SATIRE II3.

To what end did our lavish ancestors
Erect of old these stately piles of ours;
For threadbare clerks, and for the ragged muse,
Whom better fit some cotes of sad secluse?
Blush, niggard Age, and be asham'd to see,
These monuments of wiser ancestry.

And ye, fair heaps, the Muses' sacred shrines,
(In spite of time and envious repines)
Stand still and flourish till the world's last day,
Upbraiding it with former love's decay.
Here may you, Muses, our dear sovereigns,
Scorn each base lordling ever you disdains;
And every peasant churl, whose smoky roof
Denied harbour for your dear behoof.
Scorn ye the world before it do complain,
And scorn the world that scorneth you again.
And scorn contempt itself that doth incite
Each single-sol'd5 squire to set you at so light.
What needs me care for any bookish skill,
To blot white papers with my
restless quill:

3 In this satire, he celebrates the wisdom and liberality of our ancestors, in erecting magnificent mansions for the accommodation of scholars, which yet at present have little more use than that of reproaching the rich with their comparative neglect of learning. The verses have much dignity and are equal to the subject. W.

4 Low humble cottages.

5 Single-soled or single-souled, like single-witted, was used by our ancestors to designate simplicity, silliness. It is a very ancient expression. Thus in Horman's Vulgaria, 1519,

brain

Or pore on painted leaves, and beat my
With far-fetch thought; or to consume in vain
In latter even, or midst of winter nights,
Ill smelling oils, or some still-watching lights.
Let them that mean by bookish business
To earn their bread, or hopen to profess
Their hard got skill, let them alone, for me,
Busy their brains with deeper bookery.
Great gains shall bide you sure, when

spent

ye

have

A thousand lamps, and thousand reams have rent
Of needless papers; and a thousand nights
Have burned out with costly candlelights.
Ye palish ghosts of Athens, when at last
Your patrimony spent in witless waste,
Your friends all weary, and your spirits spent,
Ye may your fortunes seek, and be forwent
Of your kind cousins, and your churlish sires,
Left there alone, midst the fast-folding briers.
Have not I lands of fair inheritance,

Deriv'd by right of long continuance,

"O

"He is a good sengyll-soul and can do no harm; est doli nescius." The commentators on Shakspeare have made strange work of this phrase with their conjectures. Romeo says, single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness." Decker in his Wonderful Year has a " single-sole fidler." And Taylor the water poet "a single-soal'd gentlewoman of the last edition." So in Stephens's World of Wonders, 1607, "I will allege some rare examples of simple Sir John's; that is, of such as are not monks but single-soled priests," p. 179. The fact is that single and simple were ancient synonymes.

6 Forwent appears to have been used by Hall for abandoned, neglected. I have not traced the word elsewhere.

To firstborn males, so list the law to grace,
Nature's first fruits in an eternal race?
Let second brothers, and poor nestlings,
Whom more injurious nature later brings
Into the naked world; let them assaine
To get hard pennyworths with so bootless pain.
Tush! what care I to be Arcesilas,

Or some sad Solon, whose deed-furrowed face,
And sullen head, and yellow-clouded sight,
Still on the steadfast earth are musing pight;
Mutt'ring what censures their distracted mind,
Of brainsick paradoxes deeply hath defin'd:
Or of Parmenides, or of dark Heraclite,
Whether all be one, or ought be infinite?
Long would it be ere thou hast purchase bought,
Or wealthier wexen by such idle thought.

7 He concludes his complaints of the general disregard of the literary profession, with a spirited paraphrase of that passage of Persius, in which the philosophy of Arcesilaus, and of the Ærumnosi Solones, is proved to be of little use and estimation. W.

8 Pight is set, placed, fixed. It is explained thus by Bullokar in his Expositor, 1616.

9 Purchase here means gain, profit, a sense in which it is used by Ben Jonson in his Devil is an Ass, Act i. Sc. 1.

In your sports only, nothing in your purchace."

It is a very old sense of the word, for in the metrical prophecy attributed to Chaucer it has the same meaning:

66

Lecherie is holdin as privy solas,

And robberie as fre purchas (i. e. fair gain)."

So in Shakspeare's first part of King Henry IV. Act ii. Sc. 2. "Give me thy hand, thou shalt have a share in our purchase, as I am a true man."

Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store;
And he that cares for most shall find no more.
We scorn that wealth should be the final end,
Whereto the heav'nly Muse her course doth bend;
And rather had be pale with learned cares,
Than paunched 10 with thy choice of changed fares.
Or doth thy glory stand in outward glee?
A lave-ear'd ass with gold may trapped be.
Or if in pleasure? live we as we may,
Let swinish Grill 12 delight in dunghill clay.

10 Paunched is here used for crammed, stuffed, fullpaunched.

11 Lave-eared is lap-eared, long or flap-eared. Hall elsewhere uses laving for lapping or flapping. It is perhaps derived from Layvers, which Bullokar explains thongs of leather.

12 Gryllus is one of Ulysses's companions transformed into a hog by Circe, who refuses to be restored to his human shape. But perhaps the allusion is immediately to Spenser's Fairy Queen, ii. 12. 80. W.

SATIRE III 13.

WHO doubts? the laws fell down from heav'n's

height,

Like to some gliding star in winter's night?
Themis, the scribe of God, did long agone
Engrave them deep in during marble stone,
And cast them down on this unruly clay,
That men might know to rule and to obey.
But now their characters depraved bin,
By them that would make gain of others' sin.
And now hath wrong so mastered the right,
That they live best that on wrong's offal light.
So loathly fly that lives on galled wound,
And scabby festers inwardly unsound,
Feeds fatter with that pois'nous carrion,
Than they that haunt the healthy limbs alone.
Woe to the weal where many lawyers be,
For there is sure much store of malady.
"Twas truly said, and truly was foreseen,
The fat kine are devoured of the lean.

Genus and Species long since barefoot went 14,
Upon their ten toes in wild wanderment:

13 In this third satire of the second book the poet laments the lucrative injustice of the law, while ingenious science is without emolument or reward. W.

14 This is an allusion to an old distich, made and often quoted in the age of scholastic science:

Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores;

Sed Genus et Species cogitur ire pedes.

That is, the study of medicine produces riches, and jurispru