sleeves, and scarce give him thanks that presents it. Much better is it for those golden pens to raise such ungrateful peasants from the dunghill of obscurity, and make them equal in fame to the worthies of old, when their doting self-love shall challenge it of duty, and not only give them nothing themselves, but impoverish liberality in others.

This is the lamentable condition of our times, that men of art must seek alms of cormorants, and those that deserve best, be kept under by dunces, who count it a policy to keep them bare, because they should follow their books the better: thinking belike, that, as preferment hath made themselves idle that were erst painful in meaner places, so it would likewise slacken the endeavours of those students that as yet strive to excel in hope of advancement. A good policy to suppress superfluous liberality. But, had it been practised when they were promoted, the yeomanry of the realm had been better to pass than it is, and one drone should not have driven so many bees from their honeycombs.

THOMAS NASHE, Pierce Penilesse 1592

A Pot-poet

's;

Is the dregs of wit; yet mingled with good drink may have some relish. His inspirations are more real than others for they do but feign a god, but he has his by him. His verses run like the tap, and his invention, as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose afire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a sixpence or two in reward of the baser coin, his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three halfpence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman: for which the printer maintains him in ale a fortnight. His verses are like his clothes, miserable centos and patches, yet their pace is not altogether so hobbling as an almanac's. The death of a great man or the burning of a house furnish him with an argument, and the nine Muses are out straight in mourning gown, and Melpomene cries "Fire, Fire." His other poems are but briefs in rhyme, and like the poor Greeks' collections to redeem from captivity. He is a man now much employed in

commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the Spaniard. His frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chanted from market to market, to a vile tune and a worse throat, whilst the poor country wench melts like her butter to hear them. And these are the stories of some men of Tyburn or a strange monster out of Germany, or, sitting in a bawdyhouse, he writes God's judgment. He ends at last in some obscure painted cloth, to which himself made the verses, and his life, like a can too full, spills upon the bench. He leaves twenty shillings on the score, which my hostess loses.

John Earle, Micro-cosmographie 1628

A worthy poet

[Had the writer Shakespeare in mind while penning the following ?]

A worthy poet is the purest essence of a worthy man: he is confident of nature in nothing but the form and an ingenious fitness to conceive the matter. So he approves nature as the motive, not the foundation or structure of his worthiness. His works do every way pronounce both nourishment, delight and admiration to the reader's soul: which makes him neither rough, effeminate, nor windy: for by a sweet contemperature of tune and ditty he entices others to goodness, and shows himself perfect in the lesson. He never writes upon a full stomach and an empty head, or a full head and an empty stomach. For he cannot make so divine a receptable stoop to the sordid folly of gall or envy without strength: or strength of brain stoop, and debase itself with hunting out the body's succour. He is not so impartial as to condemn every new fashion, or tax idle circumstance; nor so easy as to allow vices, and account them generous humours. So he neither seeks to enlarge his credit of bitterness by a snarling severity; nor to augment his substance by insinuating courtship. He hath more debtors in knowledge among the present writers than creditors among the ancient poets. He is possessed with an innocent liberty, which excludes him from the slavish labour and means of setting a gloss upon frail commodities. Whatsoever therefore proceeds from him, proceeds without a meaning to supply the worth, when the work is ended, by the addition of preparative verses at the beginning, or the dispersed hire of acquaintance to extol things indifferent. Neither does he passionately affect high

patronage, or any, further than he may give freely, and so receive back honest thanks. The dangerous name and the contempt of poets, sprung from their multitude of corruptions, prove no disadvantage or terror to him: for such be his antidotes that he can walk untouched, even through the worst infection. And indeed that mountebank's preparing oil which kept his hands unscalded, was a toy of nothing to this poet's rarity of discretion, which so prepares his mind, that he can bathe it in the strains of burning lust, fury, malice, or despite, and yet be never scalded, or endangered by them. He only among men is nearest infinite: for in the scenical composures, of a tragedy or comedy, he shows the best resemblance of his high Creator: turning his quick passions, and witty humours to replenish and overcome into matter and form as infinite as God's pleasure to diversify mankind. He is no miserable selflover, nor no unbounded prodigal: for he can communicate himself wisely to avoid dull reservedness, but not make every thought common to maintain his market. It must be imputed to his perfect eyesight, that he can see error and avoid it without the hazard of a new one: as in poems, so in projects, by an easy conjecture. He cannot flatter, nor be flattered: if he gives desert, he gives no more, and leaves hyperbole in such a matter of importance. As for himself, he is so well known unto himself, that neither public fame, nor yet his own conceit, can make him over-valued in himself. He is an enemy to atheists; for he is no fatist nor naturalist: he therefore excludes luck and rhyme from the acceptance of his poems; scorning to acknowledge the one as an efficient, the other as an essence, of his muse's favour. He pays back all his imitation with interest; whilst his authors (if revived) would confess their chief credit was to be such a pattern: otherwise (for the most part) he proves himself the pattern, and the project in hand. Silver only and sound metal comprehend his nature: rubbing, motion, and customary usage, make the brightness of both more eminent. No marvel though he be immortal, seeing he converts poison into nourishment, even the worst objects and societies to a worthy use. When he is lastly silent (for he cannot die) he finds a monument prepared at others' cost and remembrance, whilst his former actions be a living epitaph. JOHN STEPHENS, Essayes and Characters 1615

Ballads and Monsters

I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV. i. 221

Falstaff. An I have not ballads made on you all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison.

I Henry IV., II. ii. 50

Clown. What hast here? ballads? Mopsa. Pray now, buy some: I love a ballad in print, o' life, for then we are sure they are true.

Autolycus. Here's one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden; and how she longed to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed.

Autolycus. Here's another ballad of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was thought she was a woman and was turned into a cold fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful and as true. Dorcas. Is is true, think you?

Autolycus. Five justices' hands at it, and witnesses more than my pack will hold. The Winter's Tale, IV. iii. 261-287

Another sort of men there are, who, though not addicted to such counterfeit curiosity, yet are they infected with a farther improbability; challenging knowledge unto themselves of deeper mysteries, whenas with Thales Milesius they see not what is under their feet; searching more curiously into the secrets of nature, whenas in respect of deeper knowledge, they seem mere naturals; coveting with the phoenix to approach so nigh to the sun, that they are scorched with his beams and confounded with his brightness. Who made them so privy to the secrets of the Almighty, that they should foretell the tokens of his wrath, or terminate the time of his vengeance? But lightly some news attends the end of every term, some monsters are booked, though not bred, against vacation times, which are straightway diversely dispersed into every quarter, so that at length they become the alehouse talk of every carter: yea, the country ploughman feareth a Calabrian flood in the midst of a furrow, and the silly shepherd committing his wandering sheep to the custody of his wap, in his

field-naps dreameth of flying dragons, which for fear lest he should see to the loss of his sight, he falleth asleep; no star he seeth in the night but seemeth a comet; he lighteth no sooner on a quagmire, but he thinketh this is the foretold earthquake, whereof his boy hath the ballad.

Thus are the ignorant deluded, the simple misused, and the sacred science of astronomy discredited; and in truth what leasings will not make-shifts invent for money? What will they not feign for gain? Hence come our babbling ballads, and our new found songs and sonnets, which every rednose fiddler hath at his fingers' ends, and every ignorant ale-knight will breathe forth over the pot, as soon as his brain waxeth hot. Be it a truth which they would tune, they interlace it with a lie or two to make metre, not regarding verity, so they may make up the verse; not unlike to Homer, who cared not what he feigned, so he might make his countrymen famous. But as the straightest things being put into water seem crooked, so the crediblest truths if once they come within compass of these men's wits, seem tales. Were it that the infamy of their ignorance did redound only upon themselves, I could be content to apply my speech otherwise than to their Apuleian ears, but sith they obtain the name of our English poets, and thereby make men think more basely of the wits of our country, I cannot but turn them out of their counterfeit livery, and brand them in the forehead, that all men may know their falsehood. Well may that saying of Campanus be applied to our English poets, which he spake of them in his time: "They make (saith he) poetry an occupation, lying is their living, and fables are their movables; if thou takest away trifles, silly souls, they will famish for hunger." It were to be wished that the acts of the venturous, and the praise of the virtuous were, by public edict, prohibited by such men's merry mouths to be so odiously extolled, as rather breeds detestation than admiration, loathing than liking. What politic councillor or valiant soldier will joy or glory of this, in that some stitcher, weaver, spendthrift or fiddler hath shuffled or slubbered up a few ragged rimes, in the memorial of the one's prudence, or the other's prowess? It makes the learned sort to be silent when they see unlearned sots so insolent.

THOMAS NASHE, The Anatomie of Absurditie 1589