Still turning over Nature's books:

The wheel that governs all : Their works chaste, moral, and divine,

From thence the change in church and state, Where profit and delight combine;

And all the mischief bears the date
They, gilding dirt, in noble verse

From Haberdashers' Hall.
Rustic philosophy rehearse.
When heroes, gods, or god-like kings,

Did we force Ireland to despair,
They praise, on their exalted wings

Upon the king to cast the war, To the celestial orbs they climb,

To make the world abhor him, And with th' harmonious spheres keep time:

Because the rebels us'd his name? Nor did their actions fall behind

Though we ourselves can do the same, Their words, but with like candour shind;

While both alike were for him.
Each drew fair characters, yet none

Then the same fire we kindled here
Of these they feign'd, excels their own.
Both by two generous princes lov'd,

With what was given to quench it there,
Who knew, and judg'd what they approv'd,

And wisely lost that nation : Yet having each the same desire,

To do as crafty beggars use, Both from the busy throng retire.

To maim themselves, thereby t'abuse
Their bodies to their minds resign'd,

The simple man's compassion.
Card not to propagate their kind :
Yet though both fell before their hour,

Have I so often past between
Time on their offspring hath no power,

Windsor and Westminster, unseen, Nor fire nor Fate their bays shall blast,

And did myself divide :
Nor Death's dark veil their day o'ercast.

To keep his excellence in awe,
And give the parliament the law?

For they knew none beside.

A SPEECH AGAINST PEACE

AT THE

Did I for this take pains to teach
Our zealous ignorants to preach,

And did their lungs inspire;
Gave them their texts, shuwd them their parts,
And taught them all their little arts,

To fing abroad the fire ?

CLOSE COMMITTEE.

To the tune of, “ I went from England.”

But will you now to peace incline,
And languish in the main design,

And leave us in the lurch?
I would not monarchy destroy,
But as the only way t' enjoy

The ruin of the church.
Is not the bishop's bill deny'd,
And we still threaten’d to be try'd ?

You see the king embraces
Those counsels he approv'd before :
Nor doth he promise, which is more,

That we shall have their places.
Did I for this bring in the Scot?
(For 'tis no secret now) the plot

Was Saye's and mine together :
Did I for this return again,
And spend a winter there in vain,

Once more t'invite them hither ?

Sometimes to beg, sometimes to threaten,
And say the cavaliers have beaten,

To stroke the people's ears?
Then straight when victory grows cheap,
And will no more advance the heap,

To raise the price of fears.
And now the books, and now the bells,
And now our act the preacher tells,

To edify the people ;
All our divinity is news,
And we have made of equal use

The pulpit and the steeple.

And shall we kindle all this flame
Only to put it out again,

And must we now give o'er,
And only end where we begun ?
In vain this mischief we have done,

If we can do no more.

Though more our money than our cause
Their brotherly assistance draws,

My labour was not lost.
At my return I brought you thence
Necessity, their strong pretence,

And these shall quit the cost.
Did I for this my country bring
To help their knight against their king,

And raise the first sedition ?
Though I the business did decline,
Yet I contriv'd the whole design,

And sent them their petition. So many nights spent in the city In that invisible committee,

If men in peace can have their right,
Where 's the necessity to fight,

That breaks both law and vath?
They'll say they fight not for the cause,
Nor to defend the king and laws.

But us against them both,
Either the cause at first was ill,
Or being good, it is so still;

And thence they will infer,
That either now or at the first
They were deceiv'd; or, which is worst,

That we ourselves may err.
But plague and famine will come in,
For they and we are near of kin,

sense :

OF THE

And cannot go asunder :

For all those pretty knacks you compose, But while the wicked starve, indeed

Alas, what are they but poems in prose ? The saints have ready at their need

And between those and ours there's no difference, God's providence, and plunder.

But that yours want the ryme, the wit, and the Princes we are if we prevail,

But for lying (the most noble part of a poet) And gallant villains if we fail :

You have it abundantly, and yourselves know it ; When to our fame 'tis told,

And though you are modest and seem to abhor it, It will not be our least of praise,

'T has done you good service, and thank Heli Since a new state we could not raise,

for it : To have destroy'd the old.

Although the old maxim remains still in force,

That a sanctify'd cause must have a sanctify'd Then let us stay and fight, and vote,

If poverty be a part of our trade,

[course, Till London is not worth a groat;

So far the whole kingdom poets you have made, Oh'tis a patient beast !

Nay even so far as undoing will do it, When we have gall’d and tir'd the mule,

You have made king Charles himself a poct : And can no longer have the rule,

But provoke not his Muse, for all the world We'll have the spoil at least.

knows,

Already you have had too much of his prose. TO THE FIVE MEMBERS

A WESTERN WONDER. FONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS, Do you not know not a fortnight ago, THE HUMBLE PETITION OF THE POETS. How they bragg'd of a Western Wonder ?

When a hundred and ten slew five thousand men, AFTER so many concurring petitions

With the help of lightning and thunder?
From all ages and sexes, and all conditions,
We come in the rear to present our follies There Hopton was slain again and again,
To Pym, Stroude, Haslerig, Hampden, and Or else my author did lye ;

[living, Holles.

With a new Thanksgiving, for the dead who are Though set form of prayer be an abomination, To God, and his servant Chidleigh. Set forms of petitions find great approbation : Therefore, as others from th' bottom of their But now on which side was this miracle try'd, souls,

I hope we at last are even ;

[graves, So we from the depth and bottom of our bowls, For sir Ralph and his knaves are risen from their According unto the bless'd form you have taught To cudgel the clowns of Devon, Wethank you first for the ills you have brought us : And there Stamford came, for his honour was For the good we receive we thank him that gave

Of the gout three months together ; [lame And you for the confidence only to crave it. [it, But it prov'd when they fought, but a runniug Next in course, we complain of the great viola- For his heels were lighter than ever. [gout Of privilege (like the rest of our nation); [tion For now he outruns his arms and his guns, But 'tis none of yours of which we have spoken, Which never had being until they were broken ;

And leaves all his money behind him ; But ours is a privilege ancient and native,

But they follow after; unless he takes water, Hangs not on an ordinance, or power legislative.

At Plymouth again they will find him.
And first, 'tis to speak whatever we please,
Without fear of a prison or pursuivant's fees.

What Reading hath cost, and Stamford hath Next, that we only may lye by authority ;

Goes deep in the sequestrations ! (lost,

These wounds will not heal, with your new great But in that also you have got the priority. Next, an old custom, our fathers did name it Nor Jepson's declarations.

(seal.
Poetical licence, and always did claim it. Now, Peters and Case, in your prayer and grace
By this we have power to change age into youth, Remember the new Thanksgiving;
Turn nonsense to sense, and falsehood to truth; Isaac and his wife, now dig for your life,
In brief, to make good whatsoever is faulty;

Or shortly you'll dig for your living.
This art some poet, or the Devil, has taught ye:
And this our property you have invaded;
And a privilege of both houses have made it.

A SECOND WESTERN WONDER.
But that trust above all in poets reposed,
That kings by them only are made and deposed, You heard of that wonder, of the lightning and
This though you cannot do, yet you are willing :

thunder, But when we undertake deposing or killing, Which made the lye so much the louder : They're tyrants and monsters; and yet then the Now list to another, that miracle's brother, poet

Which was done with a firkin of powder.
Takes full revenge on the villains that do it :
And when we resume a sceptre or crown,

O what a damp it struck through the camp !
We arc modest, and seek not to make it our own. But as for honest sir Ralph,
But is 't not presumption to write verses to you,

It blew him to the Vies, without beard or eyes, Who make better poems by far of the two ? But at least three heads and a half.

us,

When out came the book which the news-monger But, alas ! he had been feasted

From the preaching ladies letter, [took With a spiritual collation, Where, in the first place, stood the Conqueror's By our frugal mayor, Which made it show much the better. [face,

Who can dine on a prayer,

And sup on an exhortation.
But now without lying, you may paint him flying,
At Bristol they say you may find him,

'Twas mere impulse of spirit, Great William the Con, so fast he did run, Though he us'd the weapon carnal: That he left balf his name behind him.

“ Filly foal,” quoth he,

“ My bride thou shalt be, And now came the post, save all that was lost, And how this is lawful, learn all.

But alas, we are past deceiving
By a trick so stale, or else such a tale

“ For if no respect of persons Might amount to a new Thanksgiving.

Be due 'mongst sons of Adam,

In a large extent, This made Mr. Case, with a pitiful face,

Thereby may be meant In the pulpit to fall a weeping, (eyes,

That a mare's as good as a madam." Though his mouth utter'd lyes, truth fell from his

Then without more ceremony, Which kept the lord-mayor from sleeping.

Not bonnet vail'd, nor kiss'd her,

But took her by force,
Now shut up shops, and spend your last drops,
For the laws, not your cause, you that loath and us'd her like a sister.

For better for worse,
'em,
Lest Essex should start, and play the second part Now when in such a saddle
Of the worshipful sir John Hotham.

A saint will needs be riding,

Though we dare not say

'Tis a falling away, NEWS FROM COLCHESTER:

May there be not some back-sliding? Or, A proper New Ballad of certain Carnal Pas

“No surely," quoth James Naylor,

“ 'Twas but an insurrection sages betwixt a Quaker and a Colt, at Horsly,

Of the carnal part, near Colchester, in Essex.

For a Quaker in heart
To the tune of Tom of Bedlam.

Can never lose perfection.

All in the land of Essex,
Near Colchester the zealous,

On the side of a bank,

Was play'd such a prank,
As would make a stone-horse jealous.

“ For (as our masters' teach us)
The intent being well directed,

Though the Devil trepan

The Adamical man,
The saint stands uninfected."

Help Woodcock, Fox, and Naylor,
For brother Green 's a stallion :

Now, alas, what hope

Of converting the Pope, When a Quaker turps Italian :

But alas ! a Pagan jury
Ne'er judges what 's intended ;

Then say what we can,

Brother Green's outward man I fear will be suspended.

And our adopted sister
Will find no better quarter,

But when him we enrol

For a saint, Filly Foal
Shall pass herself for a martyr.

Even to our whole profession
A scandal 'twill be counted,

When 'tis talk'd with disdain,

Amongst the profane,
How brother Green was mounted.
And in the good time of Christmas,
Which though our saints have dama'd all,

Yet when did they hear

That a damn'd cavalier
E’er play'd such a Christmas gambal!
Had thy flesh, O Green, been pamper'd
With any cates unhallow'd,

Hadst thou sweeten'd thy gums

With pottage of plums,
Or profane minc'd pye hadst swallow'd :
Roll'd up in wanton swine's flesh,
The fiend might have crep into thee;

Then fullness of gut
Might bave caus'd thee to rut,
And the Devil have so rid through thee.

Rome, that spiritual Sodom,
No longer is thy debtor,

O Colchester, now

Who's Sodom but thou,
Even according to the letter?

A SONG.
Morpheus, the humble god, that dwello
In cottages and smoaky cells,
Hates gilded roofs and beds of down;
And though he fears no prince's frown,
Flies from the circle of a crown.

5 The Jesuits.

ON

Come, I say, thou powerful god,

But what in them is want of art or voice, And thy leaden charming rod,

in thec is either modesty or choice. Dipt in the Lethéan lake,

While this great picce, restord by thee, doth O'er his wakeful temples shake,

stand Lest he should sleep, and never wake.

Free from the blemish of an artless hand,

Secure of fame, thou justly dost esteem Nature (alas !) why art thou so

Less honour to create, than to redeem. Obliged to thy greatest foe?

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ, Sleep that is thy best repast,

Attempt translation ; for transplanted wit, Yet of death it bears a taste,

All the defects of air and soil doth share,
And both are the same thing at last.

And colder brains like colder cliniates are ;
In vain they toil, since nothing can beget
A vital spirit but a vital heat.

That servile path thou nobly dost decline
MR. JOAN FLETCHER'S WORKS.

Of tracing word by word, and line by line.

Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains, So shall we joy, when all whom beasts and worms Not the effect of poetry, but pains ; Have turn’d to their own substances and forms: Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords Whom earth to earth, or fire hath chang'd to No fight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at fire,

words. We shall behold more than at first entire ; A new and nobler way thou dost pursue As now we do, to see all thine thy own

To make translations and translators too. In this my Muse's resurrection,

They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame, Whose scatter'd parts from thy own race, more True to his sense, but truer to his fame. wounds

Fording his current, where thou find'st it low, Hath suffer'd, than Acteon from his hounds; Let'st in thine own to make it rise and flow; Which first their brains, and then their belly Wisely restoring whatsoever grace fed,

It lost by change of times, or tongues, or place. And from their excrements new poets bred. Nor fetter'd to his nambers and his times, But now thy Muse enraged, from her urn, Betray'st his music to unhappy rhymes. Like ghosts of murder'd bodies, does return Nor are the nerves of his compacted strength T'accuse the murderers, to right the stage, Stretch'd and dissolv'd into unsinew'd length: And undeceive the long-abused age,

Yet after all, (lest we should think it thine) Which casts thy praise on them, to whom thy | Thy spirit to his circle dost confine. wit

New names, new dressings, and the modern cast, Gives not more gold than they give dross to it: Some scenes, some persons alter'd, and outWho, not content, like felons, to purloin,

fac'd

[known Add treason to it, and debase the coin.

The world, it were thy work: for we have But whither am I stray'd ? I need not raise Some thank'd and prais'd for what was less their Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise; Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,

That master's hand which to the life can trace Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt

The airs, the lines, and features of the face,
Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign, May with a free and bolder stroke express
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain. A vary'd posture or a flattering dress;
Then was Wit's empire at the fatal height, He could have made those like, who made the
When labouring and sinking with its weight,

rest,
From thence a thousand lesser poets sprung, But that he knew his own design was best.
Like petty princes from the fall of Rome;
When Jonson, Shakespeare, and thyself did sit,
And sway'd in the triumvirate of wit-
Yet what from Jonson's oil and sweat did flow,

A DIALOGUE
Or what more easy Nature did bestow
On Shakespeare's gentler Muse, in thee full
grown

SIR JOHN POOLEY
Their graces both appear, yet so that none
Can say, bere Nature ends, and Art begins,
But mixt like th' elements, and born like twins,

MR. THOMAS KILLIGREW.
So interwove, so like, so much the same,
None, this mere Nature, that mere Art can name:
'Twas this the ancients meant ; Nature and Skili Pool. To thee dear Tom, myself addressing,
Are the two tops of their Parnassus' hill.

Most queremoniously confessing,

That I of late have been compressing. TO SIR RICHARD FANSHAW,

Destitute of my wonted gravity,

I perpetrated arts of pravity,
UPON HIS TRANSLATION OP

In a contagious concavity.
PASTOR FIDO.

Making efforts with all my puissance, Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate,

For some venereal rejouissance, That few but such as cannot write, translate.

I got (as once may say) a nuysance.

own.

BETWEEN

AND

THE

Kıl. Come leave this fooling, cousin Pooley,

Two kings like Saul, much taller than the rest, And in plain English tell us truly

Their equal armies draw into the field : Why under th' eyes you look so bluely? | Till one take th' other prisoner they contest;

Courage and fortune must to conduct yield.
'Tis not your hard words will avail you, This game the Persian Magi did invent,
Your Latin and your Greek will fail The force of Eastern wisdom to express ;
you,

From thence to busy Europeans sent,
Till you speak plainly what doth ail you. And styl’d by modern Lombards pensive Chess.

Yet some that fled from Troy to Rome report,
When young, you led a life monastic,

Penthesilea Priam did oblige ;
And wore vest ecclesiastic;

Her Amazons, his Trojans taught this sport,
Now in your age you grow fantastic.

To pass the tedious hours of ten years' siege. Pool. Without more preface or formality,

There she presents herself, whilst kings and A female of malignant quality

peers Set fire on label of mortality.

Look gravely on whilst fierce Bellona fights;

Yet maiden modesty her motion steers,
The fæces of which ulceration

Nor rudely skips o'er bishops' heads like
Brought o'er the helm a distillation,

knights.
Through th’instrument of propagation.
KIL. Then, cousin, (as I guess the matter)

You have been an old fornicator,
And now are shot 'twixt wind and water. PASSION OF DIDO FOR ENEAS.
Your style has such an ill complexion, HAVING at large declar'd Jove's embassy,
That from your breath I fear infection,
That even your mouth needs an injec-He loth to disobey the god's command,

Cyllenius from Æneas straight doth fly:
tion.

Nor willing to forsake this pleasant land,
You that were once so economic,

Asham's the kind Eliza to deceive,
Quitting the thrifty style laconic,

But more afraid to take a solemn leave;
Turn prodigal in makeronic.

He many ways his labouring thoughts revolves,

But fear o'ercoming shame at last resolves
Yet be of comfort, I shall send-a

(Instructed by the god of thieves ,) to steal Person of knowledge, who can mend-a Himself away, and his escape conceal. Disaster in your nether end-a

He calls his captains, bids them rig the fleet,

That at the port they privately should meet;
But you that are a man of learning, And some disembled colour to project,
So read in Virgil, so discerning, That Dido should not their design suspect :
Methinks towards fifty should take But all in vain he did his plot disguise;
warning:

No art a watchful lover can surprise.

She the first motion finds; love though most Once in a pit, you did ' miscarry,

Yet always to itself seems unsecure. (sure, That danger might have made one wary That wicked fame which their first love proThis pit is deeper than the quarry.

claim’d, Pool. Give me not such disconsolation,

Foretells the end ; the queen with rage inflam'd Having now cur'd my inflammation,

Thus greets him: “Thou dissembler, would'st thou To ulcerate my reputation.

Out of my arms by stealth perfidiously ? [fly

Could not the hand I plighted, nor the love,
Though it may gain the ladies' favour, Nor thee the fate of dying Dido move ?
Yet it may raise an evil savour

And in the depth of winter, in the night,
Upon all grave and staid behav'our. Dark as thy black designs to take thy ilight,

To plow the raging seas to coasts unknown, And I will rub my mater pia,

The kingdom thou pretend'st to, not thy own ! To fin? a rhyme to gonorrheia,

Were Troy restor'd thou should'st mistrust a And put it in my Litania.

wind False as thy vows, and as thy heart unkind.

Fly'st thou from me ? By these dear drops of AN OCCASIONAL IMITATION

brine
I thee adjure, by that right hand of thine,

By our espousals, by our marriage-bed,
GAME OF CHESS.

If all my kindness aught have merited;
A Tablet stood of that abstersive tree, (nest,

If ever I stood fair in thy esteem,
Where Æthiop's swarthy biru did build her From ruin me and my lost house redeem.
Inlaid it was with Lybian ivory,

Cannot my prayers a free acceptance find, Drawn from the jaws of Afric's prudent Nor my tears soften an obdurate mind ? beast.

My fame of chastity, by which the skies

I reach'd before, by thee extinguish'd dies. I Hunting near Paris, he and his horse fell

! Mercury

OF A MODERN AUTHOR UPON THE

into a quarry.