Their modest stole, to garish looser weed,

Deck'd with love-favours, their late whoredoms meed :
And where they wont sip of the simple flood,
Now toss they bowls of Bacchus' boiling blood.
I marvell'd much, with doubtful jealousie,
Whence came such litters of new poetrie:
Methought I fear'd, lest the horse-hoofed well
His native banks did proudly over-swell
In some late discontent, thence to ensue
Such wondrous rabblements of rhymesters new:
But since I saw it painted on Fame's wings,
The Muses to be woxen wantonings.

Each bush, each bank, and each base apple-squire1
Can serve to sate their beastly lewd desire.
Ye bastard poets, see your pedigree,

From common trulls and loathsome brothelry!

SATIRE III.

WITH Some pot-fury, ravish'd from their wit,
They sit and muse on some no-vulgar writ :
As frozen dung-hills in a winter's morn,
That void of vapour seemed all beforn,
Soon as the Sun sends out his piercing beams
Exhale out filthy smoak and stinking steams.
So doth the base and the fore-barren brain,
Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.

One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought
On crowned kings, that Fortune hath low brought :
Or some upreared, high-aspiring swaine,

As it might be the Turkish Tamberlaine :2

1 See Nabbe's Microcosmus.

2 Malone's Shakespeare.

Then weeneth he his base drink-drowned spright,
Rapt to the threefold loft of heaven hight,
When he conceives upon his faigned stage
The stalking steps of his great personage,
Graced with huff-cap terms and thundring threats,
That his poor hearers' hair quite upright sets.
Such soon as some brave-minded hungry youth
Sees fitly frame to his wide-strained mouth,
He vaunts his voyce upon an hired stage,
With high-set steps, and princely carriage;
Now soouping in side robes of royalty,
That erst did skrub in lowsy brokery,
There if he can with terms Italianate1
Big-sounding sentences, and words of state,
Fair patch me up his pure iambic verse,
He ravishes the gazing scaffolders:
Then certes was the famous Corduban,2
Never but half so high tragedian.

Now, lest such frightful shows of Fortune's fall,
And bloody tyrant's rage, should chance apall
The dead-struck audience, 'midst the silent rout,
Comes leaping in a self-misformed lout,

And laughs, and grins, and frames his mimic face,
And justles straight into the prince's place;
Then doth the theatre echo all aloud,

With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd.
A goodly hotch-potch! when vile russetings

Are match'd with monarchs, and with mighty kings.
A goodly grace to sober Tragic muse,

When each base clown his clumbsy fist doth bruise, And show his teeth in double rotten row,

For laughter at his self-resembled show.

1 See Marston's Satires, 1598.

2 Seneca.