Meanwhile our poets in high parliament
Sit watching every word and gesturement,
Like curious censors of some doughty gear,
Whispering their verdict in their fellow's ear.
Woe to the word whose margent in their scrole
Is noted with a black condemning coal!
But if each period might the synod please,
Ho!-bring the ivy boughs, and bands of bays!
Now when they part and leave the naked stage,
Gins the bare hearer, in a guilty rage,

To curse and ban, and blame his likerous eye,
That thus hath lavish'd his late half-penny.
Shame that the Muses should be bought and sold,
For every peasant's brass, on each scaffold!

SATIRE IV.

Too popular is Tragic poesie,

Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee,
And doth beside on rhymeless numbers tread;
Unbid iambics flow from careless head.
Some braver brain in high heroic rhymes
Compileth worm-eat stories of old times;
And he like some imperious Maronist,
Conjures the Muses that they him assist,
Then strives he to bombast his feeble lines

With far-fetch'd phrase;

And maketh up his hard-betaken tale

With strange enchantments, fetch'd from darksom vale,

Of some Melissa1, that by magic doom

To Tuscan soil transporteth Merlin's tomb.

1 Ariosto.

Painters and poets hold your auncient right:

Write what you will, and write not what you might : Their limits be their list, their reason will.

But if some painter, in presuming skill,

Should paint the stars in center of the Earth,
Could ye forbear some smiles, and taunting mirth?
But let no rebel satyr dare traduce

Th' eternal legends of thy faerie Muse,
Renowned Spenser: whom no earthly wight
Dares once to emulate, much less dares despight.
Salust1 of France, and Tuscan Ariost,
Yield up the lawrel garland ye have lost:
And let all others willow wear with me,
Or let their undeserving temples bared be.

SATIRE V.

ANOTHER, whose more heavy hearted saint,
Delights in nought but notes of rueful plaint,
Urgeth his melting Muse with solemn tears,
Rhyme of some dreary fates of luckless peers.
Then brings he up some branded whining ghost,
To tell how old misfortunes had him toss'd.
Then must he ban the guiltless fates above,
Or fortune frail, or unrewarded love.
And when he hath parbreak'd2 his grieved mind,
He sends him down where erst he did him find,

1 Guillaume Saluste, Seigneur du Bartas.

2 An old word signifying "spewed forth." See Proverbs, c. xxv. v. 16, Bible Edition, 1569.-Spenser, B. 1. c.1. p. 8.4to Edit. 1590.