Third, that he never change his trencher twice.
Fourth, that he use all common courtesies;
Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait.
Last, that he never his young master beat,
But he must ask his mother to define

10

How many jerks she would his breech should line.
All these observ'd, he could contented be,

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To give five marks and winter livery.

SATIRE VII."

IN th' heaven's universal alphabet
All earthly things so surely are foreset,

That who can read those figures, may foreshew
Whatever thing shall afterwards ensue.
Fain would I know (might it our artist please)
Why can his tell-troth Ephemerides
Teach him the weather's state so long beforn,
And not foretell him, nor his fatal horn,
Nor his death's-day, nor no such sad event;
Which he mought wisely labour to prevent?

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10

pany. One of these stately salt-cellars is still preserved, and in use, at Winchester College. With this idea we must understand the following passage of a table meanly decked. Book vi. Sat. 1.:—

"Now shalt thou never see the salt beset
With a big-bellied gallon flagonet."

In Jonson's Cynthia's Revels it is said of an affected coxcomb, "His fashion is, not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. He never drinkes below the salt." Act ii. Sc. 2. So in Dekker's Gul's Hornbook, "At your twelvepenny ordinary, you may give any justice of the peace, or young knight, if he sit but one degree towards the equinoctial of the saltcellar, leave to pay for the wine," &c. In Parrot's Springes for Woodcocks, 1613, a guest complains of it as an indignity,

66

And swears that he below the salt was sett."

Lib. ii. Epig. 188.-WARTON.

Mr. Gifford, in a note on Massinger's Unnatural Combat, Act iii. Sc. I, remarks, "It argues little for the delicacy of our ancestors, that they should have admitted of such distinctions at their board; but, in truth, they seem to have placed their guests below the salt for no better purpose than that of mortifying them." Mr. Gifford thinks a passage in Nixon's Strange Foot Post furnished Hall with his subject; and has given the following extract : the writer is describing the miseries of a poor scholar; "Now for his fare, it is lightly at the cheapest table, but he must sit under the salt: that is an axiome in such places: then, having drawne his knife leisurably, unfolded his napkin mannerly, after twice or thrice wiping his beard, if he have it, he may reach the bread on his knife's point, and fall to his porrige, and between every spoonful take as much deliberation as a capon craming, lest he be out of his porrige before they have buried part of the first course in their bellies."--SINGER.

S

From those who despised learning he makes a transition to those who

Thou damned mock-art, and thou brainsick tale
Of old astrology: where didst thou veil
Thy cursed head thus long, that so it mist
The black bronds" of some sharper Satirist?
Some doting gossip 'mongst the Chaldee wives
Did to the credulous world thee first derive;
And Superstition nurs'd thee ever since,
And publish'd in profounder art's pretence *?
That now, who pares his nails, or libs his swine,
But he must first take counsel of the sign?

So that the vulgar's count, for fair or foul,
For living or for dead, for sick or whole,
His fear or hope, for plenty or for lack,
Hangs all upon his new-year's Almanack.

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20

If chance once in the spring his head should ache,
It was foretold: thus says mine Almanack.

In th' heav'n's' High-Street are but a dozen rooms,
In which dwells all the world, past and to come.
Twelve goodly inns they are, with twelve fair signs,
Ever well tended by our star-divines.
Every man's head inns at the horned Ram,

The whiles the neck the Black-Bull's guest became :

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abused it by false pretences. Judicial astrology is the subject of this Satire. He supposes that astrology was the daughter of one of the Egyptian midwives, and that having been nursed by Superstition, she assumed the garb of Science. The numerous astrological tracts, particularly called Prognostications, published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, are a proof how strongly the people were infatuated with this sort of divination. One of the most remarkable was a treatise written in the year 1582, by Richard Harvey, brother to Gabriel Harvey, a learned astrologer of Cambridge, predicting the portentous conjunction of the primary planets, Saturn and Jupiter, which was to happen the next year. It had the immediate effect of throwing the whole kingdom into a most violent consternation. When the fears of the people were over, Nash, in his Pierce Penniless, gave a droll account of their opinions and apprehensions while this formidable phenomenon was impending; and Elderton, a ballad-maker, and Tarleton, the comedian, joined in the laugh. This was the best way of confuting the impertinences of the science of the stars. True knowledge must have been beginning to dawn, when these profound fooleries became the objects of wit and ridicule.-WARTON.

t Ephemerides; astronomical tables, shewing the state of the heavens at noon on every day of the year, and used by astrologers in calculating horoscopes.-MAITLAND,

p. 212.): but

Bronds; properly swords (see Todd's Spenser, vol. v. black bronds must here mean severe brands, or censures.-PRATT.

* See More's Utopia, by Dibdin, p. 233, who varies the reading, and substitutes defence for pretence.-HAZLEWOOD.

To lib; a word still in general use in Scotland, signifying to geld.— MAITLAND.

Hall supposes the twelve signs of the Zodiac to be twelve inns in the High Street of Heaven; and he assigns the duties of ostlers, tapsters, and chamberlains, to astrologers. The Ram, the Black-Bull, and the BlueLion, were the signs of inns at Cambridge; and Bridge Street was a street in the same town.-MAITLAND.

a

Th' arms, by good hap, meet at the wrastling Twins,
Th' heart, in the way, at the Blue-Lion inns :
The legs, their lodging in Aquarius got;
That is the Bridge-Street of the heav'n, I wot:
The feet took up the Fish with teeth of gold;
But who with Scorpio lodg'd, may not be told".
What office then doth the star-gazer bear?
Or let him be the heaven's osteler,
Or tapster some, or some be chamberlain,
To wait upon the guests they entertain.
Hence can they read, by virtue of their trade,
When any thing is miss'd, where it was laid :
Hence they divine, and hence they can devise,
If their aim fail, the stars to moralize.
Demon, my friend, once liver-sick of love,
Thus learn'd I by the signs his grief remove":

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40

45

In the blind Archer first I saw the sign,

When thou receiv'dst that wilful wound of thine;

50

And now in Virgo is that cruel maid,

Which hath not yet with love thy love repaid:
But mark when once it comes to Gemini,
Straightway fish-whole shall thy sick liver be.
But now (as th' angry heavens seem to threat
Many hard fortunes and disasters great)
If chance it come to wanton Capricorn,
And so into the Ram's disgraceful horn,
Then learn thou of the ugly Scorpion,
To hate her for her foul abusiond;
Thy refuge then the Balance be of right,
Which shall thee from thy broken bond acquite:
So, with the Crab, go back whence thou began,
From thy first match, and live a single man.

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60

a The later editions read Bride Street. I have restored the reading from the first edition.-PRATT. This passage is animadverted upon by Milton in his Apology for Smectymnus, in the following manner: "Turning by chance to the sixth (seventh) satire of his second book, I was confirmed; where, having begun loftily in heaven's universal alphabet, he falls down to that wretched poorness and frigidity, as to talk of Bridge Street in heaven, and the ostlers of heaven: and there, wanting other matter to catch him a heat (for certainly he was on the frozen zone, miserably benumbed), with thoughts lower than any beadle's, betakes him to whip the sign-posts of Cambridge alehouses, the ordinary subjects of freshmen's tales, and in a strain as pitiful.”—SINGER. The human figure, thus astrologically distributed, was common on old almanacs.-PRATT.

e His grief remove; i. e. his grief to remove.-PRATT.

d Abusion; corruption, reproach: from the same word in old French.— MAITLAND.

END OF THE SECOND BOOK.

SATIRES.

BOOK III.

PROLOGUE".

SOME say my Satires over-loosely flow",
Nor hide their gall enough from open show:
Not, riddle-like, obscuring their intent;

But, pack-staff plain, utt'ring what thing they meant :
Contrary to the Roman ancients,

Whose words were short, and darksome was their sense;
Who reads one line of their harsh poesies,

Thrice must he take his wind, and breathe him thrice.
My Muse would follow them that have foregone,
But cannot with an English pinion.

For look how far the ancient Comedy
Pass'd former Satires in her liberty:
So far must mine yield unto them of old.
'Tis better be too bad, than be too bold.

In the prologue to this book our author strives to obviate the objections of certain critics, who falsely and foolishly thought his Satires too perspicuous. Nothing could be more absurd than the notion that, because Persius is obscure, therefore obscurity must be necessarily one of the qualities of satire. If Persius, under the severities of a prescriptive and sanguinary government, was often obliged to conceal his meaning, this was not the case with Hall. But the darkness and difficulties of Persius arise, in a great measure, from his own affectation and false taste. He would have been enigmatical under the mildest government. To be unintelligible can never naturally belong to any species of writing. Hall of himself is certainly obscure: yet he owes some of his obscurity to an imitation of this ideal excellence of the Roman Satirists.-WARTON.

"Sunt quibus in satirâ videar nimis acer, et ultra," &c. Hor.-Singer. This proverbial phrase is still in use; we say, as plain as a pike-staff, alluding to the staff of a pike. The old form pack-staff alludes to the staff on which a pedler carried his pack. So Marston uses 'pack-staff rhymes,' and a 'pack-staff epithet.'-SINGER.