Or in the Turkish wars, at Cæsar's pay,
To rub his life out till the latest day.
Another shifting gallant, to forecast
To gull his hostess for a month's repast,
With some gall'd trunk, ballac'd
Left for the pawn of his provision.
Had F's shop lien fallow but from hence?

with straw and stone,

Whiles his light heels their fearful flight can take,

His doors close seal'd, as in some pestilence,

To get some badgeless blue upon his back?
Tocullio was a wealthy usurer,

Such store of incomes had he every year,
By bushels was he wont to mete his coin,
As did the old wife of Trimalcion2.
Could he do more, that finds an idle room
For many hundred thousands on a tomb?
Or who rears up four free-schools in his age,

30

35

40

45

Of his old pillage, and damn'd surplusage?

Yet now he swore, by that sweet cross he kiss'd,

(That silver cross, where he had sacrific'd

His coveting soul, by his desire's own doom,
Daily to die the Devil's martyrdom,)

50

a

His angels were all flown up to their sky,
And had forsook his naked treasury.
Farewell Astrea, and her weights of gold,
Until his lingering calends once be told;

Nought left behind but wax and parchment scrolls,
Like Lucian's dream that silver turn'd to coals.
Shouldst thou him credit, that nould credit thee?
Yes, and mayst swear he swore the verity.

55

and blasphemers; common ravishers of women, and murtherers of children." See Todd's edit. vol. viii. p. 392.-PRATT. For the supposed etymology of the term Kernes, vid. Todd's Johnson.-MAITLAND.

The old substantive was "balase, wherewith ships are poysed to go upright." The participle of the verb to balase was therefore balased, as we find it in the old dictionaries. The old copies read ballac'd, but the modern editor changed it unwarrantably to ballast.-SINGER.

Badgeless blue; some dress, different from that which he had worn, in order to prevent detection.-PRATT. The dress of a person in low life; generally of a servant, which was of a blue colour.-MAITLAND. A blue coat and a badge being the dress of a servant, probably badgeless blue here means a soldier's coat. In Green's Tu Quoque, one says:

“A blue coat with a badge does better with you."-Singer.

Uxor Trimalchionis Fortunata appellatur, quæ nummos modio metitur." Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, cap. 37.-MAITLAND.

a Angels were gold coins worth about ten shillings.-SINGER.

b Astræa. The daughter of Astreus, one of the Titans, and of Themis; or, according to Ovid, of Jupiter and Themis. She descended from heaven to

e

The ding-thrift heir, his shift-got sum mispent,
Comes drooping like a penniless penitent,
And beats his faint fist on Tocullio's door;
It lost the last, and now must call for more.
Now hath the spider caught a wandering fly,
And drags her captive at her cruel thigh:
Soon is his errand read in his pale face,
Which bears dumb characters of every case.
So Cyned's dusky cheek, and fiery eye,
And hairless brow, tells where he last did lie.
So Matho doth bewray his guilty thought,
Whiles his pale face doth say his cause is nought.
Seest thou the wary angler trail along

His feeble line, soon as some pike too strong

Hath swallowed the bait, that scorns the shore,
Yet now near hand cannot resist no more ?
So lieth he aloof in smooth pretence,

To hide his rough intended violence.

As he that, under name of Christmas cheer,
Can starve his tenants all the' ensuing year.
Paper and wax (God wot!) a weak repay

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65

70

75

For such deep debts and down-stak'd sums as they: 80
Write, seal, deliver, take, go spend and speed;

And yet full hardly could his present need

Part with such sum; for but as yester-late &

Did Furnus offer penn'orths at easy rate,

For small disbursement; he the banks hath broke,

85

And needs mote now some further plain o'erlook:
Yet, ere he go, fain would he be releas'd;
Hie you, ye ravens, hie you to the feast.

dwell upon earth during the golden age. The crimes of mortals, however, at length drove her back to the celestial abodes ;

"Et virgo cæde madentes

Ultima cœlestum terras Astræa reliquit."

The Greeks confounded Astræa with the Goddess of Justice; and Spenser exhibits her under the same character. Vid. Fairy Queen, book v. cant. i. ver. 5. et seq.-MAITLAND.

• Πόθεν χρυσίον τοσοῦτον ; ἤ που ὄναρ ταῦτά ἐστι ; δέδια γοῦν μὴ ἄνθρακας, Ευρω ȧvεypóμevoc. Vid. Luciani Timon. edit. Hemsterhus. tom. i. p. 152.-MAIT

LAND.

Nould; quasi, ne would, would not.-PRATT.

e Ding-thrift, i. e. spendthrift, one who dings or throws away thrift, who spurns prudence and economy ::

"No, but because the ding-thrift now is poore,

And knows not where i' th' world to borrow more."

Herrick, Hesper. p. 186.—SINGer.

The edition of 1599 reads downcast; and is followed, as usual, by the Oxford editor.-PRATT.

* As yester-late; i. e. so lately since as yesterday.-PRATT.

Provided that thy lands are left entire,
To be redeem'd or ere thy day expire;
Then shalt thou tear those idle paper bonds,
That thus had fettered thy pawned lands.
Ah fool! for sooner shalt thou sell the rest,
Than stake aught for thy former interest;
When it shall grind thy grating gall for shame,

To see the lands, that bear thy grandsire's name,
Become a dunghill-peasant's summer-hall,

Or lonely hermit's cage inhospitall;

A pining gourmand, an imperious slave,

A horse-leech, barren womb, and gaping grave;

100

A legal thief, a bloodless murderer,

A fiend incarnate, a false usurer:

Albe such main extort scorns to be pent

In the clay walls of thatched tenement :
For certes no man of a low degree

105

May bid two guests, or gout or usury:
Unless some base hedge-creeping Collybist *
Scatters his refuse scraps on whom he list,
For Eastergloves, or for a Shrovetidehen,
Which, bought to give, he takes to sell again.
I do not mean some glozing merchant's feat,
That laugheth at the cozen'd world's deceit,
When as a hundred stocks lie in his fist,

110

He leaks, and sinks, and breaketh when he list.
But Nummius eas'd the needy gallant's care
With a base bargain of his blowen' ware

115

"The horse-leech hath two daughters, crying, Give, Give. There are three things that are never satisfied: yea, four things say not, It is enough: the grave, and the barren womb, &c." Prov. xxx. 15, 16.-PRATT.

i Main extort, i. e. excessive extortion.-PRATT.

* Collybist. Our author uses this word when speaking of Christ's driving the money-changers out of the Temple: "See now, how his eyes sparkle with holy anger, and dart forth beams of indignation in the faces of these guilty Collybists!" Contempl. xxv. The word is from the Greek κολλυβιστής, nummularius, a money-changer, usurer, banker, &c.—Pratt.

1 Blowen for blown, i. e. stale, worthless.-SINGER.

m

Shakspeare alludes to these dishonest practices in Measure for Measure, where the clown enumerates the inhabitants of the prison: “—First, here's young master Rash; he's in for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger; nine score and seventeen pounds." Act iv. Sc. 3. The passages in contemporary writers, alluding to this custom of the usurers, are extremely numerous. It forms the subject of a chapter in Dekker's English Villanies; and is well illustrated by Mr. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, first series, vol. iii. p. 78. These nominal purchases of any trumpery which were to be turned into money by selling at a great loss, and often to a confederate of the usurer, have been heard of even in our times. Greene, in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier, says, " For the merchant he delivered iron, tin, lead, hops, sugars, spices, oyls, brown paper, or whatever else, from six months to

Of fusted hops, now lost for lack of sale,

Or mould brown-paper" that could nought avail;
Or what he cannot utter otherwise,

May pleasure Fridoline for treble price:

120

Whiles his false broker lieth in the wind,

And for a present chapman is assign'd,

The cut-throat wretch for their compacted gain

Buys all for but one quarter of the main ";

Whiles, if he chance to break his dear-bought day,

125

And forfeit, for default of due repay,

His late entangled lands; then, Fridoline,

Buy thee a wallet, and go beg or pine.

If Mammon's self should ever live with men,
Mammon himself shall be a citizen.

130

SATIRE VI.o

Quid placet ergo?

I wor not P 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 :

5

six months; which when the poor gentleman came to sell again, he could not make threescore and ten in the hundred, besides the usury." And in his Defence of Cony Catching: "So that, if he borrow an hundred pounds, he shall have forty in silver, and threescore in wares: as lute-strings, hobby horses, or brown paper, or cloath," &c. All rich citizens were engaged in this traffic. Hence in Cymbeline, Belarius says:

"Did you but know the City's usuries,

And felt them knowingly.”—SINGER.

Of the main; i. e. of the full price.-PRATT.

• In this Satire, from Juvenal's position that every man is naturally discontented, and wishes to change his proper condition and character, he ingeniously takes occasion to expose some of the new fashions and affectations.WARTON. In this Satire our author appears to have had both the first Ode and the first Satire of Horace in view.-PRATT.

"Qui fit, Mæcenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem
Seu ratio dederit, seu fors objecerit, illâ

Contentus vivat ?"

Hor. Lib. I. Sat. i.-ELLIS.

"Omnibus in terris, quæ sunt a Gadibus usque
Auroram et Gangem, pauci dignoscere possunt
Vera bona."

Juv. Sat. x.-ELLIS.

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!

10

Whose mannish housewives like their refuse state,
And make a drudge of their uxorious mate;
Who, like a cot-quean, freezeth at the rock,

15

Whiles his breech'd dame doth man the foreign stock.
Is't not a shame to see each homely groom
Sit perched in an idle chariot-room",

20

That were not meet some pannel to bestride,
Sursingled to a galled hackney's hide?

C

Each muckworm will be rich with lawless gain,

Although he smother up mows of seven years grain,
And hang'd himself when corn grows cheap again;

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A ruff is now an ornament peculiar to the female neck, but it was formerly used by both sexes. The effeminacy of a man's ruff is ridiculed by Beaumont and Fletcher; Nice Valour, Act iii. Sc. 1.-MAITLAND.

A partlet was a neckerchief, gorget, or rail, say the old Dictionaries. But Minshew adds: " Partlet, mentioned in the statute 24 H. VIII. c. 13, seemeth to be some part of a man's attire, viz. some loose collar of a doublet, to be set on or taken off by itselfe, without the bodies, as the picadillies now a daies, or as men's bands, or women's neckerchiefs, which are in some places, or at least have been within memorie, called partlets."-SINGER. Johnson's definition of partlet, after Hanmer, is "A name given to a hen; the original signification being a ruff or band, or covering for the neck ;" and, in illustration, he quotes this line of our author.-PRATT.

Busks were pieces of wood, (steel,) or whalebone, worn down the front of women's stays to keep them straight. It seems that such beings as are now popularly called dandies were not unknown in the good old times: the same accusation of wearing stays, and other articles of female attire, has been brought against their descendants.-SINGER.

"A verdingale, or farthingale, a kind of hoop.-SINGER. "A whalebone circle that ladies formerly wore on their hips, and upon which they tied their petticoats." Phillips's New World of Words.-PRATT.

* This kind of high shoe was called a moyle. "Mulleus, a shoe with a high sole, which kings and noblemen use to weare, nowe common amonge nice fellowes." Junius's Nomenclator, by Fleming, 1585.-SINGER.

Napkin, i. e. hundkerchief. Baret, in his Alvearie, has “Napkin, or handkerchief, wherewith we wipe away the sweat, Sudarium; distinguished from a table napkin, Muntile.”—SINGER.

Cot-quean; "A man that is too busy in meddling with women's affairs." Phillips's New World of Words.-PRATT. An effeminate fellow; probably a corruption of coquine, which Cotgrave interprets a cockney, a simper de cockit, a nice thing. Addison compares a woman interfering with state affairs to a man interfering in female business, a cot-quean.-SINGER. A hen-pecked husband. Vid. Nares's Glossary, for the derivation and various meanings of this word. --MAITLAND.

a The rock is the distaff; that is, the staff on which the flax was held, when spinning was performed without a wheel: or the corresponding part of the spinning-wheel.-SINGER.