A DEFIANCE TO ENVY.

NAY; let the prouder pines of Ida fear
The sudden fires of heaven; and decline
Their yielding tops, that dar'd the skies whilerea:
And shake your sturdy trunks, ye prouder pines,
Whose swelling grains are like be gall'd alone,
With the deep furrows of the thunder-stone.

Stand ye secure, ye safer shrubs below,
In humble dales, whom heav'ns do not despite;
Nor angry clouds conspire your overthrow,
Envying at your too disdainful height.

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Let high attempts dread envy and ill tongues,
And cow'rdly shrink for fear of causeless wrongs.

So wont big oaks fear winding ivy weed:
So soaring eagles fear the neighbour sun

So golden mazer wont suspicion breed,

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Of deadly hemlock's poison'd potion:

So adders shroud themselves in fairest leaves :
So fouler fate the fairer thing bereaves.

a Whilere; just now, a little while ago. Shakspeare uses erewhile in this

sense,

"Else your memory is bad, going o'er it erewhile."

Love's Labour Lost, Act iv. Sc. 1.

Raleigh uses the word as Hall does.-PRATT.

↳ Like be galľ'd; i. e. like to be galled, &c. (from galler, Fr.) fretted, marked, or torn. So in Book iv. Sat. 5,

"With some gall'd trunk, ballac'd with straw and stone."

And in the conclusion to Book iii,—

"Hold out, ye guilty and ye galled hides.”—PRATT.

A mazer (or mazor) was a standing cup, a bowl, or goblet. Philips, in his World of Words, derives the name from Maser (or Maeser), which in Dutch means maple, of which sort of wood (says he) those cups are commonly made. The old dictionaries, however, interpret Chrysendeta, "Cups having borders of gold, as our mazers and nuts have." Du Cange, in his Glossary, gives a more curious account, of which the following is the substance. Murrhinum, or murreum, the ancient name for the most valuable kind of cups, made of a substance not yet clearly known, continued in the darker ages to be applied

Nor the low bush fears climbing ivy twine:
Nor lowly bustard dreads the distant rays:
Nor earthen pot wont secret death to shrine:
Nor subtle snake doth lurk in pathed ways:
Nor baser deed dreads envy and ill tongues,
Nor shrinks so soon for fear of causeless wrongs.

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Needs me then hope, or doth me need mis-dreed;

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Hope for that honour, dread that wrongful spite;
Spite of the party, honour of the deed,

Which wont alone on lofty objects light:

That envy should accost my muse and me,
For this so rude and reckless poesy.

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Would she but shade her tender brows with bay,
That now lie bare in careless wilful rage,

And trance herself in that sweet ecstasy,

That rouseth drooping thoughts of bashful age:

(Though now those bays, and that aspired thought,
In careless rage she sets at worse than nought.)

d

Or would we loose her plumy pinion,
Manacled long with bonds of modest fear,
Soon might she have those kestrels proud outgone,
Whose flighty wings are dew'd with wetter air,
And hopen now to shoulder from above-
The eagle from the stairs of friendly Jove.

Or list she rather in late triumph rear
Eternal trophies to some conqueror,
Whose dead deserts slept in his sepulchre,
And never saw, nor life, nor light before:

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to those of fine glass, which had been at first formed in imitation of the murrhine. This word, by various corruptions, became mardrinum, masdrinum, mazerinum, from which last mazer was formed. The French word madre is supposed to have the same origin; and it is still applied to substances curiously variegated; but at first more particularly to the materials of fine goblets. To these murrhine cups, I believe, the virtue was attributed (which the glass of Venice was afterwards said to possess) of manifesting whether the liquor put into them was poisonous or no. This seems to account for the application of the term to cups of value but it was also frequently applied to vessels of wood.-SINGER. Ruperti has a learned note on this subject, in his Commentary upon the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, 1. 156.—MAITLAND. The contrast of the poet then is, between a cup usually made of maple, and the same cup made of gold.-PRATT.

:

From

d A kestrel was a hawk of a base unserviceable breed.-SINGER. the French quercelle, cercelle: these from the Latin circulus; so called from the shape or disposition of its tail.-PRATT.

The stairs must here mean the steps (scala) of the throne of Jove, on the highest of which the eagle perched.-MAITLAND.

To lead sad Pluto captive with my song,
To grace the triumphs he obscur'd so long.

Or scour the rusted swords of elvish knights,
Bathed in Pagan blood, or sheath them new
In misty moral types; or tell their fights,
Who mighty giants, or who monsters slew,

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And by some strange enchanted spear and shield,
Vanquish'd their foe, and won the doubtful field.

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May be she might in stately stanzas frame
Stories of ladies, and advent'rous knights,
To raise her silent and inglorious name
Unto a reachless pitch of praises heights,

And somewhat say, as more unworthy done,
Worthy of brass, and hoary marble-stone.

Then might vain envy waste her duller wing,
To trace the airy steps she spiting sees,
And vainly faint in hopeless following
The clouded paths her native dross denies.
But now such lowly Satires here I sing,
Not worth our Muse, not worth her envying.

Too good, if ill, to be expos'd to blame :
Too good, if worse, to shadow shameless vice.
Ill, if too good, not answering their name:
So good and ill in fickle censure lies.

Since in our Satire lies both good and ill,
And they and it, in varying readers' will.

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Witness, ye Muses, how I wilful sung

These heady rhymes, withouten second care;

And wish'd them worse, my guilty thoughts among;

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The ruder Satire should go ragg'd and bare,
And show his rougher and his hairy hide,

Though mine be smooth, and deck'd in careless pride.

Would we but breathe within a wax-bound quill,
Pan's seven-fold pipe, some plaintive pastoral;
To teach each hollow grove, and shrubby hill,
Each murmuring brook, each solitary vale,

To sound our love, and to our song accord,
Wearying Echo with one changeless word.

80

This and the following stanza contain evident allusions to the Fairy Queen of Spenser.-H.

Or list us make two striving shepherds sing",
With costly wagers for the victory,

Under Menalcas judge; while one doth bring
A carven bowl well wrought of beechen tree,
Praising it by the story, or the frame,
Or want of use, or skilful maker's name.

Another layeth a well-marked lamb,

Or spotted kid, or some more forward steer,
And from the pail doth praise their fertile dam ;
So do they strive in doubt, in hope, in fear,
Awaiting for their trusty umpire's doom,
Faulted as false by him that's overcome,

Whether so me list my lovely thought to sing,

Come dance, ye nimble Dryads, by my side:

Ye gentle wood-Nymphs, come; and with you bring

The willing Fawns that mought your music guide:

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Come, Nymphs and Fawns, that haunt those shady groves,
While I report my fortunes or my loves,

Or whether list me sing so personate,

My striving self to conquer with my verse,

Speak, ye attentive swains, that heard me late,
Needs me give grass unto the conquerors?

105

At Colin's feet I throw my yielding reed",
But let the rest win homage by their deed.

But now, ye Muses, sith your sacred hestsi
Profaned are by each presuming tongue;
In scornful rage I vow this silent rest,
That never field nor grove shall hear my song.
Only these refuse rhymes I here mis-spend,

To chide the world, that did my thoughts offend.

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8 Vid. Theocrit. Idyll. IV. V. Virgil. Bucol. Ecl. III.-MAITLAND. "This is a delicate compliment to Spenser (says Warton), after whom he declares his reluctance and inability to write pastorals; but these spirited lines show that he was admirably qualified for this species of poetry." Do they not rather show that he had written pastorals? Else why should he say,

"Speak, ye attentive swains, that heard me late ?"

I do not completely understand the next line,—

Needs me give grass unto the conquerors ?"

To give grass, was probably to yield the palm, but I have found no instance of its use.-SINGER. He gives Spenser the name of Colin, in allusion to Colin Clout's come home again.—MAITLAND.

i Hests; behests, commands; from haitan, Goth. to command.-MAITLAND,

SATIRES.

BOOK I.