Sir; though (I thank God for it) I do hate
Perfectly all this town, yet there’s one state
In all ill things so excellently best,
That hate, towards them, breeds pity towards the rest.
Though poetry indeed be such a sin
As I think that brings dearths, and Spaniards in,
Though like the pestilence and old fashioned love,
Riddlingly it catch men; and doth remove
Never, till it be starved out; yet their state
Is poor, disarmed, like papists, not worth hate.
One (like a wretch, which at Bar judged as dead,
Yet prompts him which stands next, and cannot read,
And saves his life) gives idiot actors means
(Starving himself) to live by his laboured scenes;
As in some organ, puppets dance above
And bellows pant below, which them do move.
One would move love by rhymes; but witchcraft’s charms
Bring not now their old fears, nor their old harms:
Rams, and slings now are silly battery,
Pistolets are the best artillery.
And they who write to lords, rewards to get,
Are they not like singers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have still
That excuse for writing, and for writing ill.
But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
Others’ wits’ fruits, and in his ravenous maw
Rankly digested, doth those things out spew,
As his own things; and they are his own, ’tis true,
For if one eat my meat, though it be known
The meat was mine, th’ excrement is his own.
But these do me no harm, nor they which use
To outdo dildoes, and out-usure Jews;
To out-drink the sea, to outswear the Litany;
Who with sins’ all kinds as familiar be
As confessors; and for whose sinful sake,
Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make:
Whose strange sins, canonists could hardly tell
In which commandment’s large receipt they dwell.
But these punish themselves; the insolence
Of Coscus only breeds my just offence,
Whom time (which rots all, and makes botches pox,
And plodding on, must make a calf an ox)
Hath made a lawyer, which was alas of late
But a scarce poet; jollier of this state,
Than are new beneficed ministers, he throws
Like nets, or lime-twigs, wheresoe’er he goes,
His title of barrister, on every wench,
And woos in language of the Pleas, and Bench:
“A motion, Lady”; ” Speak Coscus”; ” I have been
In love, ever since tricesimo of the Queen,
Continual claims I have made, injunctions got
To stay my rival’s suit, that he should not
Proceed”; ” Spare me”; ” In Hilary term I went,
You said, if I returned next ‘size in Lent,
I should be in remitter of your grace;
In th’ interim my letters should take place
Of affidavits”; words, words, which would tear
The tender labyrinth of a soft maid’s ear,
More, more, than ten Sclavonians scolding, more
Than when winds in our ruined abbeys roar.
When sick with poetry, and possessed with Muse
Thou wast, and mad, I hoped; but men which choose
Law practice for mere gain, bold soul, repute
Worse than embrothelled strumpets prostitute.
Now like an owl-like watchman, he must walk
His hand still at a bill, now he must talk
Idly, like prisoners, which whole months will swear
That only suretyship hath brought them there,
And to every suitor lie in everything,
Like a king’s favourite, yea like a king.