a great advantage in his breeding, by
the wisdom and devotion of his grandfather, Thomas Sackville, earl of
Dorset, and lord high treasurer of England, who was then held one of
the wisest of that time; by which means he was so good a scholar in all
manner of learning, that, in his youth, when he was at the university,
there was none of the young nobility then students there that excelled
him. He was also a good patriot to his country, and generally well
beloved in it; much esteemed in all the parliaments that sat in his
time, and so great a lover of scholars and soldiers, as that, with an
excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of worth that were in
distress, he did much diminish his estate; and also with excessive
prodigality in house-keeping, and other noble ways at court, as tilting,
masking, and the like; prince Henry being then alive, who was much
addicted to those noble exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.” He
died at the age of 35, March 28th, 1624.

I should be very unwilling to deprive Corbet of the praise due to a poem
of so much intrinsic merit; but as the following epitaph is printed among
the poems of his contemporary, King, bishop of Chichester, and again
attributed to the latter in MS. Ashmole, A 35, Corbet’s claim to the
composition of it is rendered very disputable.




ON THE EARL OF DORSETS DEATH.


    Let no prophane, ignoble foot tread here,
    This hallowed piece of earth, Dorset lyes there:
    A small poor relique of a noble spirit,
    Free as the air, and ample as his merit:
    A soul refin’d, no proud forgetting lord,
    But mindful of mean names, and of his word:
    Who lov’d men for his honour, not his ends,
    And had the noblest way of getting friends
    By loving first, and yet who knew the court,
    But understood it better by report
    Than practice: he nothing took from thence
    But the kings favour for his recompence.
    Who, for religion or his countreys good,
    Neither his honour valued, nor his blood.
    Rich in the worlds opinion, and mens praise,
    And full in all we could desire, but days.
    He that is warn’d of this, and shall forbear
    To vent a sigh for him, or shed a tear,
    May he live long scorn’d, and unpitied fall,
    And want a mourner at his funeral!




TO THE NEW-BORNE PRINCE, AFTERWARDS CHARLES II.

(Born May 29th[77], 1630; died 6th of February, 1684-5.)

UPON THE APPARITION OF A STARR, AND THE FOLLOWING ECCLYPSE.


    Was heav’ne afray’d to be out-done on earth
    When thou wert borne, great prince, that it brought forth
    Another light to helpe the aged sunn,
    Lest by thy luster he might be out-shone?
    Or were th’ obsequious starres so joy’d to view
    Thee, that they thought their countlesse eyes too few
    For such an object; and would needes create
    A better influence to attend thy state?
    Or would the Fates thereby shew to the earth
    A Cæsars birth, as once a Cæsars death?
    And was ’t that newes that made pale Cynthia run
    In so great hast to intercept the sunn;
    And, enviously, so shee might gaine thy sight,
    Would darken him from whome shee had her light?
    Mysterious prodigies yet sure they bee,
    Prognosticks of a rare prosperity:
    For, can thy life promise lesse good to men,
    Whose birth was th’ envy, and the care of heav’ne?




ON THE BIRTH OF THE YOUNG PRINCE CHARLES.


    When private men gett sonnes they get a spoone[78],
    Without ecclypse, or any starr at noone:
    When kings gett sonnes, they get withall supplyes
    And succours, farr beyond all subsedyes.
    Wellcome, Gods loane! thou tribute to the State,
    Thou mony newly coyn’d, thou fleete of plate!
    Thrice happy childe! whome God thy father sent
    To make him rich without a parliament!




VINCENT CORBET,


The only son of the poet, was born (if the authority of a manuscript
in the Harleian collection may be relied upon, in which this pathetic
address appears,) on the 10th of November, 1627. From the following
injunction in the bishop’s will[79], it seems he was educated at one
of the universities: “I commit and commend the nurture and maintenance
of my sonne and daughter unto the faythfull and loving care of my
mother-in-law, declaring my intent, &c., that my sonne be placed at
Oxford or Cambridge, where I require him, upon my blessing, to apply
himself to his booke studiously and industriously.”

In 1648 he administered to the will[80] of his grandmother Anne Hutton;
and of the further circumstances of his life I am ignorant.




TO HIS SON, VINCENT CORBET,

On his BIRTH-DAY, November 10, 1630, being then Three Years old.


    What I shall leave thee none can tell,
    But all shall say I wish thee well;
    I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth,
    Both bodily and ghostly health:
    Nor too much wealth, nor wit, come to thee,
    So much of either may undo thee.
    I wish thee learning, not for show,
    Enough for to instruct, and know;
    Not such as gentlemen require,
    To prate at table, or at fire.
    I wish thee all thy mothers graces,
    Thy fathers fortunes, and his places.
    I wish thee friends, and one at court,
    Not to build on, but support;
    To keep thee, not in doing many
    Oppressions, but from suffering any.
    I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
    Nor lazy nor contentious days;
    And when thy soul and body part,
    As innocent as now thou art[81].




AN EPITAPH ON DR. DONNE, DEAN OF PAULS.

Born in 1573; died March 31, 1631.



    He that would write an epitaph for thee,
    And do it well, must first begin to be
    Such as thou wert; for none can truly know
    Thy worth, thy life, but he that hath liv’d so.
    He must have wit to spare, and to hurl down
    Enough to keep the gallants of the town;
    He must have learning plenty, both the laws
    Civil and common, to judge any cause;
    Divinity great store, above the rest,
    Not of the last edition, but the best.
    He must have language, travel, all the arts,
    Judgment to use, or else he wants thy parts:
    He must have friends the highest, able to do,
    Such as Mecænas and Augustus too.
    He must have such a sickness, such a death,
    Or else his vain descriptions come beneath.
    Who then shall write an epitaph for thee,
    He must be dead first; let ’t alone for me.




CERTAIN FEW WOORDES SPOKEN CONCERNINGE ONE BENET CORBETT AFTER HER
DECEASE.

She died October the 2d, Anno 1634.

(From MS. Harl. No. 464.)


    Here, or not many feet from hence,
    The virtue lies call’d Patience.
    Sickness and Death did do her honour
    By loosing paine and feare upon her.
    Tis true they forst her to a grave,
    That’s all the triumph that they have....
    A silly one.... Retreat o’er night
    Proves conquest in the morning-fight:
    She will rise up against them both....
    All sleep, believe it, is not sloth.
      And, thou that read’st her elegie,
    Take something of her historie:
    She had one husband and one sonne;
    Ask who they were, and then have doone.




ITER BOREALE


Seems a sort of imitation of Horace’s Brundusian journey. Davenant has “a
journey into Worcestershire” (page 215. fol. edit.) in a similar vein,
says Headley. If the popularity of this poem may be estimated by the
frequency of manuscript copies in the public libraries, we may conclude
it was valued very highly, as the transcripts of it are very numerous.

Misled by one of these, I considered this poem, the longest and most
celebrated of bishop Corbet’s productions, to have been written in
1625: subsequent examination has induced me to place the date of its
composition considerably earlier: the reasons on which this opinion is
grounded, will be detailed in the following analysis of the Tour.

Our author commences his journey from Oxford in a company consisting
of four persons, two of whom then were, and two of whom wished to be,
doctors: but there is nothing in the course of the tour to show us
which of the classes he belonged to, unless we are to suppose, from the
shortness of cash which discovers itself before the termination of his
adventures, that he was rather one of those who had wealth in expectancy
than in possession.

[Sidenote: 30]

[Sidenote: 12]

They set off on the 10th of August, and, long as the days are about that
period, had a good chance of sharpening their appetites by their first
half-day’s ride, thirty miles before dinner, when they sat down to dine
with Dr. Christopher Middleton, at his rectory of Ashton on the Wall in
Northamptonshire, about eight miles north of Banbury; where we learn that
their entertainment was better than the looks of their host, whom they
left in the evening, and rode to Flore, about twelve miles north-east,
and took up their lodgings for the night.

At Flore they were entertained by a country surgeon, or (in the vulgar
phrase) bone-setter, the tenant of Dr. Leonard Hutton, the rector of
Flore and dean of Christ-Church, who fed them upon venison.

[Sidenote: 5]

The third morning they set off for Daventry, about five miles. Here it
happened to be the market- and lecture-day: and after having washed down
the dust which their throats had acquired in the ride, one of them was
summoned by the serjeant at mace to deliver the lecture; for which they
were all rewarded with thanks and wine.

[Sidenote: 16]

[Sidenote: 13]

The fourth morning they rode to Lutterworth in Leicestershire, about
sixteen miles. This was once the benefice of Wickliffe, the father of
English reformers; and here the tourist very properly remarks on the
double injustice done to that venerable character, first by the Papists
in burning his body, and afterwards by the Puritans in destroying the
sacred memorial of the interment of his ashes. At Lutterworth they were
met by a parson, who though well-beneficed was better-mannered, and was
their guide to his dwelling within a mile of Leicester. A note on the
older editions of Corbet calls this gentleman the Parson of Heathcot:
but there is no place of the name of Heathcot in that neighbourhood;
and as, by comparison with other parts of the tour in which miles are
mentioned, one mile will be invariably found to signify one and a half at
the least; and as less than two reputed miles is accounted only one mile
in the distance of places, I presume it was Ayleston, and not Heathcot,
where the party rested, and were regaled with stale beer. At length they
arrived at Leicester, thirteen miles north of Lutterworth, where, passing
over six steeples and two hospitals, (“one hospital twice told,”)
which he refers to the eye of Camden, he censures the ignorance of the
alms-man, who, notwithstanding it was written on the walls that Henry
of Grisemont laid the foundation, told them it was John of Gaunt. Henry
Plantagenet, earl of Lancaster, was the first founder of the hospital
in the Newark at Leicester in the year 1330, which was considerably
enlarged and improved, and converted into a college by his son Henry, the
good duke of Lancaster, in 1355; but there is a more general sense in
which the word Founder is used, namely, that in which it is extended to
all those who inherit, either by descent or by purchase, the patronage
under the original founder. And in this sense it may be applied to John
of Gaunt, the second duke of Lancaster, who married his near kinswoman
the heiress of the former duke, and perfected both in buildings and
endowments what the others had commenced. The other hospital alluded to,
is that founded by William Wigston, merchant of the Staple, about 1520.

The tourist next observes on the extortion of the innkeeper, who,
reckoning by the number of his guests rather than the goodness of his
provision, charged them seven shillings and sixpence for bread and beer;
but, after a kindly caution to the publican to forbear such cozenage upon
Divines in future, lest they should be suspected of drinking as freely
as he charges them, turns from a subject so unworthy of his Pegasus in
disgust, and inquires if this be not the burial-place of Richard the
Third; and, finding that there is no memorial for him, moralizes upon the
neglected state in which he lies, as the eventual fate of all greatness:
then from Richard proceeds to Wolsey, who was also buried at Leicester,
and produces similar reflections; and from Wolsey, to William the ostler
of the inn, who outdoes the company in years as well as drink, and calls
them to horse as imperiously as if he had a warrant from the earl of
Nottingham.

The earl of Nottingham here glanced at was Charles lord Howard of
Effingham, lord high admiral of England under queen Elizabeth and king
James the First. He died in 1624.

[Sidenote: 25]

From Leicester to Nottingham (twenty-five miles) the travellers pass
without noticing any thing on their way, until approaching the latter
place they cross the Trent, pray to St. Andrew as they ride up hill, into
the town, and observe that the people burrow, like conies, in caverns,
from whence the smoke ascends at the feet of the woman who stands on the
surface watching, down the chimney, the cooking of her dinner. The part
of the town at which they enter is described as the Rocky Parish, higher
than the rest; and the church of St. Mary, as embracing her Baby in her
arms. From hence they proceed to the Castle, which is described as a
ruin, with two statues of giants at the gates, whom the tourist severely
censures for their negligence in permitting their charge to come to ruin,
and reproaches them with the fidelity of the giants at Guildhall and
Holmeby, who had carefully kept the buildings committed to their charge
when the founders were dead. The poet might still compliment the giants
at Guildhall; but of Holmeby (Holdenby House, Northamptonshire, built
by queen Elizabeth’s lord chancellor, sir Christopher Hatton,) not one
stone remains upon another: nay, the very memory of the giants might have
perished but for the Iter Boreale.

The travellers then go to dinner at the Bull’s Head, where the archbishop
of York had been before them, and where their discontent with bed and
diet was answered by a reference to the satisfaction which _he_ had
received; and where the aged landlord, formerly an ostler, is noticed as
a rare example to those who have an itch for gold.

[Sidenote: 20]

Their next stage was to Newark, (about twenty miles, or, according to
the reckoning of the poet, twelve), which is spoken of as no journey,
but only a walk; and the banks of the Trent as so fertile and beautiful,
that the English river takes away the palm from the celebrated Meander.
The pleasure of this part of their journey was not diminished by their
reception at Newark, where they met with a friend, out of respect to whom
the town united as a family to give the travellers a hearty welcome; and
even the landlord of one inn did not repine that they had passed his
house to go to another, and the landlord of the inn where they rested
was more solicitous of their approbation than his own profit. The very
beggars rather prayed for their friend than begged of his guests, and the
Puritans were willing to “let the organs play,” if the visitors would
tarry.

From Newark they saw Bever (Belvoir) and Lincoln, and would fain have
gone there but for the limitation on their purse and horses. At three
o’clock they set off, with twenty (thirty) miles to ride, (probably to
Melton Mowbray); and having neither guide, nor horse of speed, after
losing their way, two hours after sun-set blundered upon a village, from
whence they obtained a guide to Loughborough. From thence they set off
next morning for Bosworth, (eighteen miles,) but in their way thither
are lost in Charley Forest, and ask their way from the travellers they
meet about the coal-mines at Coalorton, without receiving an answer; when
William, their attendant, seeing a man approach, imagines himself to be
in Fairyland. But the party are agreeably surprised by finding him one of
the keepers of the forest, who conducts them within view of Bosworth.

At Bosworth they meet with far better treatment than the appearance
of the place had promised; and, when their host there, who was their
guide the next morning, brought them near to the field on which the
battle of Bosworth was fought, are greatly amused by his romantic
description of the battle. The guide seems to leave them at Nuneaton in
Warwickshire, six miles (about nine) from Bosworth; from whence they
proceed to Coventry, nine miles; and from thence, having scarcely had
time to dine, depart for Kenilworth, five miles, where they are offended
by the indecency of an aged parson, who attended the servant of the
lord Leicester, it is presumed, to show them the Castle. The Castle of
Kenilworth was once the splendid residence of Robert Dudley, earl of
Leicester, one of the favourites of queen Elizabeth, and on his death,
in 1588, passed to his son, Robert Dudley, who used the title of earl
of Leicester,—but by a decree of the Star-Chamber was declared to be
illegitimate, and from disgust at that sentence retired into Italy, under
a license for three years; and being summoned by the privy-council, at
the instigation of his enemies, to return into England, and refusing to
obey the summons, the Castle of Kenilworth was, for his contumacy, seized
by the Crown under the statute of Fugitives; and Henry prince of Wales,
in the year 1611, purchased a release of the inheritance of it from sir
Robert Dudley, who was to have the constableship of the Castle, under
prince Henry, for life. It does not appear, however, that sir Robert
Dudley resided at Kenilworth afterwards: he probably had little regard
for a place of which he had been compelled to relinquish the inheritance.
This may account for the neglected state in which it was found by our
poet and his companions.

From Kenilworth they proceed to Warwick, three (five) miles, noticing
in their way the Cave of the celebrated hero of English romance, Guy
earl of Warwick, as also his Pillar: and at Warwick we have a humorous
description of the landlady of the inn. From the inn they proceed to the
Castle, where they are received by “the lord of all this frame, the
honourable Chancellor,” whose politeness and elegance of manners receive
favourable notice. Sir Fulk Greville obtained a grant of Warwick Castle
from king James the First, in the second year of his reign, (1604,)
and was about the same time appointed chancellor of the exchequer; and
resigned his office of chancellor, on being elevated to the peerage by
the title of lord Brooke, 19th of January, 1620-21. It may be observed,
that the author of the Iter notices him as an honourable chancellor, not
as noble lord; which he certainly would have done if the Iter had not
been of an earlier date than 1621.

With sir Fulk Greville they found a prelate of the church, an archdeacon,
whom a note in the old editions calls archdeacon Burton. This, I presume,
was Samuel Burton, A. M. of Christ-Church, Oxford, who paid first-fruits
for the archdeaconry of Gloucester, in the cathedral of Gloucester, the
9th of May, 1607, and died the 14th of June, 1634, and was buried at
Dry-Drayton in Gloucestershire. He is described as sufficiently corpulent
to deserve the displeasure of the Puritans, whom our author never loses
an opportunity of lashing.

From Warwick they arrive at Flore, (about twenty-one miles,) having been
able to make both ends (of their purse) meet; and, after staying there
four days, arrive at Banbury on St. Bartholomew’s day, (24th of August,)
desirous to see what sport the saint would produce there. At this place
(where they rested at the sign of the Altar-Stone) the tourist finds
the altar converted into an inn, and, judging by the sign, lodged in a
chapel, but, by the wine, in a bankrupt tavern; and yet, by the coffins
converted into horse-troughs, a church. But though you may judge, by what
is found at the inn, that the church is full of monuments, you will be
disappointed; for there was not an inscription in the church except the
names of the last year’s churchwardens,—with buckets and cobwebs hanging,
instead of painted saints, in the windows. In short, the town seems to
have been a strange collection of sectaries differing from each other.

From hence he returns to Oxford, twenty-two miles, with as little coin in
his purse as sir Walter Raleigh brought from his unsuccessful expedition
to Guiana in 1618; between which period and 1621 it is clear the poem was
written.




ITER BOREALE.


    Foure clerkes of Oxford, doctours two, and two
    That would be doctors, having lesse to do
    With Augustine then with Galen in vacation,
    Chang’d studyes, and turn’d bookes to recreation:
    And on the tenth of August, northward bent
    A journey, not so soon conceiv’d as spent.
    The first halfe day they rode, they light upon
    A noble cleargy host, Kitt Middleton[82];
    Who, numb’ring out good dishes with good tales,
    The major part o’ th’ cheere weigh’d downe the scales:
    And though the countenance makes the feast, (say bookes,)
    Wee nere found better welcome with worse lookes.
    Here wee pay’d thankes and parted; and at night
    Had entertainement, all in one mans right[83],
    At Flore, a village; where our tenant shee,
    Sharp as a winters morning, feirce yet free,
    With a leane visage, like a carved face
    On a court cupboard, offer’d up the place.
    Shee pleas’d us well; but, yet, her husband better;
    A harty fellow, and a good bone-setter[84].
    Now, whether it were providence or lucke,
    Whether the keepers or the stealers bucke,
    There wee had ven’son; such as Virgill slew
    When he would feast Æneas and his crew.
    Here wee consum’d a day; and the third morne
    To Daintry with a land-wind were wee borne.
    It was the market and the lecture-day,
    For lecturers sell sermons, as the lay
    Doe sheep and oxen; have their seasons just
    For both their marketts: there wee dranke downe dust.
    In th’ interim comes a most officious drudge[85],
    His face and gowne drawne out with the same budge;
    His pendant pouch, which was both large and wide,
    Lookt like a letters-patent by his side:
    He was as awfull, as he had bin sent
    From Moses with th’ elev’nth commandement;
    And one of us he sought; a sonne of Flore
    He must bid stand, and challendge for an hower.
    The doctors both were quitted of that feare,
    The one was hoarce, the other was not there;
    Wherefore him of the two he seazed, best
    Able to answere him of all the rest:
    Because hee neede but ruminate that ore
    Which he had chew’d the Sabbath-day before.
    And though he were resolv’d to doe him right,
    For Mr. Balyes sake, and Mr. Wright[86],
    Yet he dissembled that the mace did erre;
    That he nor deacon was, nor minister.
    No! quoth the serjeant; sure then, by relation,
    You have a licence, sir, or toleration:
    And if you have no orders ’tis the better,
    So you have Dods Præcepts, or Cleavers Letters[87].
    Thus looking on his mace, and urging still
    Twas Mr. Wrights and Mr. Bayleyes will
    That hee should mount; at last he condiscended
    To stopp the gapp; and so the treaty ended.
    The sermon pleas’d, and, when we were to dine,
    Wee all had preachers wages, thankes and wine.
    Our next dayes stage was Lutterworth[88], a towne
    Not willing to be noted or sett downe
    By any traveller; for, when w’ had bin
    Through at both ends, wee could not finde an inne:
    Yet, for the church sake, turne and light wee must,
    Hoping to see one dramme of Wickliffs dust[89];
    But wee found none: for underneath the pole
    Noe more rests of his body then his soule.
    Abused martyr! how hast thou bin torne
    By two wilde factions! First, the Papists burne
    Thy bones for hate; the Puritans, in zeale,
    They sell thy marble, and thy brasse they steale.
    A parson[90] mett us there, who had good store
    Of livings, some say, but of manners more;
    In whose streight chearefull age a man might see
    Well govern’d fortune, bounty wise and free.
    He was our guide to Leister, save one mile,
    There was his dwelling, where wee stay’d awhile,
    And dranke stale beere, I thinke was never new,
    Which the dun wench that brought it us did brew.
    And now wee are at Leister, where wee shall
    Leape ore six steeples, and one hospitall
    Twice told; but those great landmarkes I referr
    To Camdens eye, Englands chorographer.
    Let mee observe that almesmans heraldrye,
    Who being ask’d, what Henry that should be
    That was their founder, duke of Lancaster,
    Answer’d: Twas John of Gaunt, I assure you, sir;
    And so confuted all the walles, which sayd
    Henry of Grisemond this foundation layd.
    The next thing to be noted was our cheere,
    Enlarg’d, with seav’ne and sixpence bread and beere!
    But, oh you wretched tapsters as you are,
    Who reckon by our number, not your ware,
    And sett false figures for all companyes,
    Abusing innocent meales with oathes and lyes;
    Forbeare your coos’nage to Divines that come,
    Least they be thought to drinke up all your summe.
    Spare not the Laity in your reckoning thus,
    But sure your theft is scandalous to us.
    Away, my muse, from this base subject, know
    Thy Pegasus nere strooke his foote soe low.
    Is not th’ usurping Richard buryed here,
    That king of hate, and therefore slave of feare;
    Dragg’d from the fatall feild Bosworth, where hee
    Lost life, and, what he liv’d for,—cruelty?
    Search; find his name: but there is none. Oh kings!
    Remember whence your power and vastnesse springs;
    If not as Richard now, so shall you bee;
    Who hath no tombe, but scorne and memorye.
    And though that Woolsey from his store might save
    A pallace, or a colledge for his grave,
    Yet there he lyes interred as if all
    Of him to be remembred were his fall.
    Nothing but earth to earth, no pompeous waight
    Upon him, but a pibble or a quaite.
    If thou art thus neglected, what shall wee[91]
    Hope after death, who are but shreads of thee?
    Hold! William calls to horse; William is hee,
    Who, though he never saw threescore and three,
    Ore-reckons us in age, as he before
    In drink, and will baite nothing of foure score:
    And he commands, as if the warrant came
    From the great earle himselfe of Nottingham.
    There wee crost Trent, and on the other side
    Prayd to Saint Andrew; and up hill wee ride.
    Where wee observ’d the cunning men, like moles,
    Dwell not in howses, but were earth’t in holes;
    So did they not builde upwards, but digg thorough,
    As hermitts caves, or conyes do their borough:
    Great underminers sure as any where;
    Tis thought the Powder-traitors practis’d there.
    Would you not thinke the men stood on their heads,
    When gardens cover howses there, like leades;
    And on the chymneyes topp the mayd may know
    Whether her pottage boyle or not, below;
    There cast in hearbes, and salt, or bread; their meate
    Contented rather with the smoake then heate?
    This was the Rocky-Parish; higher stood
    Churches and houses, buildings stone and wood;
    Crosses not yet demolish’t; and our Ladye
    With her armes on, embracing her whole Baby[92].
    Where let us note, though those are northerne parts,
    The Crosse finds in them more then southerne hearts.
    The Castle’s next; but what shall I report
    Of that which is a ruine, was a fort?
    The gates two statues keepe, which gyants[93] are,
    To whome it seemes committed was the care
    Of the whole downfall. If it be your fault;
    If you are guilty; may king Davids vault[94],
    Or Mortimers darke hole[95], contain you both[96]!
    A just reward for so prophane a sloth.
    And if hereafter tidings shall be brought
    Of any place or office to be bought,
    And the left lead, or unwedg’d timber yet
    Shall pass by your consent to purchase it;
    May your deformed bulkes endure the edge
    Of axes, feele the beetle and the wedge!
    May all the ballads be call’d in and dye,
    Which sing the warrs of Colebrand and sir Guy!
    Oh you that doe Guild-hall and Holmeby keepe
    Soe carefully, when both the founders sleepe,
    You are good giants, and partake no shame
    With those two worthlesse trunkes of Nottinghame:
    Looke to your severall charges; wee must goe,
    Though greiv’d at heart to leave a castle so.
    The Bull-head[97] is the word, and wee must eate;
    Noe sorrow can descend soe deepe as meate:
    So to the inne wee come; where our best cheere
    Was, that his grace of Yorke had lodged there:
    Hee was objected to us when wee call,
    Or dislike ought: “My lords grace” answers all:
    “Hee was contented with this bed, this dyett.”
    That keepes our discontented stomackes quiett.
    The inne-keeper was old, fourescore allmost,
    Indeede an embleme rather then an host;
    In whome wee read how God and Time decree
    To honour thrifty ostlers, such as hee.
    For in the stable first he did begin;
    Now see hee is sole lord of the whole inne:
    Mark the encrease of straw and hay, and how,
    By thrift, a bottle may become a mow.
    Marke him, all you that have the golden itch,
    All whome God hath condemned to be rich[98].
    Farwell, glad father of thy daughter Maris,
    Thou ostler-phœnix, thy example rare is.
      Wee are for Newarke after this sad talke;
    And whither tis noe journey, but a walke.
    Nature is wanton there, and the high-way
    Seem’d to be private, though it open lay;
    As if some swelling lawyer, for his health,
    Or frantick usurer, to tame his wealth,
    Had chosen out ten miles by Trent, to trye
    Two great effects of art and industry.
    The ground wee trodd was meddow, fertile land,
    New trimm’d and levell’d by the mowers hand;
    Above it grew a roke, rude, steepe, and high,
    Which claimes a kind of reverence from the eye:
    Betwixt them both there glides a lively streame,
    Not loud, but swifte: Mæander was a theame
    Crooked and rough; but had the poetts seene
    Straight, even Trent, it had immortall bin.
    This side the open plaine admitts the sunne
    To halfe the river; there did silver runne:
    The other halfe ran clowdes; where the curl’d wood
    With his exalted head threaten’d the floude.
    Here could I wish us ever passing by
    And never past; now Newarke is too nigh:
    And as a Christmas seemes a day but short,
    Deluding time with revells and good sport;
    So did these beauteous mixtures us beguile,
    And the whole twelve, being travail’d, seem’d a mile.
    Now as the way was sweet, soe was the end;
    Our passage easy, and our prize a friend[99],
    Whome there wee did enjoy; and for whose sake,
    As for a purer kinde of coyne, men make
    Us liberall welcome; with such harmony
    As the whole towne had bin his family.
    Mine host of the next inne did not repine
    That wee preferr’d the Heart, and past his signe:
    And where wee lay, the host and th’ hostesse faine
    Would shew our love was aym’d at, not their gaine:
    The very beggars were s’ ingenious,
    They rather prayd for him, then begg’d of us.
    And, soe the Doctors friends will please to stay,
    The Puritans will let the organs play.
    Would they pull downe the gallery, builded new,
    With the church-wardens seat and Burleigh-pew,
    Newarke, for light and beauty, might compare
    With any church, but what cathedralls are.
    To this belongs a vicar[100], who succeded
    The friend I mention’d; such a one there needed;
    A man whose tongue and life is eloquent,
    Able to charme those mutinous heads of Trent,
    And urge the Canon home, when they conspire
    Against the crosse and bells with swords and fire.
    There stood a Castle, too; they shew us here
    The roome where the King slep’t[101], the window where
    He talk’t with such a lord, how long he staid
    In his discourse, and all, but what he said.
    From hence, without a perspective, wee see
    Bever and Lincolne, where wee faine would bee;
    But that our purse and horses both are bound
    Within the circuite of a narrower ground.
    Our purpose is all homeward, and ’twas time
    At parting to have witt, as well as rime;
    Full three a clock, and twenty miles to ride,
    Will aske a speedy horse, and a sure guide;
    Wee wanted both: and Loughborow may glory,
    Errour hath made it famous in our story.
    Twas night, and the swifte horses of the Sunne
    Two houres before our jades their race had runn;
    Noe pilott moone, nor any such kinde starre
    As governd those wise men that came from farre
    To holy Bethlem; such lights had there bin,
    They would have soone convay’d us to an inne;
    But all were wandring-starrs; and wee, as they,
    Were taught noe course, but to ride on and stray.
    When (oh the fate of darknesse, who hath tride it)
    Here our whole fleete is scatter’d and divided;
    And now wee labour more to meete, then erst
    Wee did to lodge; the last cry drownes the first:
    Our voyces are all spent, and they that follow
    Can now no longer track us by the hollow;
    They curse the formost, wee the hindmost, both
    Accusing with like passion, hast, and sloth.
    At last, upon a little towne wee fall,
    Where some call drinke, and some a candle call:
    Unhappy wee, such stragglers as wee are
    Admire a candle offner then a starre:
    Wee care not for those glorious lampes a loofe,
    Give us a tallow-light and a dry roofe.
    And now wee have a guide wee cease to chafe,
    And now w’ have time to pray the rest be safe.
    Our guide before cryes Come, and wee the while
    Ride blindfold, and take bridges for a stile:
    Till at the last wee overcame the darke,
    And spight of night and errour hitt the marke.
    Some halfe howre after enters the whole tayle,
    As if they were committed to the jayle:
    The constable, that tooke them thus divided,
    Made them seeme apprehended, and not guided:
    Where, when wee had our fortunes both detested,
    Compassion made us friends, and so wee rested.
    ’Twas quickly morning, though by our short stay
    Wee could not find that wee had lesse to pay.
    All travellers, this heavy judgement heare:
    “A handsome hostesse makes the reckoning deare;”
    Her smiles, her wordes, your purses must requite them,
    And every wellcome from her, adds an item.
    Glad to be gon from thence at any rate,
    For Bosworth wee are horst: Behold the state
    Of mortall men! Foule Errour is a mother,
    And, pregnant once, doth soone bring forth an other;
    Wee, who last night did learne to loose our way,
    Are perfect since, and farther out next day.
    And in a forrest[102] having travell’d sore,
    Like wandring Bevis ere hee found the bore;
    Or as some love-sick lady oft hath donne,
    Ere shee was rescued by the Knight of th’ Sunne:
    Soe are wee lost, and meete no comfort then
    But carts and horses, wiser then the men.
    Which is the way? They neyther speake nor point;
    Their tongues and fingers both were out of joynt:
    Such monsters by Coal-Orton bankes there sitt,
    After their resurrection from the pitt.
    Whilst in this mill wee labour and turne round
    As in a conjurers circle, William found
    A menes for our deliverance: Turne your cloakes,
    Quoth hee, for Puck is busy in these oakes:
    If ever yee at Bosworth will be found,
    Then turne your cloakes, for this is Fayry-ground.
    But, ere this witchcraft was perform’d, wee mett
    A very man, who had no cloven feete;
    Though William, still of little faith, doth doubt
    Tis Robin, or some sprite that walkes about:
    Strike him, quoth hee, and it will turne to ayre;
    Crosse your selves thrice and strike it: Strike that dare,
    Thought I, for sure this massy forrester
    In stroakes will prove the better conjurer.
    But twas a gentle keeper, one that knew
    Humanity, and manners where they grew;
    And rode along soe farr till he could say,
    See yonder Bosworth stands, and this your way.
    And now when wee had swett ’twixt sunn and sunn,
    And eight miles long to thirty broad had spun;
    Wee learne the just proportion from hence
    Of the diameter and circumference.
    That night yet made amends; our meat and sheetes
    Were farr above the promise of those streetes;
    Those howses, that were tilde with straw and mosse,
    Profest but weake repaire for that dayes losse
    Of patience: yet this outside lets us know,
    The worthyest things make not the bravest show:
    The shott was easy; and what concernes us more,
    The way was so; mine host doth ride before.
    Mine host was full of ale and history;
    And on the morrow when hee brought us nigh
    Where the two Roses[103] joyn’d, you would suppose,
    Chaucer nere made the Romant of the Rose.
    Heare him. See yee yon wood? There Richard lay,
    With his whole army: Looke the other way,
    And loe where Richmond in a bed of gorsse
    Encampt himselfe ore night, and all his force:
    Upon this hill they mett. Why, he could tell
    The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell:
    Besides what of his knowledge he could say,
    He had authenticke notice from the Play;
    Which I might guesse, by’s mustring up the ghosts,
    And policyes, not incident to hosts;
    But cheifly by that one perspicuous thing,
    Where he mistooke a player for a king.
    For when he would have sayd, King Richard dyed,
    And call’d—A horse! a horse!—he, Burbidge cry’de[104].
    Howere his talke, his company pleas’d well;
    His mare went truer then his chronicle;
    And even for conscience sake, unspurr’d, unbeaten,
    Brought us six miles, and turn’d tayle at Nuneaton.
    From thence to Coventry, where wee scarcely dine;
    Our stomackes only warm’d with zeale and wine:
    And then, as if wee were predestin’d forth,
    Like Lot from Sodome, fly to Killingworth.
    The keeper of the castle was from home,
    Soe that halfe mile wee lost; yet when wee come
    An host receiv’d us there, wee’l nere deny him,
    My lord of Leisters man; the parson by him,
    Who had no other proofe to testify
    He serv’d the Lord, but age and baudery[105].
    Away, for shame, why should foure miles devide
    Warwicke and us? They that have horses ride.
    A short mile from the towne, an humble shrine[106]
    At foote of an high rock consists, in signe
    Of Guy and his devotions; who there stands
    Ugly and huge, more then a man on ’s hands:
    His helmett steele, his gorgett mayl, his sheild
    Brass, made the chappell fearefull as a feild.
    And let this answere all the Popes complaints;
    Wee sett up gyants though wee pull downe saintes.
    Beyond this, in the roadway as wee went,
    A pillar stands, where this Colossus leant;
    Where he would sigh and love, and, for hearts ease,
    Oftimes write verses (some say) such as these:
    “Here will I languish in this silly bower,
    Whilst my true love triumphes in yon high tower.”
    No other hinderance now, but wee may passe
    Cleare to our inne: Oh there an hostesse was,
    To whome the Castle and the Dun Cow are
    Sights after dinner; shee is morning ware.
    Her whole behaviour borrowed was, and mixt,
    Halfe foole, halfe puppet, and her pace betwixt
    Measure and jigge; her court’sy was an honour;
    Her gate, as if her neighbour had out-gon her.
    Shee was barrd up in whale-bones which doe leese
    None of the whales length; for they reach’d her knees:
    Off with her head, and then shee hath a middle:
    As her wast stands, shee lookes like the new fiddle,
    The favorite Theorbo, (truth to tell yee,)
    Whose neck and throat are deeper then the belly[107].
    Have you seene monkyes chain’d about the loynes,
    Or pottle-potts with rings? Just soe shee joynes
    Her selfe together: A dressing shee doth love
    In a small print below, and text above.
    What though her name be King, yet tis noe treason,
    Nor breach of statute, for to aske the reason
    Of her brancht ruffe, a cubit every poke:
    I seeme to wound her, but shee strook the stroke
    At our departure; and our worshipps there
    Pay’d for our titles deare as any where:
    Though beadles and professors both have done,
    Yet every inne claimes augmentation.
    Please you walke out and see the Castle[108]? Come,
    The owner saith, it is a schollers home;
    A place of strength and health: in the same fort,
    You would conceive a castle and a court.
    The orchards, gardens, rivers, and the aire,
    Doe with the trenches, rampires, walls, compare:
    It seemes nor art nor force can intercept it,
    As if a lover built, a souldier kept it.
    Up to the tower, though it be steepe and high,
    Wee doe not climbe but walke; and though the eye
    Seeme to be weary, yet our feet are still
    In the same posture cozen’d up the hill:
    And thus the workemans art deceaves our sence,
    Making those rounds of pleasure a defence.
    As wee descend, the lord of all this frame,
    The honorable Chancellour, towards us came[109].
    Above the hill there blew a gentle breath,
    Yet now we see a gentler gale beneath.
    The phrase and wellcome of this knight did make
    The seat more elegant; every word he spake
    Was wine and musick, which he did expose
    To us, if all our art could censure those.
    With him there was a prelate[110], by his place
    Arch-deacon to the byshopp, by his face
    A greater man; for that did counterfeit
    Lord abbot of some covent standing yet,
    A corpulent relique: marry and tis sinne
    Some Puritan gets not his face call’d in;
    Amongst leane brethren it may scandall bring,
    Who seeke for parity in every thing.
    For us, let him enjoy all that God sends,
    Plenty of flesh, of livings, and of freinds.
    Imagine here us ambling downe the street,
    Circling in Flower, making both ends meet:
    Where wee fare well foure dayes, and did complain,
    Like harvest folkes, of weather and the raine:
    And on the feast of Barthol’mew wee try
    What revells that saint keepes at Banbury[111].
    In th’ name of God, Amen! First to begin,
    The altar was translated to an inne;
    Wee lodged in a chappell by the signe,
    But in a banquerupt taverne by the wine:
    Besides, our horses usage made us thinke
    Twas still a church, for they in coffins drinke[112];
    As if twere congruous that the ancients lye
    Close by those alters in whose faith they dye.
    Now yee beleeve the Church hath good varietye
    Of monuments, when inns have such satiety;
    But nothing lesse: ther’s no inscription there,
    But the church-wardens names of the last yeare:
    Instead of saints in windowes and on walls,
    Here bucketts hang, and there a cobweb falls:
    Would you not sweare they love antiquity,
    Who brush the quire for perpetuity?
    Whilst all the other pavement and the floore
    Are supplicants to the surveyors power
    Of the high wayes, that he would gravell keepe;
    For else in winter sure it will be deepe.
    If not for Gods, for Mr. Wheatlyes sake
    Levell the walkes; suppose these pittfalls make
    Him spraine a lecture, or misplace a joynt
    In his long prayer, or his fiveteenth point:
    Thinke you the dawes or stares can sett him right?
    Surely this sinne upon your heads must light.
    And say, beloved, what unchristian charme
    Is this? you have not left a legg or arme
    Of an apostle: think you, were they whole,
    That they would rise, at least assume a soule?
    If not, ’tis plaine all the idolatry
    Lyes in your folly, not th’ imagery.
    Tis well the pinnacles are falne in twaine;
    For now the divell, should he tempt againe,
    Hath noe advantage of a place soe high:
    Fooles, he can dash you from your gallery,
    Where all your medly meete; and doe compare,
    Not what you learne, but who is longest there;
    The Puritan, the Anabaptist, Brownist,
    Like a grand sallet: Tinkers, what a towne ist?
    The crosses also, like old stumps of trees,
    Are stooles for horsemen that have feeble knees;
    Carry noe heads above ground: They which tell,
    That Christ hath nere descended into hell,
    But to the grave, his picture buried have
    In a far deeper dungeon then a grave:
    That is, descended to endure what paines
    The divell can think, or such disciples braines.
    No more my greife, in such prophane abuses
    Good whipps make better verses then the muses.
    Away, and looke not back; away, whilst yet
    The church is standing, whilst the benefitt
    Of seeing it remaines; ere long you shall
    Have that rac’t downe, and call’d Apocryphal,
    And in some barne heare cited many an author,
    Kate Stubbs, Anne Askew, or the Ladyes daughter[113];
    Which shall be urg’d for fathers. Stopp Disdaine,
    When Oxford once appears, Satyre refraine.
    Neighbours, how hath our anger thus out gon ’s?
    Is not Saint Giles’s this, and that Saint Johns?
    Wee are return’d; but just with soe much ore
    As Rawleigh from his voyage, and noe more.

    _Non recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus,_
    _Non ubivis, coramve quibuslibet._

                               HOR. lib. i. sat. 4.




ON MR. RICE, THE MANCIPLE OF CHRIST-CHURCH IN OXFORD.


    Who can doubt, Rice, but to th’ eternall place
    Thy soule is fledd, that did but know thy face?
    Whose body was soe light, it might have gone
    To heav’ne without a resurrection.
    Indeed thou wert all type; thy limmes were signes,
    Thy arteryes but mathematicke lines:
    As if two soules had made thy compound good,
    That both should live by faith, and none by blood.




ON HENRY BOLINGS.


    If gentleness could tame the Fates, or wit
    Deliver man, Bolings had not di’d yet;
    But One which over us in judgment sits,
    Doth say our sins are stronger than our wits.




ON JOHN DAWSON, BUTLER OF CHRIST-CHURCH.


    Dawson the butler’s dead: Although I think
    Poets were ne’re infus’d with single drink,
    I’ll spend a farthing, muse; a watry verse
    Will serve the turn to cast upon his herse.
    If any cannot weep amongst us here,
    Take off his cup, and so squeeze out a tear.
    Weep, O ye barrels! let your drippings fall
    In trickling streams; make waste more prodigal
    Than when our beer was good, that John may float
    To Styx in beer, and lift up Charons boat
    With wholsome waves: and, as the conduits ran
    With claret at the Coronation,
    So let your channels flow with single tiff,
    For John, I hope, is crown’d: Take off your whiff,
    Ye men of rosemary[114], and drink up all,
    Remembring ’tis a butlers funeral:
    Had he been master of good double beer,
    My life for his, John Dawson had been here.




ON GREAT TOM OF CHRIST-CHURCH.


    Be dumb, ye infant-chimes, thump not your mettle,
    That ne’re out-ring a tinker and his kettle;
    Cease, all you petty larums; for, to-day
    Is young Tom’s resurrection from the clay:
    And know, when Tom rings out his knells,
    The best of you will be but dinner-bells.
    Old Tom’s grown young again, the fiery cave
    Is now his cradle, that was erst his grave:
    He grew up quickly from his mother earth,
    For, all you see was but an hours birth;
    Look on him well, my life I dare engage,
    You ne’re saw prettier baby of his age.
    Some take his measure by the rule, some by
    The Jacobs-staff take his profundity,
    And some his altitude; but some do swear
    Young Tom’s not like the Old: But, Tom, ne’re fear
    The critical geometricians line,
    If thou as loud as e’re thou did ring’st nine.
    Tom did no sooner peep from under-ground,
    But straight Saint Maries tenor lost his sound.
    O how this may-poles heart did swell
    With full main sides of joy, when that crackt bell
    Choakt with annoy, and ’s admiration,
    Rung like a quart-pot to the congregation.
    Tom went his progress lately, and lookt o’re
    What he ne’re saw in many years before;
    But when he saw the old foundation,
    With some like hope of preparation,
    He burst with grief; and lest he should not have
    Due pomp, he’s his own bell-man to the grave:
    And that there might of him be still some mention,
    He carried to his grave a new invention.
    They drew his brown-bread face on pretty gins,
    And made him stalk upon two rolling-pins;
    But Sander Hill swore twice or thrice by heaven,
    He ne’re set such a loaf into the oven.
    And Tom did Sanders vex, his Cyclops maker,
    As much as he did Sander Hill, the baker;
    Therefore, loud thumping Tom, be this thy pride,
    When thou this motto shalt have on thy side:
    “Great world! one Alexander conquer’d thee,
    And two as mighty men scarce conquer’d me.”
    Brave constant spirit, none could make thee turn,
    Though hang’d, drawn, quarter’d, till they did thee burn:
    Yet not for this, nor ten times more be sorry,
    Since thou was martyr’d for the Churches glory;
    But for thy meritorious suffering,
    Thou shortly shalt to heaven in a string:
    And though we griev’d to see thee thump’d and bang’d,
    We’ll all be glad, Great Tom, to see thee hang’d.




R. C.


    When too much zeal doth fire devotion,
    Love is not love, but superstition:
    Even so in civil duties, when we come
    Too oft, we are not kind, but troublesome.
    Yet as the first is not idolatry,
    So is the last but grieved industry:
    And such was mine, whose strife to honour you
    By overplus, hath rob’d you of your due.




A PROPER NEW BALLAD, INTITULED THE FAERYES FAREWELL; OR, GOD-A-MERCY WILL.


To be sung or whiseled to the Tune of “The Meddow Brow,” by the Learned;
by the Unlearned, to the Tune of “Fortune.”

    Farewell rewards and Faeries,
      Good houswives now may say,
    For now foule slutts in daries
      Doe fare as well as they.
    And though they sweepe theyr hearths no less
      Then maydes were wont to doe,
    Yet who of late for cleaneliness,
      Finds sixe-pence in her shoe?

    Lament, lament, old abbies,
      The Faries lost command;
    They did but change priests babies,
      But some have changd your land:
    And all your children sprung from thence
      Are now growne Puritanes;
    Who live as changelings ever since
      For love of your demaines.

    At morning and at evening both
      You merry were and glad,
    So little care of sleepe or sloth
      These prettie ladies had;
    When Tom came home from labour,
      Or Ciss to milking rose,
    Then merrily merrily went theyre tabor,
      And nimbly went theyre toes.

    Wittness those rings and roundelayes
      Of theirs, which yet remaine,
    Were footed in queene Maries dayes
      On many a grassy playne;
    But since of late, Elizabeth,
      And later, James came in,
    They never daunc’d on any heath
      As when the time hath bin.

    By which wee note the Faries
      Were of the old profession;
    Theyre songs were Ave Maryes;
      Theyre daunces were procession:
    But now, alas! they all are dead,
      Or gone beyond the seas;
    Or farther for religion fled,
      Or elce they take theyre ease.

    A tell-tale in theyre company
      They never could endure,
    And whoe so kept not secretly
      Theyre mirth was punisht sure;
    It was a just and christian deed
      To pinch such blacke and blew:
    O how the common welth doth need
      Such justices as you!

    Now they have left our quarters
      A register they have,
    Who looketh to theyre charters,
      A man both wise and grave;
    An hundred of theyre merry prancks
      By one that I could name
    Are kept in store, conn twenty thanks
      To William for the same.

    I marvell who his cloake would turne
      When Pucke had led him round[115],
    Or where those walking-fires would burne,
      Where Cureton would be found;
    How Broker would appeare to be,
      For whom this age doth mourne;
    But that theyre spiritts live in thee,
      In thee, old William Chourne.

    To William Chourne of Stafford shire
      Give laud and prayses due,
    Who every meale can mend your cheare
      With tales both old and true:
    To William all give audience,
      And pray yee for his noddle,
    For all the Faries evidence
      Were lost, if that were addle.




A NON SEQUITUR.

(From “Wit Restored,” 8vo. 1658.)


    Marke! how the lanterns clowd mine eyes,
    See where a moon-drake ’gins to rise;
    Saturne crawls much like an iron catt,
    To see the naked moone in a slipshott hatt.
      Thunder-thumping toadstools crock the pots
        To see the mermaids tumble;
      Leather cat-a-mountaines shake their heels,
        To heare the gosh-hawke grumble.
            The rustic threed
            Begins to bleed,
          And cobwebs elbows itches;
            The putrid skyes
            Eat mulsacke pyes,
          Backed up in logicke breches.
    Munday trenchers made good hay,
    The lobster weares no dagger;
    Meale-mouthed she-peacocke powle the starres,
    And made the lowbell stagger.
        Blew crocodiles foame in the toe,
        Blind meale-bagges do follow the doe;
    A ribb of apple braine spice
    Will follow the Lancashire dice.
    Harke! how the chime of Plutoes pispot cracks,
    To see the rainbowes wheele-gann made of flax.




NONSENCE.

(Ashmole’s Museum, A. 37.)


    Like to the thundring tone of unspoke speeches,
    Or like a lobster clad in logicke breeches,
    Or like the graye-furre of a crimson catt,
    Or like the moone-calfe in a slip-shodde hatt:
      Even such is hee who never was begotten
      Untill his children were both dead and rotten.

    Like to the fiery tombstone of a cabbage,
    Or like a crabbe-louse with its bag and baggage,
      Or like the four square circle of a ring,
      Or like to hey dinge, dingea dingea dinge:
      Even such is he who spake, and yet no doubt
      Spake to small purpose, when his tongue was out.

    Like to a fairs, fresh, faiding, withered rose,
    Or lyke to rhyming verse that runs in prose,
    Or lyke the stumbles of a tynder box,
    Or lyke a man that’s sound yet hath the pox:
      Even such is he who dyed, and yet did laugh
      To see these lines writt for his epitaph.




THE COUNTRY LIFE[116].


    Thrice and above blest (my souls halfe!) art thou
      In thy though last yet better vowe,
    Canst leave the Cyttye with exchange to see
      The Country’s sweet simplicitie,
    And to knowe and practise, with intent
      To growe the sooner innocent,
    By studdyinge to knowe vertue, and to ayme
      More at her nature than her name.
    The last is but the least, the first doth tell
      Wayes not to live, but to live well.
    And both are knowne to thee, who now canst live,
      Led by thy conscience, to give
    Justice[117] to soon pleas’d Nature, and to showe
      Wisdome and she togeather goe,
    And keepe one center: this with that conspires
      To teach man to confine’s desires;
    To knowe that riches have their proper stint
      In the contented minde, not mint;
    And canst instruct, that those that have the itch
      Of cravinge more, are never rich.
    These thinges thou knowst to th’ height, and dost prevent
      The mange, because thou art content
    With that Heaven gave thee with a sparinge hand,
      More blessed in thy brest than land,
    To keepe but Nature even and upright,
      To quench not cocker appetite.
    The first is Nature’s end; this doth impart
      Least thankes to Nature, most to Art.
    But thou canst tersely live, and satisfie
      The bellye only, not the eye;
    Keepinge the barkinge stomache meanly quiet
      With a neat yet needfull dyett.
    But that which most creates thy happy life,
      Is the fruition of a wife,
    Whom (starres consentinge with thy fate) thou hast
      Gott, not so beautifull as chast.
    By whose warm’d side thou dost securely sleepe,
      Whilst Love the centinell doth keepe
    With those deeds done by day, which ne’er affright
      The silken slumbers in the night;
    Nor hath the darkenesse power to usher in
      Feare to those sheets that knowe no sinne:
    But still thy wife, by chast intention led,
      Gives thee each night a maidenhead.
    For where pure thoughts are led by godly feare,
      Trew love, not lust at all, comes there;
    And in that sense the chaster thoughts commend
      Not halfe so much the act as end:
    That, what with dreams in sleepe of rurall blisse,
      Night growes farre shorter than shee is.
    The damaske meddowes, and the crawlinge streames,
      Sweeten, and make soft thy dreams.
    The purlinge springes, groves, birdes, and well-weav’d bowers,
      With fields enamelled with flowers,
    Present thee shapes, whilst phantasye discloses
      Millions of lillyes mixt with roses.
    Then dreame thou hear’st the lambe with many a bleat
      Woo’d to come sucke the milkey teate;
    Whilst Faunus, in the vision, vowes to keepe
      From ravenouse wolfe the woolley sheepe;
    With thowsand such enchantinge dreames, which meet
      To make sleepe not so sound as sweet.
    Nor can these figures in thy rest endeere,
      As not to up when chanticleere
    Speaks the last watch, but with the dawne dost rise
      To worke, but first to sacrifice:
    Makinge thy peace with Heaven for some late fault,
      With holy meale and cracklinge salt.
    That done, thy painfull thumbe this sentence tells us,
      God for our labour all thinges sells us.
    Nor are thy daylye and devout affayres
      Attended with those desperate cares
    Th’ industriouse marchant hath, who for to finde
      Gold, runneth to the furthest Inde[118],
    And home againe tortur’d with fear doth hye,
      Untaught to suffer povertye.
    But you at home blest with securest ease,
      Sitt’st and beleev’st that there are seas,
    And watrye dangers; but thy better hap
      But sees these thinges within thy mapp,
    And viewinge them with a more safe survaye,
      Makst easy Feare unto thee say,
    A heart thrice wall’d with oake and brass that man
      Had, first durst plough the ocean.
    But thou at home, without or tyde or gale,
      Canst in thy mapp securely sayle,
    Viewinge the parted countryes, and so guesse
      By their shades their substances;
    And from their compasse borrowing advise,
      Buy’st travayle at the lowest price.
    Nor are thy eares so seald but thou canst heare
      Far more with wonder than with feare.

                                 —_Cætera desiderantur._




ROBERT WISDOM


Was rector of Settrington in Yorkshire, and was presented to the
archdeaconry of Ely by Elizabeth the 27th of February 1559-60. In bishop
Cox’s Certificatorium (MS. Bennet Col. Lib.) he is returned to the
archbishop as “a priest and B. D. usually residing upon his living of
Wilberton, appropriated to the archdeaconry, was qualified for preaching,
and licensed thereunto by the Queen’s majesty.”

He died, and was buried at Wilberton the 20th of September, 1568.

He is chiefly memorable for his metrical prayer intended to be sung in
the church against the Pope and the Turk, of whom he seems to have had
the most alarming apprehensions; and in consequence of which he has been
ridiculed by sir John Denham, Corbet, Butler, and others.




TO THE GHOST OF ROBERT WISDOME[119].


    Thou, once a body, now but aire,
    Arch-botcher of a psalme or prayer,
                          From Carfax come;
    And patch mee up a zealous lay,
    With an old _ever and for ay_,
                          Or, _all and some_.
    Or such a spirit lend mee,
    As may a hymne downe send mee,
                          To purge my braine:
    So, Robert, looke behind thee,
    Least Turke or Pope doe find thee,
                          And goe to bed againe.




THOMAS JONCE.


The name of this man, (Jones,) which Corbet, for the sake of the rhyme,
has corrupted, sufficiently denotes his extraction; and I would have
ascertained the time of his death, but the register was not to be found
upon application for that purpose.

Antony à Wood says, in his History of the City of Oxford, “Thomas Jonce,
a clergyman and inhabitant of this place, (St. Giles’s parish, Oxford,)
desiring here to lay his bones, was of note sufficient to excite bishop
Corbet to write an epitaph on him.”

‘Say’st thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?’




AN EPITAPH ON THOMAS JONCE.


    Here, for the nonce,
    Came Thomas Jonce,
          In St. Giles church to lye.

    None Welsh before,
    None Welshman more,
          Till Shon Clerk die.

    I’ll tole the bell,
    I’ll ring his knell;
    He died well,
    He’s sav’d from hell;
    And so farwel
          Tom Jonce.




TO THE LADYES OF THE NEW DRESSE, THAT WEARE THEIR GORGETS AND RAYLES
DOWNE TO THEIR WASTES.


    Ladyes, that weare black cipress-vailes
    Turn’d lately to white linnen-rayles,
    And to your girdle weare your bands,
    And shew your armes instead of hands;
    What can you doe in Lent so meet
    As, fittest dress, to weare a sheet?
    ’Twas once a band, ’tis now a cloake,
    An acorne one day proves an oke:
    Weare but your linnen to your feet,
    And then your band will prove a sheet.
    By which devise, and wise excesse,
    You’l doe your penance in a dresse;
    And none shall know, by what they see,
    Which lady’s censur’d, and which free.




THE LADIES’ ANSWER.

(Harl. MS. No. 6396.)


    Blacke cypresse vailes are shroudes on night,
    White linnen railes are raies of light,
    Which though we to the girdles weare,
    We’ve hands to keep your hands off there.
    A fitter dresse we have in Lent,
    To shew us trewly penitent.
    Whoe makes the band to be a cloke
    Makes John-a-style of John-an-oake.
    We weare our garments to the feet,
    Yet neede not make our bandes a sheet:
    The clergie weare as long as we,
    Yet that implies conformitie.
    Be wise, recant what you have writt,
    Least you doe pennance for your witte;
    Love’s charm hath power to weare a stringe,
    To tye you as you tied your ringe[120];
    There by love’s sharpe but just decree
    You may be censured, we go free.




CORBET’S REPLY.

(Ashmole’s Museum, A. 38. Fol. 66.)


    Yff nought but love-charmes power have
    Your blemisht creditt for to save;
    Then know your champion is blind,
    And that love-nottes are soon untwinde.
    But blemishes are now a grace,
    And add a lustre to your face;
    Your blemisht credit for to save,
    You needed not a vayle to have;
    The rayle for women may be fitte,
    Because they daylie practice ytt.
      And, seeing counsell can you not reforme,
      Read this reply—and take ytt not in scorne.




FAIRFORD WINDOWS


Are much admired, says the provincial historian of Glocestershire,
for their excellent painted glass. There are twenty-eight large
windows, which are curiously painted with the stories of the Old and
New Testament: the middle windows in the choir, and on the west side
of the church, are larger than the rest; those in the choir represent
the history of our Saviour’s Crucifixion; the window at the west end
represents Hell and Damnation; those on the side of the church, and over
the body, represent the figures in length of the prophets, apostles,
fathers, martyrs and confessors, and also the persecutors of the church.
The painting was designed by Albert Durer, an eminent Italian Master: the
colours are very lively, especially in the drapery: some of the figures
are so well finished, that sir Anthony Vandyke affirmed that the pencil
could not exceed them. This curious painting was preserved from zealous
fury in the great rebellion, by turning the glass upside down.

John Tame, esq. founded this church in the year 1493. He was a merchant,
and took a prize-ship bound for Rome, in which was this painted glass: he
brought both the glass and workmen into England, built the church for the
sake of the glass, and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary.

                     Atkyns’s Hist. of Glocestershire, p. 226. 1768. fol.

It is to be observed that the tradition of the famous Albert Durer having
furnished the drawings will not, as Mr. Dallaway justly observes, bear
the test of chronology; for he was not twenty years of age when these
windows were put up; nor is it probable that he had then attained to such
proficiency—to say nothing of the time necessary for the perfecting such
works.




UPON FAIRFORD WINDOWS.


    Tell me, you anti-saints, why brass
    With you is shorter lived than glass?
    And why the saints have scap’t their falls
    Better from windows than from walles?
    Is it, because the Brethrens fires
    Maintain a glass-house at Blackfryars?
    Next which the church stands North and South,
    And East and West the preacher’s mouth.
    Or is ’t, because such painted ware
    Resembles something that you are,
    Soe py’de, soe seeming, soe unsound
    In manners, and in doctrine, found,
    That, out of emblematick witt,
    You spare yourselves in sparing it?
    If it be soe, then, Faireford, boast
    Thy church hath kept what all have lost;
    And is preserved from the bane
    Of either warr, or puritane:
    Whose life is colour’d in thy paint,
    The inside drosse, the outside saint.




UPON FAIREFORD WINDOWES[121].

(Misc. MS. Poems, Mus. Brit. Bib. Sloan. No. 1446.)


    I knowe no painte of poetry
    Can mend such colour’d imag’ry
    In sullen inke, yet (Fayreford) I
    May rellish thy fair memory.
    Such is the echoe’s fainter sound,
    Such is the light when the sunn’s drown’d,
    So did the fancy look upon
    The work before it was begun.
    Yet when those showes are out of sight,
    My weaker colours may delight.
    Those images doe faithfullie
    Report true feature to the eie,
    As you may think each picture was
    Some visage in a looking-glass;
    Not a glass window face, unless
    Such as Cheapside hath, where a press
    Of painted gallants, looking out,
    Bedeck the casement rounde about.
    But these have holy phisnomy;
    Each paine instructs the laity
    With silent eloquence; for heere
    Devotion leads the eie, not eare,
    To note the cathechisinge paint,
    Whose easie phrase doth soe acquainte
    Our sense with Gospell, that the Creede
    In such an hand the weake may reade.
    Such tipes e’en yett of vertue bee,
    And Christ as in a glass we see—
    When with a fishinge rod the clarke
    St. Peter’s draught of fish doth marke,
    Such is the scale, the eie, the finn,
    You’d thinke they strive and leape within;
    But if the nett, which holdes them, brake,
    Hee with his angle some would take.
    But would you walke a turn in Paules,
    Looke up, one little pane inrouls
    A fairer temple. Flinge a stone,
    The church is out at the windowe flowne.
    Consider not, but aske your eies,
    And ghosts at mid-day seem to rise,
    The saintes there seemeing to descend,
    Are past the glass, and downwards bend.
    Look there! The Devill! all would cry,
    Did they not see that Christ was by.
    See where he suffers for thee! See
    His body taken from the tree!
    Had ever death such life before?
    The limber corps, be-sully’d o’er
    With meagre paleness, does display
    A middle state ’twixt flesh and clay.
    His armes and leggs, his head and crown,
    Like a true lambskin dangle downe:
    Whoe can forbeare, the grave being nigh,
    To bringe fresh ointment in his eye?
    The wond’rous art hath equall fate,
    Unfixt, and yet inviolate.
    The Puritans were sure deceav’d
    Whoe thought those shaddowes mov’d and heav’d,
    So held from stoninge Christ; the winde
    And boysterous tempests were so kinde,
    As on his image not to prey,
    Whome both the winde and seas obey.
    At Momus’ wish bee not amaz’d;
    For if each Christian’s heart were glaz’d
    With such a windowe, then each brest
    Might bee his owne evangelist.




THE DISTRACTED PURITANE.


        Am I madd, O noble Festus,
        When zeale and godly knowledge
          Have put me in hope
          To deal with the Pope,
        As well as the best in the Colledge?
    Boldly I preach, hate a crosse, hate a surplice,
      Miters, copes, and rotchets:
    Come heare mee pray nine times a day,
        And fill your heads with crotchets.

        In the house of pure Emanuel
        I had my education;
          Where my friends surmise
          I dazeled mine eyes
        With the Light of Revelation.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        They bound mee like a bedlam,
        They lash’t my foure poore quarters;
          Whilst this I endure,
          Faith makes mee sure
        To be one of Foxes martyrs.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        These injuryes I suffer
        Through Anti-Christs perswasions:
          Take off this chaine,
          Neither Rome nor Spaine
        Can resist my strong invasions.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        Of the Beasts ten hornes (God blesse us!)
        I have knock’t off three already:
          If they let mee alone,
          I’ll leave him none;
        But they say I am too heady.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        When I sack’d the Seaven-hill’d Citty
        I mett the great redd Dragon:
          I kept him aloofe
          With the armour of proofe,
        Though here I have never a rag on.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        With a fiery sword and targett
        There fought I with this monster:
          But the sonnes of pride
          My zeale deride,
        And all my deedes misconster.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        I unhorst the whore of Babel
        With a launce of inspirations:
          I made her stinke,
          And spill her drinck
        In the cupp of abominations.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        I have seene two in a vision,
        With a flying booke betweene them:
          I have bin in dispaire
          Five times a yeare,
        And cur’d by reading Greenham[122].
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        I observ’d in Perkins Tables[123]
        The black lines of damnation:
          Those crooked veines
          Soe struck in my braines,
        That I fear’d my reprobation.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        In the holy tongue of Chanaan
        I plac’d my chiefest pleasure:
          Till I prickt my foote
          With an Hebrew roote,
        That I bledd beyond all measure.
    Boldly I preach, &c.

        I appear’d before the arch-bishopp,
        And all the high commission:
          I gave him noe grace,
          But told him to his face
        That he favour’d superstition.
    Boldly I preach, hate a crosse, hate a surplice,
      Miters, copes, and rotchets:
    Come heare mee pray nine times a day,
      And fill your heads with crotchets.




ORATIO DOMINI DOCTORIS CORBET, EX ÆDE CHRISTI, IN FUNUS HENRICI PRINCIPIS.

(Mus. Ashm. No. 1153.)


Quam sit semper vobis facile, et pronum, justo servire, sobriisque
lachrimis obtemperare, ipsi mihi vos dixistis modo, qui egregio oratori,
et invicto argumento fideliter cessistis, mihi tantum post consumptum
humorem, et historiæ, meæ fidem vestram et suspiria præstituri. Si qua
autem unquam ageretur causa quæ suis viribus staret, neque patrono
aliquo, aut oratore indigeret, hæc ipsa profecto hodierna est, quæ nec
adversarium infestum habet, nec facilem auditorem postulat; hæc ipsa
est, quæ in omni familia versata, vexata, compressa, ad forum postea,
et cœlum provocat, humano generi se dat obviam, et una Britannia nunc
orbem replet. Tam multa, variaque unius mors est, ut ubique moriatur;
tam frequens dolor ut humanitatem omnem hac ipsa cogitatione imbuat.
Nescit enim domestica esse aut paucorum fama, pervia simul et ambitiosa,
utrumque simul minatur polum, rumpetque mœnia aut transibit caprificus:
ideoque facti repetitione aliqua opus est; ad metus vestros, et
necessitates descendite, affectus vestros interrogate, quis desiderii
modus aut finis. Dicite tandem utrum timere quicquid possitis, aut amare
sine Henrico, sitque ille miseriæ vestræ vera causa, qui felicitati
vestræ sola spes emicuit—quare aures ego hodie vestras non appello, sed
oculos, neque auditores ut olim neque censores alloquar, sed homines,
sed Britannos. Adeste igitur, Anglosissimi Academici, lassi, queruli,
mihique per hunc mensem a primo hujus nuncio ruinæ, non tacito sed muto
post lachrimas jam deliberatas aspirate, et dolorem illum, quem vel
vita nostra vincere non possumus, data quasi opera dolendo leniamus.
Exanimat enim possessorem ægrum luctus longus, et prodigus mentem sine
sensu vulnerat, et quasi jam humanitas potius aut natura, quæ morbus
dici vellet, lachrimarum suarum epulis impleri gaudet, et imperiosa
consuetudine satiatur. Quare redeat jam ad se oculus unusquisque vestrûm,
animamque in oculos arripiat. Henricum cogitet sive principem sive
nostrum et vincet, credo ratio, aut suadebit pietas, ut omnes hodie
simus Heracliti sive enim ad majorum sepulchra et imagines, proavosque
ejus multum remotissimos revertimur, honor est et crescit acervus,
nec sine centum regibus potest prodire, si patremque matremque jam
superstites, quod sæpius proferre juvat jam superstites, jam supra
cyathum, et cultrum, pyram flammamque jam superstites, et si quid
votis nostris precibusque jam litare possumus, sero superstaturos. Hos
si repetimus Deus est in utroque parente. Si cunabula respicimus, et
Lucinam ejus, quid in illa infantia non debuit esse plus quam mortale,
quæ a sponsoribus Belgiis et immortali Elizabetha Christo initiata, et
æternitati, pueritiam autem nullam habuit, qui annum ... unum excessit
ex ephebis, et tanquam tempus præcipitare mallet, quam expectare, annos
non ætate sed virtute æstimat, neque hominem se longævum esse sed virum
cupit. In omni actione, rebusque gestis se juvenem præbuit, solum in
affectu senem, et suos annos sic explevit, ut nonagenarium esse illum
vellet quis libenter agnoscere. Senectutem pariter nec habuit nec
exoptavit, neque exhæreditavit eum morbus, sed industriam, vitæque
suum patrimonium reliquum aut laboribus vendidit, aut studio decoxit.
Diuturnioris spem vitæ ei natura dederat, dare melioris non poterat;
indicium prorsus quod illum cæca fortuna non vidisset maximum; mens
pariter condidisset optimum, adeone raro succumbit tenuiori, et æternum
elementum gloriæ perituræ auræ infeliciter serviet? Adeone virtus qua
vivimus minor erit vilissimo illius aeris haustu, quo vivendum est. Atqui
redeat in Chaos unde prognatum est, ingratum illud aeris elementum,
si malis tantum indulgeat, invideat bonis, si inutili populo spiret,
principibus lateat, principibus huic. Ecquis mihi vestrûm hanc Syntaxim
imputat, illum ut dicam principibus, qui et multus erat, virtutemque
in aliis fractam et remissam, totam sibi suisque imperiis mancipasset;
unaque sua anima effecit præstantissima, ut si veteres philosophos
interrogamus, infinitum animarum exercitum in hoc uno extitisse
crederent? Sed consulite memoriæ vestræ et officio, historiam revocate,
narrate Principem; quisquamne melior? quisquamne major? Deo scilicet et
cœlo stirpeque sua animoque proximus: non tamen ideo humani oneris, aut
terreæ vicinitatis immemor, Deumque immortalem quem metu subditissimo
coluit, semper et admiratus est; precibus imperatoriis, et quasi libera
servitute quotidie vincit; movet hortatu, docet Salomonis æmulus
familiam sensu, populum fama concitat, prælucet ipse omnibus pietate,
neque autoritate bonos sed exemplo facit. Irasci aliquando, neque potuit,
neque vellet, neque pœna cujusque, sed pœnitentia contentus est, credo
itaque ut qui sine felle viveret, sine sanguine imperaret. Neque amabilis
magis, et mansuetus quam domesticus et frugalis; servorum nomina, studia,
vitæque instituta cognovit, in domo sua mensaque ipse paterfamilias,
nimirum ut qui Œcumenicus esse debuit, Œconomicus quandoque esse posset.
Studia sua et exercitia corporis, (quam cœli et Decembris patientissimus
erat) campestria plerumque et in sole fuerunt.

    Gaudet equis, canibusque, et aprici gramine campi,

et quo longius a luxuria, oppidoque decessit, eo proxime accessit famæ
et probitati. Rei militaris non tam studiosus, quam peritus fuit, eoque
timore simul a transmarinis optimè ... redde Deo populum suum, I, curre
per Alpes, Romamque diu personatam et histrionicam aut vero cultu
induas, aut falso spolies. Hoc unum restat faciendum, tuisque illud
artibus permissum est, et in tua solius sæcula servatum opus. Nec male
præsagiebat Roma præstigiatrix illa famelica, quæ longo te jejunio et
siti petiit, quæ ferro et igni liberalem dat operam, morti principum
plus quam scientiæ et religioni incumbit, et quasi jam virtuti morbus
adhæreret, potius quam invidiæ, nullam non pyxidem, herbamque eruit, quo
suis exorcismis, et impudicæ nequitiæ superstes non fiat. Tu vero quam
facile illudis ... ejus, et crudelem industriam antevertis, ni virtus
ipsa pro Jesuita, et febris pro veneno est. His tu remediis hac demum
medicina sanaris (H. P.) et dum medicus ... studium, gloria tua, et
proprium meritum interficiunt, unus Peleo juveni non sufficit, Henrico
sufficeret (ut transeam finitimos) Sabaudia et Hispania ab utraque India
timeris, nec audet vexisse tuam Oceanus carinam, atque iisdem non ita
pridem ægrotavit Henricus magnus ille Galliæ rex, qui ferro et hostili
parricidio transfixus Henricis omnibus mortem propinavit.

    Credamus tragicis quicquid de Colchide torva
    Dicitur et Progne: nam clamat Roma peregi,
    Confiteor, puerisque meis aconita paravi,
    Quæ deprensa patent; facinus tamen ipsa peregi.
    Tune duos unâ sævissima vipera cœnâ?
    Tune duos?—Septem, septem si forte fuissent[124].

Verum credo nihil horum est (Academici) orationis meæ horribilius est
non religionis. Egoque cæsus olim pulvere Novembris, hodie cæcubio,
hodie insanio. Nos utinam vani: Totus igitur est in apparatu Henricus
noster quem quærimus, jamque aut equo insidet, aut choræis hasta vel
gladio dominatur, ipse Hymenæus etiam et nuptias coronat, ovant et
triumphant una dulcissima mortalium, pax, Anna et Jacobus, et fervet
annis nitentibus fratri Carolus et totus in illos. Invitant, properant,
parant Fredericus et Elizabetha, et ver illud perpetuum et poeticum hac
solum in regione deprehenditur. Æstate prima Woodstochiam suam cogitat
Henricus, et vicinam academiam adventu primo, scholaresque (quos vocat
suos) accersit, ut habeat convivas musas, et si placuerit, convictores;
juvat et meminisse potestis, qualis ibi tum in scena prodierit, in qua
ipse erat pro triumpho, ipse pro spectaculo. Quotus illa nocte adest
Henricus?—Quotus princeps, quam magnificus, quam innocens, cui vel
esuriens Jesuita potuit ignoscere. O dementiam suavem, gratissimum
errorem, et religiosum delirium, in vobis redivivum Principem, Britanni,
jubilate Henricum, O beatum impostorem.

Qui istud nec audiunt, nec credunt malum, nos miseros, qui in illa
hostium multitudine et via fortunæ viximus, et nescire dolorem non
minus sit difficile, quam cognitum extinguere. Quod si vox populi,
quæ aliquando Dei esse dicitur, eadem potuisset de morte tua et fama
decernere, caruisses hodie lachrimis, et longo nostrorum funeri
superfuisses. In te enim non tam morientis fatum, quam pacis, quam
reipublicæ situm est; non peris sed destruis, neque mors hæc dat,
sed confusio; diluvium est, nec caret prodigio. Oraculum est, nec
sine sacerdote aut pontifice potest intelligi. Quam non mortalis eras
Henricus, mortalis; adeone nonus esse nunquam potes, et nullus esses,
brevis est quia bonus, minorque quia melior.

Nobis interim quod reliquum, quam ut festinetis juvenes, animamque
principis fugitivam, per silentium et solitudinem sequamini: ut
longitudinem vitamque inimicis posthac exoptetis, sociisque vestris,
fratribusque suadeatis, quam sit senectus post fatum principis vilis
et ignominiosa. Nos interim viri, qui in longiori ludibrio constituti
sumus, consulamus huic vitio, facinusque ætatis lachrimis expiemus;
et experiamur modo utrum anima principis excellens, quæ palatio sui
corporis clarissimo valedixit, in nostris animis et hisce lachrimarum
insulis habitare velit, certemus invicem pietate, et ingenioso luctu
contendamus, summus ne dolor feriet non volentem satis, nec viventem
minus. Dixi.




IN OBITUM DOMINI THOMÆ BODLEII.

(Ex Libro cui Titulus “Bodleiomnema; seu, Carmina et Orationes in Obitum
ejus.” Oxon. 1613. 4to.)


    Obrue Bodleium saxis, prosterne colossis,
      Adde libros oneri, dimidiasque scholas,
    Aut lacrymis manes lassa, aut ululante papyro,
      Quæ solet afflictis incubuisse rogis;
    Non tamen efficies, quin summo in culmine victor
      Imperet, et molem perforet ille suam;
    Nam famæ cedunt lapides, et tecta sepulchris
      Dum memorant dominos hæc monumenta suos.




CORRECTIONS.


  Page 36, verse 11, _for_ ken _read_ hen.
       50,   ”    7, _dele_ a.
       80,   ”   10, _for_ consider _read_ consider’d.
       94, note,     _for_ brought _read_ bought.
      100,   ”       _for_ Guynes _read_ Luyne.
      119, line 7,   _for_ Nescis _read_ Nescio.
      137, verses 4 and 5. It should have been observed, that the
             Prince and Buckingham on their journey wore false
             beards for disguises, and assumed the names of Jack
             and Tom Smith.
      144. The two first lines of this beautiful poem are here
             printed as they are found in the editions of 1647
             and 1672; but they stand much better in Bishop King’s
             Poems, page 51, edit. 1657:

    Let no profane ignoble foot tread _neer_
    This hallow’d peece of earth, _Dorset lies here_.




FOOTNOTES


[1] An EPITAPH on Master VINCENT CORBET.

    I have my piety too, which, could
    It vent itself but as it would,
    Would say as much as both have done
    Before me here, the friend and son:
    For I both lost a friend and father,
    Of him whose bones this grave doth gather:
    Dear Vincent Corbet, who so long
    Had wrestled with diseases strong,
    That though they did possess each limb,
    Yet he broke them, ere they could him,
    With the just canon of his life;
    A life that knew nor noise nor strife:
    But was by sweetning so his will,
    All order and composure still.
    His mind as pure, and neatly kept
    As were his nourseries, and swept
    So of uncleanness or offence,
    That never came ill odour thence!
    And add his actions unto these,
    They were as specious as his trees.
    ’Tis true, he could not reprehend,
    His very manners taught t’ amend,
    They were so even, grave, and holy;
    No stubbornness so stiff, nor folly
    To licence ever was so light,
    As twice to trespass in his sight;
    His looks would so correct it, when
    It chid the vice, yet not the men.
    Much from him, I profess, I won,
    And more, much more, I should have done,
    But that I understood him scant:
    Now I conceive him by my want;
    And pray, who shall my sorrows read,
    That they for me their tears will shed:
    For truly, since he left to be,
    I feel I’m rather dead than he.
    Reader, whose life and name did e’er become
    An epitaph, deserv’d a tomb:
    Nor wants it here through penury or sloth,
    Who makes the one, so it be first, makes both.

                              JONSON’S Underwoods.

[2] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. Parker, 49.—Vincent Corbet left his
copyholds in Twickenham and Thistleworth (or Isleworth) to his wife, and
legacies to various others. See page 118.

[3] Wood’s Annals of Oxford, vol. ii. p. 312. ed. Gutch, 4to. 1796.

[4] Heylyn’s Life of Archbishop Laud, p. 68. fol. 1668.

[5] See a curious account of the proceedings on this occasion by an eye
witness, in Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. 626. ed. Hearne, 1770.

[6] One of the ballads written on this occasion is (through the kindness
of my friend John Dovaston, esq.) in a manuscript in my possession,
beginning,

    To Oxenford our king is gone
    With all his noble peers.—&c.

[7] Miscellaneous State Papers, vol. i. 394. 4to. 1778.

[8] A William Lake, who was M. A. and a fellow of Clare Hall in 1619, had
also a ring bequeathed him by Ruggles, and might have been the author.
See Hawkins’s edition of Ignoramus. Utrum horum mavis accipe.

[9] Biographical Sketches, vol. i. p. 38.

[10] Spencer, whose college disappointments forced him from the
University. Milton is reported to have received corporal punishment
there. Dryden has left a testimony, in a prologue spoken at Oxford, much
against his own University. The incivility, not to give it a harsher
appellation, which Gray met with, is well known. That Alma Mater has not
remitted her wonted illiberality, is to be fairly presumed from a passage
in her late most poetical son, Mr. Mason:

                          Science there
    Sat musing; and to those that loved the lore
    Pointed, with mystic wand, to truths involved
    In geometric symbols, scorning those
    Perchance too much, who woo’d the thriftless Muse.

                                       English Garden.

[11] See Lysons’s Environs, vol. ii. p. 148 et seq.

[12] The forwardness of the clergy to publish their labours is thus
ludicrously satyrized by Robert Burton: “Had I written divinitie
positively, there be so many bookes in that kinde, so many commentators,
treatises, pamphlets, sermons, expositions, that whole teams of oxen
cannot draw them: and had I beene as forward and ambitious as some
others, I might haply have printed a sermon at Paules Crosse, a sermon
in Saint Maries Oxon, a sermon in Christ-Church, or a sermon before the
Right Honourable, Right Reverend, a sermon before the Right Worshipful, a
sermon in Latin, in English, a sermon with a name, without, a sermon, a
sermon, &c.”

                                 Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 15. fol. 1632.

[13] Harl. MSS. No. 7000. Cabala, p. 220. fol. 1663.

[14] On the 26th of August.

[15] It occurs, with some variations, in a scarce poetical miscellany
called Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658, the use of which, in common with many
other volumes of still greater rarity and value, I owe to the liberality
of Thomas Hill, esq.

[16] MS. Ashmole, A 37.

[17] Martis, 27 Aug. 1605. “The comedy began between nine and ten, and
ended at one; the name of it was Alba, whereof I never saw reason; it
was a pastoral, much like one which I have seen in King’s College in
Cambridge. In the acting thereof they brought in five or six men almost
naked, which were much disliked by the queen and ladies, and also many
rustical songes and dances, which made it very tedious, insomuch that if
the chancellors of bothe the Universities had not intreated his majesty
earnestly, he would have been gone before half the comedy had been
ended.” Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. p. 637. edit. 1770.

Mercurii, 28 Aug. 1605. “After supper, about nine of the clock, they
began to act the tragedy of Ajax Flagellifer, _wherein the stage varied
three times_; they had all goodly antique apparell; but, for all that,
it was not so well acted by many degrees as I have seen it in Cambridge.
_The king_ was very weary before he came thither, but much more wearied
by it, and _spoke many words of dislike_.” Ibid. p. 639.

[18] Although the register of Flore, the residence of Dr. Hutton, was
preserved from an early date during the lifetime of Brydges, an early one
is not now to be found. That of Christ-Church, Oxford, is not so old as
the death of the bishop: his name is not found in that of Twickenham.

[19] Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658.

[20] Athenæ Oxon. vol. i. col. 736.

[21] Harl. Catalogue, 464. fol. 3. He appears to have conceded a
portion of the patronage attending his elevation, as in the Museum
is “Carta Ricardi Corbet episcopi Norwicensis, qua concedit Georgio
Abbot, archiepiscopo Cantuariensi, preximam advocationem, nominationem,
præsentationem, liberam dispositionem, et jus patronatus archidiaconatus
Norfolciæ, dat. 15 Maii, an. 8 R. Caroli 1.” Harl. MSS. No. 464. Fol. 3.

[22] Strafford State Papers and Dispatches, vol. i. p. 221. folio.

[23] He was author of a curious sermon, printed in 1627, 4to. under the
title of “Woe to Drunkards,” which was republished with king James’s
Counterblast, and other philippics against _tobacco_ and _coffee_;
4to. 1672. Upon the intrusion of the Book of Sports, Ward told his
congregation that “the Church of England was ready to ring changes on
religion, and that the Gospel stood on tip-toe ready to be gone.” For
these words he was suspended.

[24] Harl. MS. No. 464. fol. 13.

[25] Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. ii. p. 522. fol.

[26] Notwithstanding these harsh measures, which originated with
Laud—for, to the praise of our amiable prelate, he had not a grain of
persecution in his disposition—“the Walloon company in 1637 having
undertaken to repayre and make fit the church of Little St. Maryes to
be used for God’s worship by the said congregation, and also to repayre
the yard on the northside, had a lease for forty years. Which lease hath
been renewed, and now it is the church of the French congregation.”
Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. ii. 57. fol. 1739.

[27] Strype’s edition of Stowe’s Survey, book iii. page 151. edit. fol.
1720.

Perhaps his fellow-collegian Cartwright intended an immediate compliment
to Corbet in the following lines:

    Two sacred things were thought, by judging souls,
    Beyond the kingdom’s power, Christ-Church and Pauls,
    Till by a light from heaven shewn the one
    Did gain his second renovation.

                                  Poems, 188, 8vo. 1651.

[28] Ath. Oxon. vol. i. p. 601. edit. 1721.

[29] Harl. MS. No. 750. Malcolm’s Londinum Redivivum, vol. iii. p. 80. It
occurs, also, with some difference, in Mus. Ashm. No. 1153.

[30] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. 97. Sadler.

[31] Gomersall, in an epistle to Barten Holiday. See his poems, p. 7.
edit. 1633.

[32] Fuller’s Worthies, page 83. fol. 1662.

[33] Headley, i. 38.

[34] From hence it should seem that the edition 1647 was not published at
the time this preface was written.

[35] Robert Gomersall was entered of Christ-Church, Oxford, in 1614, at
the age of fourteen, where, in 1621, he proceeded M. A. In 1625 he took
refuge from the plague at Flore in Northamptonshire, of which the editor
of the Biographia Dramatica erroneously supposed he was rector. He was
afterwards vicar of Thorncombe in Devonshire, and died in 1646. His
poems, which are rather easy than correct, were published with Lodwick
Sforza, a tragedy, in 1633 and 1638, from which the above epistle is
transcribed.

[36] Saint Paul’s cathedral was in Corbet’s time the resort of the idle
and profligate of all classes: the author, _quisquis ille fuit_, of
“A Sixefold Politycian,” 4to. 1609. attributed to _Milton’s father_,
describes its frequenters as “superstitious idolaters of St. Paul (and
yet they never think of Paul nor any apostle) and many of them have that
famous monument in that account as Diogenes had _Jovis porticus_ in
Athens; who to them which wondered that he had no house nor corner to eat
his meat in, pointing at the gallerie or walking-place that was called
Jovis Porticus, said, that the people of Athens had builded that to his
use, as a royal mansion for him, wherein he might dine and sup, and take
his repast.

“And soe these make Paules like Euclides or Platoes school, as Diogenes
accounted it, κατατριβην, a mispending of much good labour and time,
and worthily many times meet with Diogenes’ fare, and are faithful and
frequent guests of Duke Humphray.” P. 8.

[37] This was not the first censure of sir Christopher Hatton’s
extravagant monument; as, according to Stowe, some poet had before
complained on the part of Sydney and Walsingham, that

    “Philip and Francis have no tomb,
    For great Christopher takes all the room.”

[38] “Coryate’s Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travels in
France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, Helvetia, some parts of High Germany, and
the Netherlands.” 4to. 1611. Re-printed in 3 vols. 8vo. 1776.

[39] Quia valde lutosa est Cantabrigia.

[40] Ludus per spatium 6 horarum infra.

[41] “A bushel of March dust is worth a king’s ransom.”

[42] Coll. Eman. abundat puritanis.

[43] The king entered Cambr. 7 Mar. 1614-5.

[44] Samuel Harsnett, then bp. of Chichester.

[45] Vestis indicat virum.

[46] Nethersoli Cant. orator, qui per speculum seipsum solet ornari.

[47] Orator hoc usus est vocabulo in oratione ad regem.

[48] Actores omnes fuere theologi.

[49] Ludus dicebatur “Ignoramus,” qui durabat per spatium sex horarum.

[50] Idem quod Bocardo apud Oxon.

[51] Insigniss. stultus.

[52] Paulus Tompsonus, qui nuper laesæ majest. reus ob aurum decurtat.

[53] Decorum quia Coll. est puritanorum plenum: scil. Emanuel.

[54] The former is Taylor, the celebrated water-poet: the latter, William
Fenner, a puritanical poet and pamphleteer of that period, was educated
at Pembroke-hall, Oxford. He was preferred to the rectory of Rochford, in
Essex, by the earl of Warwick. He died about 1640.

Archbishop Laud in his annual account to the king 1636, page 37, mentions
one Fenner, a principal ringleader of the Separatists, with their
conventicles, at and about Ashford in Kent.

[55] See Lodge’s Illustrations of British History, 4to. vol. iii. p. 178;
Brydges’s Peers of the Reign of James the First, vol. i.; and Winwood’s
Memorials.

[56] For this vehement attack upon the weakness of an infatuated woman,
the author must be screened under the example of Horace, Ep. 8 and 12.

[57] Henry Garnet, provincial of the order of Jesuits in England, who was
arraigned and executed at the west end of St. Paul’s, for his connivance
at, rather than for any active participation in, the Gunpowder Plot, May
3, 1605. See State Trials.

[58] Wilson’s Hist. of James I, Pa. 62. fol. 1653.

[59] Two manufacturers of almanacks and prognostics. The latter was,
however, of some note as to family, being the fifth son of sir Arthur
Hopton by Rachael, daughter of Edmund Hall, of Greatford in Lincolnshire;
nor was his fame in learning unequal to his birth. In 1604 he was entered
a gentleman commoner of Lincoln college, Oxon, and in 1607 was admitted
bachelor of arts. He was held in high estimation by Selden for his
mathematical knowledge, but died in the prime of life in the month of
Nov. 1614.

[60] Dr. Daniel Price was the eldest son of Thomas Price, vicar of
Saint Chad’s, Shrewsbury, in which borough he was born and educated.
From St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he was entered in 1594, he removed to
Exeter college, where he took the degree of master of arts, and entered
into holy orders. He afterwards became dean and residentiary canon of
Hereford, rector of Worthyn in Shropshire, and of Lantelos in Cornwall;
for which counties, as well as that of Montgomery, he officiated as
magistrate. He was author of many works, wholly devotional, and died at
Worthyn the 23d September 1631, and was buried there in the chancel of
the church.

[61] This poem, for what reason does not appear, is printed before some
of the later editions of sir Thomas Overbury’s “Wife.”

[62] These reverend gentlemen were jesters to James the First. The name
of the former was Archibald Armstrong, of whom and of whose jests an
account may be found in Granger, vol. ii. p. 399. ed. 1775. 8vo. They are
again joined in a manuscript poem (_penes me_) by Peter Heylin, written
in derision of Barten Holiday’s play already mentioned in the life of the
bishop, of which the following are the introductory lines:

    “Whoop Holyday! why then ’twill ne’er be better,
    Why all the guard, that never saw more letters
    Than those upon their coates; whose wit consists
    In Archy’s bobs and Garret’s sawcy jests,
    Deride our Christ-church scene.”

[63] Thomas Ereskine, earl of Fenton.

[64] William, earl of Pembroke, a poet himself, and an universal patron
of learning, whose character is so admirably drawn by Clarendon.

[65] The compass of a note is too confined for an account of this great
negociator and general, who fell by the jealousy of the Prince of Orange
the 13th March 1619. He was born at Amersfort, in the province of
Utrecht, was five times employed as ambassador to England and France,
and had long the command of the armies of the United Provinces. De Thou
says, “que c’étoit un homme très accrédité par les charges qu’il avoit
remplies, et par sa grande expérience dans les affaires:”—And Moreri
concludes an account of his character, and his death, which he met with
an undaunted spirit, in the following words: “Barneveldt, ayant été pris,
eut la tête tranchée à l’age de 72 ans, sous prétexte d’avoir voulu
livrer le pays aux Espagnols, quoiqu’il le niat constamment, et qu’en
effet on n’en ait trouvé aucune preuve dans ses papiers. Son crime étoit
d’avoir refusé d’entrer dans le complot, à la faveur du quel le prince
Maurice vouloit a ce qu’on dit se rendre maître des Pays Bas, et d’avoir
défendu la liberté de sa patrie avec trop de zèle.” Tom. ii. p. 78.

[66] No minister ever exerted his power with less tyranny and more
benignity than the favourite of Philip the Third: he fell “from his high
estate” by the intrigues of his son, and an ungrateful monk whom he had
raised to be confessor to the king, and who abandoned the friend that had
elevated him as soon as the smiles of sovereignty were transferred to
another. On the 4th of October 1618, he retired to his paternal estate
from the capricious favour of the court, where he passed the remainder of
his days in peace and privacy.

[67] William Burton is said, by Antony à Wood, to have been a _pretender_
to astronomy, of which he published an Ephemeris in 1655.—Edmund
Gunter, a mathematician of greater eminence, was astronomical professor
of Gresham College, and eminent for his skill in the sciences: his
publications were popular in his day. He died in Gresham College, 1626.

[68] Thomas Hariot, styled by Camden “Mathematicus Insignis,” was a
pensioner and companion of sir Walter Raleigh in his voyage to Virginia
(1584), of which upon his return he published an account. He was held in
high estimation by the earl of Northumberland, sir Thomas Aylesbury, and
others, for his mathematical knowledge, but, like his patron, Raleigh,
was a deist in religion.—Ob. 1621. See Wood’s Athenæ, vol. i. p. 460. ed.
1721.

[69] Of this popular song, which is reprinted from “Deuteromelia,”
1609, in Hawkins’s History of Music, and in Ritson’s Antient Songs, the
following is the introductory stanza:

    “As it fell upon a holyday
    And upon a holy-tide-a,
    John Dory brought him an ambling nag
    To Paris for to ride-a.”

[70] Louis the XIIIth, for no superior virtues surnamed “Le Juste.”
I have seen it somewhere observed that he chose his ministers for
extraordinary reasons: Richlieu, because he could not govern his kingdom
without him; Des Noyers, for psalm-singing; and le duc de Zuynes, for
being an expert bird-catcher.

The satire of Corbet seems to justify the remark.

He was born 1601; married Anne of Austria 1615; and died at St. Germain’s
1643.

[71] Upon a similar declaration being issued by Charles in 1633, “one
Dr. Dennison,” says lord Strafford’s garrulous correspondent, “read it
here (London), and presently after read the ten commandments; then said,
‘Dearly beloved, you have now heard the commandments of God and man: obey
which you please.’”

                                      Strafford Papers, vol. i. 166. fol.

[72] Whalley’s Ben Jonson, vol. v. 299.

[73] Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. ii. p. 444.

[74] See his Poems, p. 1657.

[75] Howell’s Letters, p. 64. ed. 1650. This fool, _quasi_ knave, whose
surname was Armstrong, had his coat pulled over his ears, and was
discharged of his office, for indignity to archbishop Laud.

                            See Rushworth’s Collections, vol. ii. p. 471.

[76] This refers to a popular tract published in 1622, under that title,
in favour of the Low Countries, and for the purpose of prejudicing the
people of England against the marriage which Villiers was negotiating
when this poem was addressed to him. The negotiation was not only
disgraceful, but unsuccessful:

    —αισχρον γαρ ἡμιν, και προς αισχυνη κακον.

[77] “On the 29th of May,” says sir Richard Baker, “the queen was brought
to bed of a young son, which was baptized at St. James’s on the 27th of
June, and named Charles. It is observed that at his nativity, at London,
was seen a star about noon-time: what it portended, good or ill, we leave
to the astrologers.” Baker’s Chronicle, p. 497. 1660. fol.

[78] If any one is at this time ignorant of the practice alluded to in
this line, of the sponsors at christenings giving spoons to the child
as a baptismal present, it is not the fault of the commentators on
Shakespeare, who have multiplied examples of the custom in their notes on
Henry the Eighth, vol. xv. p. 197. edit. 1803.

[79] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. Sadler 97.

[80] Ibid. Rivers 18.

[81] Cartwright has not unhappily imitated this poem in his address “To
Mr. W. B. at the Birth of his first Child:” a few lines may be given:

    I wish religion timely be
    Taught him with his A B C.
    I wish him good and constant health,
    His father’s learning, but more wealth,
    And that to use, not hoard; a purse
    Open to bless, not shut to curse.
    May he have many and fast friends
    Meaning good will, not private ends!—&c.

                    Poem, p. 208. 8vo. 1651.

[82] At Aston on the Wall, in Northamptonshire, where Christopher
Middleton, as rector, accounted for the first-fruits Oct. 12th, 1612; and
was buried Feb. 5th, 1627.

[83] By the right of Dr. Leonard Hutton, a man of some note in his day,
the fellow-collegian and subsequent father-in-law of bishop Corbet.
Hutton passed from Westminster School to Christ-Church, of which he
afterwards became a canon. It was in his residence at Oxford most
probably, and not, as the editors of the Biographia Britannica have
conjectured, upon this tour, that Corbet first became acquainted with
Hutton’s daughter. By the dean and canons he was presented to the rectory
of Flore in Northamptonshire, where he accounted for the first-fruits
Aug. 6th, 1601, and to the vicarage of Weedon in the same county in 1602.
Having lived to the age of 75 years, he died the 17th of May, 1632, and
was buried in the divinity chapel of Christ Church, where a monument
remains to his memory.

[84] A note in the old copies informs us that his name was “Ned Hale.”

[85] A sergeant. Edit. 1648.

[86] These are said in the old copies to be “the ministers of Daventry;”
but as no such names occur in the list of incumbents, it is probable they
officiated for Thomas Mariat, the then vicar, who must have been very
old, as he was inducted to the living in 1560.

[87] Dod and Cleaver, thus honourably introduced to our notice, were
united by the strong ties of puritanism and authorship.

    Ambo animis, ambo insignes præstantibus armis;
    _Hic_ pietate prior.

The latter has fallen into oblivion, but the superior zeal of John
Dod has preserved his memory. He was born at Shottledge in Cheshire,
where his family had territorial possessions, and was educated at Jesus
College, Cambridge. “He was,” says Fuller, “by nature a witty, by
industry a learned, by grace a godly, divine.” He had good preferment
in the church, but was silenced for non-conformity, though afterwards
restored. He died and was buried at Fawesly in Northamptonshire, of which
he was vicar, Aug. 19th, 1645.

They were again joined in derision by Cartwright, in his “Chambermaid’s
Posset.”

    Next Cleaver and Doddism both mixed and fine,
      With five or six scruples of conscience cases.—&c.

                               Poems, p. 231. 8vo. 1651.

[88] In Leicestershire.

[89] A note in Tanner’s Bibliotheca Brit.-Hibernica thus relates the
indignity offered to the remains of this parent of the Reformation,
after he had been ‘quietly inurned’ during the space of forty-one years:
“Magister Johannes Wicliff Anglicus per D. Thomam Arundel. archiepiscopum
Cantuar. fuit post mortem suam excommunicatus, et postea fuit exhumatus,
et ossa ejus combusta, et cineres in aquam juxta Lutterworth projecti
fuerunt, ex mandato P. Martini V.”

[90] Parson of Heathcot, Edit. 1672. It has been observed in the
Introduction that there is no village of this name in this situation:
the copy 1648 says Parson Heathcote, which was probably the name of the
parson of Ayleston, who was their conductor.

[91] Students of Christ-Church College, Oxford, which, as well as
Whitehall, the “palace” before mentioned, was founded by Wolsey.

[92] The figure in these lines is taken from the fine church of St.
Mary’s, Nottingham, in which the long chancel and nave with the tower
in the midst resemble the object of the bishop’s metaphor. The castle
mentioned in the succeeding lines has “perished ’mid the wreck of things
that were.”

[93] Guy and Colebrand.

[94] Where David king of the Scots was kept prisoner.

[95] Which is within the Castle.

[96] Every part of Corbet’s account of Nottingham Castle corresponds so
closely with the relation of Leyland, in his Itinerary, vol. iii. p. 105,
&c., that it would be superfluous to transcribe it. See also Speed’s
Chronicle, p. 540; and Holinshed’s Chronicle, p. 349.

[97] In Nottinghame.

[98] “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.” Proverbs
xxviii. ver. 20.

[99] Dr. Jucks.

[100] Mr. Edward Mason.—MS. 1625.

[101] “The 25th of April, 1603, being Thursday, his highnesse (James
the First) tooke his way towards New-warke upon Trent, where that night
he lodged in the Castle, being his owne house, where the aldermen of
New-warke presented his Majestie with a faire gilt cup, manifesting their
duties and loving hearts to him; which was kindly received.”

   “The true Narration of his Majesty’s Journey from Edenbrough, &c.” 1603.

[102] Leister forrest.

[103] Bosworth field. Edit. 1648.

[104] From this passage we learn that Richard Burbage, the _alter
Roscius_ of Camden, was the original representative of Shakespeare’s
Richard the Third.

He was buried in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, as Mr. Chalmers
discovered, on the 16th of March, 1618-19.

[105] The clerical profligate thus gibbeted for the example of posterity
was John Bust, inducted the 8th of April, 1611. He seems to have been a
worthy prototype of the Natta of antiquity:

    Non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattæ?
    Sed stupet hic vitio, et fibris increvit opimum
    Pingue; caret culpa; nescit quid perdat, et alto
    Demersus, summa rursum non bullit in unda.

                                    Persius, iii. 31.

[106] Guyes cliff. Edit. 1648. The cliff and chapel are engraved in
Dugdale’s Warwickshire, vol. i. 274. Ed. 1730.

[107] Of the Theorbo, or Cithara bijuga, so called from its having two
necks, which appears from Kircher as well as the bishop’s poetry to have
been highly esteemed in Corbet’s time, a graphical representation may be
found in Hawkins’s History of Music, vol. iv. p. 111. 4to. 1776.

[108] Warwick Castle. Edit. 1648.

[109] Fulke Greville, lord Brooke.

[110] Arch-deacon Burton. Edit. 1648.

[111] At the signe of the Alter-stone. Edit. 1648.

[112] Which serve for troughs in the backside. Ibid.

[113] Three dames,

    “Well known and like esteemed.”

“A discourse of the godly life and Christian death of Mistriss Katharine
Stubbs, who departed this life at Burton on Trent, 14th of December,”
(1592.) was written by her brother, the sanctimonious author of “The
Anatomie of Abuses.”

Anne Askew, burned in 1546 for her rigid adherence to her faith, wrote “a
balade which she sang when she was in Newgate;” printed by Bale. A long
account of her examination and subsequent martyrdom may be seen in Foxe’s
“Actes and Monuments,” vol. ii. p. 1284. edit. 1583. bl. let.

With the last I am less intimately acquainted; but I take her to be the
same “lady” of whom the favourite son of Mrs. Merrythought sings, in the
last act of “The Knight of the Burning Pestle.”

[114] It is almost superfluous to observe, that rosemary was supposed by
our forefathers to be very efficacious in strengthening the retentive
faculties; and, by being always borne at funerals, was calculated
to perpetuate the remembrance of the deceased. “Here is a strange
alteration: for, the rosemary that was washt in sweet water to set out
the bridall, is now wet in teares to furnish her burial.”—Decker’s
Wonderfull Yeare 1603.

[115] The belief that the turning of the cloak, or glove, or any garment,
solved the benighted traveller from the spell of the Fairies, is alluded
to in the Iter Boreale, (see p. 191,) and is still retained in some of
the western counties.

[116] This poem, of which the leading features seem to be copied from
the 10th epistle of the 1st book of Horace, has been printed in “The
Antient and Modern Miscellany,” by Mr. Waldron, from a manuscript in his
possession, and it is consequently retained in this edition of Corbet’s
Poems; to whose acknowledged productions it bears no resemblance, at the
same time that it is attributed (in Ashmole’s MSS., No. 38, fol. 91.) to
Robert Heyrick, the author of “Hesperides.”

[117]

    Discite quam parvo liceat producere vitam,
    Et quantum natura petat.

                          LUCAN, iv. ver. 377.

[118]

    Impiger extremos currit mercator ad Indos,
    Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes.

                                      HOR. Epist. I.

[119] See Warton’s Hist. of Engl. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 170, 171.

[120] See the Life of the Bishop.

[121] This poem, which is in some manuscripts attributed to William
Stroude, has already been printed in the Topographer of my very
intelligent friend, Samuel Egerton Brydges, esq. vol. ii. p. 112.

[122] Richard Greenham was educated at Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge, and
became minister of Dry-Drayton, three miles distant; where it should
seem, from a rhyming proverb, that his success in the ministry was not
proportionate to his zeal:

    Greenham had pastures green,
      But sheep full lean.

“What,” says Fuller (Church Hist. lib. ix. 220.), “was Dry-Drayton but a
bushel to hide,—London an high candlestick to hold up the brightness of
his parts?” Thither he repaired; and, after an ‘erratical and planetary
life,’ settled himself at Christ-Church, where he ended his days in 1592.

“His master-piece,” says Fuller, “was in comforting wounded
consciences.”—Quid multis!

[123] “Tous les tempéramens,” say our neighbours, “ne se ressemblent
pas.” The Divine thus satyrized by Corbet is lauded by Fuller in high
strains of eulogy. He was born at Marston near Coventry, and was educated
at Christ College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M. A. Having
obtained the living of St. Andrew’s parish in that university, he resided
there till his death.—“He would pronounce the word _damme_ with such
an emphasis,” says Fuller, (Holy State, p. 80. fol. 1652.) “as left a
doleful echo in his auditors’ ears a good while after.” This passage is
of itself a sufficient illustration of the poet. His works were published
in three volumes, folio, 1612. The first in the collection is, “A Golden
Chaine, containing the Order of the Causes of Salvation and Damnation,
&c., in the tables annexed.”

[124] Juvenal. Sat. vi.




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