When each base clown his clumsy fist doth bruise,
And shew his teeth in double rotten row,
For laughter at his self-resembled show.
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 scroll
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 halfpenny.
Shame that the muses should be bought and sold
For every peasant's brass, on each scaffold.

SATIRE V.

BOOK III.

FIE on all courtesy and unruly winds,
Two only foes that fair disguisement finds.
Strange curse! but fit for such a fickle
age,
When scalps are subject to such vassalage.
Late travelling along in London way,
Me met, as seem'd by his disguis'd array,
A lusty courtier, whose curled head
With auburn locks was fairly furnished.
I him saluted in our lavish wise:

He answers my untimely courtesies.

His bonnet vail'd, ere ever I could think,
Th' unruly wind blows off his periwink.
He lights and runs, and quickly hath him
To overtake his over-running head.

The sportful wind, to mock the headless man,
Tosses apace his pitch'd Rogerian,

And straight it to a deeper ditch hath blown:
There must my yonker fetch his waxen crown.
I look'd and laugh'd, whiles in his raging mind,
He curst all courtesy and unruly wind.

I look'd and laugh'd, and much I marvelled,
To see so large a causeway in his head;

And me bethought that when it first begon,

'Twas some shroad autumn that so bar'd the bone. Is 't not sweet pride then, when the crowns must shade

With that which jerks the hams of every jade,

Or floor-strew'd locks from off the barber's shears? But waxen crowns well 'gree with borrow'd hairs.

SATIRE VII1.

BOOK III,

SEEST thou how gaily my young master goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;

1 In this description of a famished gallant, Hall has rivalled the succeeding humour of Ben Jonson in similar comic portraits. Among the traits of affectation in his finished character, is that of dining with Duke Humphry while he pretends to keep open

And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side;
And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide?
'Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he din'd to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humfrày.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier.
And open house, haunted with great resort;
Long service mixt with musical disport.
Many fair yonker with a feather'd crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost,
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touch'd no meat of all this live-long day.
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seem'd sunk for very hollowness,
But could he have (as I did it mistake)
So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt,
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip?
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.

house.-The phrase of dining with Duke Humphry arose from St. Paul's being the general resort of the loungers of those days, many of whom, like Hall's gallant, were glad to beguile the thoughts of dinner with a walk in the middle aisle, where there was a tomb, by mistake supposed to be that of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester.-E.

The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.

What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain,
His grandame could have lent with lesser pain?
Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore,
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.

His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head, One lock amazon-like dishevelled,

As if he meant to wear a native cord,

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard both lip and chin;
His linen collar labyrinthian set,

Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human shew?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.
Lik'st a straw scare-crow in the new-sown field,
Rear'd on some stick, the tender corn to shield.
Or if that semblance suit not every deal,

Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel.

SATIRE VI1.

BOOK IV.

Quid placet ergo?

I wor not how the world's degenerate,

That men or know or like not their estate :
Out from the Gades up to th' eastern morn,
Not one but holds his native state forlorn.
When comely striplings wish it were their chance,
For Cænis' distaff to exchange their lance,
And wear curl'd periwigs, and chalk their face,
And still are poring on their pocket-glass.
Tir'd with pinn'd ruffs and fans, and partlet strips,
And busks and verdingales about their hips;
And tread on corked stilts a prisoner's pace,
And make their napkin for their spitting place,
And gripe their waist within a narrow span:
Fond Cænis, that wouldst wish to be a man!
Whose manish housewives like their refuse state,
And make a drudge of their uxorious mate,
Who like a cot-queen freezeth at the rock,
Whiles his breech'd dame doth man the foreign stock.

1 The general scope of this satire, as its motto denotes, is directed against the discontent of human beings with their, respective conditions. It paints the ambition of the youth to become a man, of the muckworm to be rich, of the rustic to become a soldier, of the rhymer to appear in print, and of the brain-sick reader of foreign wonders to become a traveller.-E.