Nathlesse some hungry squire, for hope of good,
Matches the churle's sonne into gentle blood;
Whose soune more justly of his gentry boasts,
Than who were borne at two pide-painted posts",
And had some traunting chapman to his syre",
That traufiqu'ed both by water and by fyre.
O times! since ever Rome did kings create,
Brasse gentlemen, and Cæsars Laureate!
Fuimus Troës. Vel, Vix ea nostra.
WHAT boots it, Pontice, tho' thou could'st discourse "
Of a long golden line of ancestors?
Or shew their painted faces gaylie drest,
From ever since before the last conquest?
Or tedious bedroles of descended blood,
From father Japhet since Ducalion's flood?
Or call some old church-windowes to record
The age of thy fayre arms ;-
Or find some figures, halfe obliterate,
In rain-beat marble, neare to the church-gate,
Upon a crosse-leg'd toombe"? what boots it thee,
To shew the rusted Buckle that did tie
The garter of thy greatest grand-sire's knee?
2 Nathlesse-Not the less, nevertheless.
Pide, or pied, is spotted, or speckled.
54 And had some TRAUNTING CHAPMAN to his syre.
Traunting means travelling. Johnson explains Tranters, from Bailey, as who carry fish from the sea-coasts to sell in the inland countries."-Chapman is substituted in the Errata to the first edition for merchant, which is in the text, but none of the later editions have adopted the correction.
Part of the VIIIth Satire of Juvenal is followed here, in a correct and spirited
What bools it, Pontice, tho' thou could'st discourse, &c. &c.
Stemmata quid faciunt? Quid prodest, Pontice, longo
Sanguine censeri pictósque ostendere vultus
Majorum?
57 Or find some figures, halfe obliterate,
Juv. Sat. viii, 1. 1. ·E.
In rain-beat marble, neare to the church-gate,
Upon a crosse-leg'd toombe ?-
Et Curios jam dimidios, humerbque minorem
Corvinum, et Galbam auriculis nasóque carentem.
What to reserve their reliques many yeares,
Their silver-spurs, or spils 58 of broken speares?
Or cite olde Ocland's verse, how they did weild
The wars in Turwin, or in Turney field?
And, if thou canst in picking strawes engage
In one halfe day thy father's heritage;
Or hide whatever treasures he thee
got,
In some deepe cock-pit; or, in desp'rate lot
Upon a sixe-square peece of ivorie,
Throw both thy selfe and thy posteritie;
Or if (O shame!) in hired harlot's bed
Thy wealthy heyre-dome thou have buried:
Then, Pontice, little boots thee to discourse
Of a long golden line of ancestors.
Ventrous Fortunio his farme hath sold,
And gads to Guiane land to fish for gold;
Meeting perhaps, if Orenoque denye,
Some stragling pinnace of Polonian Rie.
Then comes home floting with a silken sayle,
That Severne shaketh with his canon-peale.
Wyser Raymundus, in his closet pent,
Laughs at such daunger and adventurement;
When halfe his lands are spent in golden smoke,
And nowe his second hopefull glasse is broke;
But yet, if haply his third fornace hold,
Devoteth all his pots and pans to gold:
So spend thou, Pontice, if thou canst not spare,
Like some stout sea-man, or Philosopher.
And were thy fathers gentle ? that's their praise";
No thanke to thee, by whome their name decays:
By virtue got they it, and valourous deed;
Do thou so, Pontice, and be honoured.
spils-small shivers of wood.
» Or cite olde Ocland's verse, how they did weild &c. &c.
Tot bellatorum si luditur alea pernox
"Christopher Ocland, a schoolmaster of Cheltenham, published two poems in Latin Hexameters, one entitled Anglorum Prælia, the other Elizabetha." See Warton's Hist. Eng. Poetry iii. 314.
And were thy fathers gentle? that's their praise; &c. &c.
Tota licet veteres exornent undique ceræ
Atria, nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus:
Paulus vel Cossus vel Drusus moribus esto:
Hos ante effigies majorum pone tuorum.
But els, looke how their virtue was their owne,
Not capable of propagation,
Right so their titles beene, nor can be thine,
Whose ill deserts might blancke their golden line".
Tell me, thou gentle Trojan, dost thou prise
Thy brute beasts' worth by their dams' qualities?
Say'st thou, This Colt shall proove a swift-pac'd steed,
Only because a Jennet did him breed?
Or say'st thou, This same horsse shall win the prize,
Because his dame was swiftest Trunchefice,
Or Runcevall his syre? himselfe a Gallaway?
Whiles, like a tireling jade, he lags half-waye ;
Or whiles thou seest some of thy Stallion-Race,
Their eyes boar'd out, masking the miller's-maze,
Like to a Scythian slave sworne to the payle,
Or dragging froathy barrels at his tayle?
Albee wise Nature, in her providence,
Wont, in the want of reason and of sence,
Traduce the native virtue with the kinde,
Making all brute and senselesse things inclin'd
Unto their cause, or place where they were sowne;
That one is like to all, and all like one:
Was never foxe, but wily cubs begets:
The beare his fiercenesse to his brood besets:
Nor fearfull hare fals out of lyon's seede,
Nor eagle wont the tender dove to breede:
Creet ever wont the cypresse sad to beare,
Acheron banks the palish popelare:
The palme doth rifely rise in Jury field,
And Alpheus' waters nought but olives wild :
Asopus breeds big bul-rushes alone,
Meander, heath; peaches by Nilus growne:
An English wolfe, an Irish toad to see,
Were as a chast-man nurs'd in Italie.
And now, when Nature gives another guide
To humane-kind, that in his bosome bides,
Right so their titles beene, nor can be thine,
Whose ill deserts might blancke their golden line.
·Sed te censeri laude tuorum,
Pontice, noluerim ; 'sic ut nihil ipse futuræ
Laudis agas. Miserum est aliorum incumbere fame.
masking the miller's-maze.
i. e. pacing round the mill with his eyes covered.
3 Wont, in the want of reason and of sence, Traduce
i. e. si accustomed to traduce.
Juv. Sat. viii. 1. 76. E.
Above instinct, his reason and discourse,
His beeing better, is his life the worse!
Ah me! how seldome see we sonns succeed
Their father's praise, in prowesse and great deed!
Yet, certes, if the syre be ill inclin'd,
His faults befall his sonns by course of kinde.
Scaurus was covetous, his sonne not so;
But not his pared nayle will hee foregoe.
Florian, the syre, did women love alife,
And so his sonne doth too; all, but his wife.
Brag of thy father's faults: they are thine owne.
Brag of his lands, if those bee not forgone".
Brag of thine owne good deeds: for they are thine;
More than his life, or lands, or golden line.
SATIRE IV.
Plus beau que fort.
CAN I not touch some upstart carpet-shield
Of Lolio's sonne that never saw the field",
Or taxe wild Pontice for his Luxuries,
But straight they tell mee of Tiresias' eyes?
Or lucklesse Collingborn's feeding of the crowes 67,
Or hundreth scalps which Thames still underflowes 68 ?
But straight Sigalion nods and knits his browes,
"Brag of his lunds, if THOSE BEE not FORGONE.
The Oxford edition, instead of those be, reads they are, without authority.Forgone means lost, resigned.
65 Can I not touch some upstart CARPET-SHIELD
Of Lolio's sonne that never saw the field
In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Sir Toby says of Sir Andrew "He is a knight, dubbed with unhacked rapier, and on carpet consideration": which Johnson explains of a knight receiving his dignity, kneeling, not on the ground, as in war; but on a carpet. Hence the contemptuous term Carpet-Knights: which epithet the reader may see farther explained by Mr. Reed and Mr. Stevens, in Reed's Shakespeare, vol. v. p. 368.
66 But straight they tell me of Tiresias' eyes.
Tiresias was fabled to have been deprived of his sight by Juno, in resentment of his having determined against her a point contested between her and Jupiter.
67 Or lucklesse Collingborn's feeding of the crowes.
His legend is in the Mirrour of Magistrates. He was hanged for a distich on Catesby, Ratcliff, Lord Lovel, and Richard III, about 1484. E.
68 Or hundreth Scalps which Thames still UNDERFLOWES.
The Oxford editor altered this word to overflowes, supposing the heads to be at the bottom of the river: but the author evidently alludes to their being fixed on the bridge.
And winkes and waftes his warning hand for feare,
And lisps some silent letters in my eare?
Have I not vow'd for shunning such debate
(Pardon, ye Satyres,) to degenerate ?
And, wading low in this plebeian lake,
That no salt wave shall froath
upon my
Let Labeo, or who else list for mee,
Go loose his eares and fall to Alchymie.
Onely let Gallio give me leave a while
To schoole him once, or ere I change my style.
O lawlesse paunch! the cause of much despight,
Through raunging of a currish appetite,
When splenish morsels cram the gaping maw,
Withouten diet's care or trencher-law;
Tho' never have I Salerne rimes profest",
To be some ladie's trencher-criticke guest
Whiles each bitt cooleth for the oracle,
Whose sentence charms it with a ryming spell:
Touch not this coler, that melancholy :
This bit were dry and hote, that cold and dry.
Yet can I set my Gallio's dieting,
A pestle of a larke, or plover's wing;
And warne him not to cast his wanton eyne
On grosser bacon, or salt haberdine",
Or dried fliches of some smoked beeve
Hang'd on a writhen with since Martin's eve,
Or burnt larke's heeles, or rashers raw and grene
Or melancholike liver of a hen ;
Which stout Voravo brags to make his feast,
And claps his hand on his brave ostrige-brest,
Then fals to praise the hardy Janizar
That sucks his horse side, thirsting in the warre:
Lastly, to seale up all that he hath spoke,
Quaffes a whole tunnell of Tobacco smoke.
If Martius in boystrous buffes be drest,
Branded with iron plates upon the brest,
And pointed on the shoulders for the nonce",
As new-come from the Belgian Garrisons,
What shall thou need to envie ought at that,
When as thou smellest like a Civet-Cat?
69 Withouten-without.
"Tho' never have I Salerne rimes profest,
Salernum is a city in the kingdom of Naples, which had formerly a famous University. I cannot explain the Satirist's allusion.
haberdine-a dried salt-cod.
i. e. for the occasion or purpose.
See Johnson; and Todd's Spencer, vol. vi.
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