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"Take comfort then, for thou shalt see on earth
Most of thy coate to be of greatest worth;
Though not in state, for who ere saw but merit
Was rather borne to begge than to inherit?
Yet in the gifts of nature we shall finde
A ragged coate oft haue a Royall minde :
For to descend to each distinct degree
By due experience we the same shall see.
If to Parnassus where the Muses are,
There shall we finde their Dyet very bare;
Their houses ruind and their well-springs dry,
Admir'd for nought so much as Pouertie.
Here shall we see poore Eschylus maintaine
His nighterne studies with his daily paine,
Pulling up Buckets but twas neuer knowne
That filling others he could fill his owne.
Here many more discerne we may of these,
As Lamachus, and poore Antisthenes,
Both which the sweetes of Poesie did sipp
Yet were rewarded with a staff and scripp;
For I nere knew nor (much I feare) shall know it,
Any die rich that liu'd to die a Poet."

MORTON. It would have been more curious if he had made some allusions to those of his own time who were sufferers.

BOURNE. It would, but he does not hint at any of them. He writes always in a bold and often in an energetic strain: the following six lines commence a poem, in the second division of "Times Curtaine drawne," called "The Great-mans Alphabet."

"Come hither Great-man, that triumphs to see

So

many men of lower ranke to thee;

That swells with honours, and erects thy state
As high as if thou wer't Earths Potentate!
Thou whose aspiring buildings raise thy name,
As if thou wer't the sonne and heyre of fame."

This, you will admit, is very spirited; and most of the piece is not inferior, though of a grave, moral cast. This is all I think necessary to read from Brathwayte.

MORTON. If I do not mistake, the title-page mentions "other choice, poems, entitled Health from Helicon," what are they?

BOURNE. Chiefly miscellaneous subjects, and not very good.

MORTON. Nor curious?

BOURNE. Unless we except the following passage from one of the pieces, called " Ebrius Experiens," in which the author attempts to vindicate his easily besetting sin, drunkenness.

ELLIOT. Let us hear that, for as the first Spectator says, we are always deeply interested about the personal appearance, peculiarities, and habits of authors: Montaigne too remarks, though with a different application, Je ne vois jamais Auteur que je ne recherche curieusement quelque il a été.

BOURNE. The lines, then, are these,

"Some say I drinke too much to write good lines; Indeed, I drinke more to obserue the Times,

And for the loue I bear vnto my friend,
To hold him chat than any other end.
Yea, my obseruance tells me I haue got
More by discoursing sometimes o're the pot,
Than if I had good fellowship forsooke,
And spent that houre in poring on a booke."

ELLIOT. There seems nothing very new in his arguments, at least in what you have read.

BOURNE. Nor in any of them. It is only doing exactly what Sir T. Wyatt censures in some lines quoted on a former day, viz. giving to every vice the name of the nearest virtue, “as drunkenness good fellowship to call."

ELLIOT. Brathwayte then concludes the series of the English satirists you intend to bring before us?

BOURNE. He does; but it cannot, with any propriety, be called a series, for some omissions have been made by design, and a few because the books were of such extreme rarity that I could not procure the use of them.

MORTON. You have purposely refrained from touching upon translations from the classic satirists, yet, with a view to this subject, I borrowed a very small tract, which my friend assured me was seldom to be met with, though only a translation: it is by an author I have frequently heard you praise-Chap

man.

BOURNE. Satires translated by Chapman? I have never seen any.

MORTON. Here is the tract, and the following is its title, "A Iustification of a strange action of Nero; in burying with a Solemne Fvnerall one of the cast Hayres of his Mistresse Poppæia. Also a iust reproofe of a Romane smell-Feast, being the fifth Satire of Ivvenall. Translated by George Chapman," 1629.

BOURNE. I remember it now, but I have never seen the tract, and Ritson mentions it as two works, when in truth it is only one, which proves that he was in the same condition. It is a very curious piece indeed.

ELLIOT. From that author we have surely a right to expect something more than curious.

MORTON. I Skimmed it over hastily last night, and I am sorry to say that I saw but little in it to admire.

BOURNE. Perhaps not: we are to recollect that at the time it was printed the author was not less than 72 years old, and that during the whole of his long life he had been a laborious writer, living probably entirely by his pen.

MORTON. Yet at the very time when he published it, he tells us, in the dedication to Richard Hubert Esq., that he has "some worthier work" in hand: the whole passage is a singular one with reference to himself and his labours. He first complains, that "greate workes get little regard," adding, " as it is now the fashion to iustifie Strange Actions, I (vtterly

against mine owne fashion) followed the vulgar, & assaid what might be said for iustification of a Strange Action of Nero:" he observes next, in terms, that he throws out this piece as a tub to the whale, σε hauing yet once more some worthier worke then this Oration, & following Translation, to passe the sea of the land, exposed to the land and vulgar Leuiathan.”- "The rather because the Translation containing in two or three instances, a preparation to the iustification of my ensuing intended Translations, lest some should account them, as they haue my former conuersions, in some places licences, bold ones, and vtterly redundant."

BOURNE. His "ensuing intended Translation," I conjecture, must have been of the whole of the satires of Juvenal and Persius, of which this was a foretaste, and which he did not live to complete.

ELLIOT. This tract before us then, was his last production. When did he die, do you recollect?

BOURNE. Ritson says, in 1634, but he refers to no authority. Chapınan always, as he has done above, expressed a great disgust at, and contempt for, the applause of the vulgar: particularly in the prefatory matter to his " Memorable Masque" of the Middle Temple and Lincolns Inn (1613), where he is speaking of true poets and true poetry. "Euery vulgarlyesteemed vpstart dares breake the dreadfull dignity of antient and authenticall Poesie, and presume Luciferously to proclame in place thereof, repugnant

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