When as thine oyled lockes smooth platted fall,
Shining like varnisht pictures on a wall?
When a plum'd fanne may shade thy chalked face,
And lawny strips thy naked bosome grace.
If brabling Make-Fray, at each fayre and sise,
Picks quarrels for to show his valiantise;
Straight pressed, for a hungry Swizzer's pay,
To thrust his fist to each part of the fray;
And, piping hote, puffes toward the pointed plaine,
With a broad Scot, or proking spit of Spaine 73;
Or hoyseth sayle up to a forraine shore,
That he may live a lawlesse conquerer :
If some such desp'rate Hackster shall devise
To rouse thy hare's-hart from her cowardise,
As idle children striving to excell
In blowing bubles from an emptie shell;
Oh Hercules! how like to prove a man,
That all so rath" thy warlike life began!
Thy mother could thee for thy cradle set
Her husband's rusty iron corselet;
Whose jargling sound might rocke her babe to rest,
That never playn'd of his uneasie nest:
There did he dreame of drery wars at hand,
And woke, and fought, and won, ere he could stand.
But who hath seene the lambs of Tarentine ",
May gesse what Gallio his manners beene :
All soft as is the falling thistle-downe,
Soft as the fumy ball, or Morrian's crowne".
Now Gallio, gins thy youthly heate to raigne
In every vigorous limme and swelling vaine.
Time bids thee raise thy hedstrong thoughts on by,
To valour and adventerous chivalry:
73 With a broad Scot, or proking spit of Spaine.
With a broad Scotch dirk; or long, slender Spanish sword. 14-rath-early.
" But who hath seene the lambs of Tarentine, &c. &c.
Vanus, et Euganeâ quantumvis mollior agnâ:
Si tenerum attritus Catinensi pumice lumbum
Squallentes traducit avos
Juv. Sat. VIII. 1. 14. E.
Morrian is the Fool in the play. W. By crowne may, therefore, be meant either the Fool's head or the cap which he wore. But, Query, does not our author allude to Maid Marian's crown among the Morris Dancers? See Fig. 2. in the Ancient Window of Mr. Tollett given at the end of vol. XI. of Reed's Shakespeare: where, as the Mock Queen, her crown appears puffed out at the top.
Paune thou no glove for challenge of the deed,
Nor make thy Quintaine other's armed head
T'enrich the waiting herald with thy shame ",
And make thy losse the scornfull scaffold's game.
Wars, God forefend "! nay God defend from warre!
Soone are sonns spent, that not soone reared are.
Gallio may pull mee roses ere they fall,
Or in his net entrap the tennis-ball,
Or tend his spar-hauke mantling in her mew ",
Or yelping begles' busy heeles persue,
Or watch a sinking corke upon the shore,
Or halter finches through a privy doore,
Or, list he spend the time in sportfull game,
In daily courting of his lovely dame,
Hang on her lips, melt in her wanton eye,
Dance in her hand, joy in her jollity;
Here's little perill, and much lesser paine,
So timely Hymen doe the rest restraine.
Hy, wanton Gallio, and wed betime,
Why should'st thou leese the pleasures of thy prime?
Seest thou the rose-leaves fall ungathered?
Then hy thee, wanton Gallio, to wed.
Let ring and ferule meet upon thy hand ",
And Lucine's girdle with her swathing-band.
Hy thee, and give the world yet one dwarfe more,
Such as it got when thou thy selfe wast bore.
Looke not for warning of thy bloomed chin:
Can never happinesse to soone begin.
Virginius vow'd to keepe his mayden-head,
And eats chast lettuce, and drinkes poppy-seed,
Nor make thy Quintaine other's armed head
T'enrich the waiting herald with thy shame.
The Quintaine, or Quintin, is described by Johnson, as "An upright post, on the top of which a cross post turned upon a pin. At one end of the cross post was a broad board, and at the other a heavy sand-bag. The play was to ride against the broad end with a lance, and pass by before the sand-bag, coming round, should strike the tilter on the back." This appears to have been the kind commonly used in English sports; but Quintaines of different construction, as in the figure of a man with a sword or a sand-bag, were used on the continent. The principle of all these was the same, viz. to avoid the_blow of the sword or sandbag, by striking the Quintaine in a particular place. Figures of the different kinds may be seen in the curious Notes of Mr. Malone and Mr. Douce on the subject. See Reed's Shakespeare, vol. viii. pp. 193-198.
· forefend-avert, prohibit. Frequent in Shakespeare.
79 Or tend his spar-hauke mantling in her mew.
To mantle, is" to spread the wings as a hawk in pleasure," says Johnson. The mew was the place where hawks were confined. See Note 22, p. 331.
"Let ring and ferule meet upon thy hand.
i. e. Marry, while so young as to be yet under the ferule of the master.
And smels on camphyre fasting; and, that done,
Long bath he lived, chast as a vayled nunne;
Free as the new-absolved Damosell,
That Frere Cornelius shrived in his cell:
Till, now he waxt a toothlesse bacheler,
He thaws like Chaucer's frosty Janivere;
And sets a month's minde upon smyling May,
And dyes his beard that did his age bewray;
Byting on annis-seede and rose-marine,
Which might the fume of his rot lungs refine :
Now he in Charon's barge a bride doth seeke,
The maydens mocke, and call him withered leeke,
That with a greene tayle hath a hoary head;
And now he would, and now he cannot wed.
WOULD now that Matho were the Satyrist,
That some fat bribe might greaze him in the fist;
For which he neede not braule at any barre,
Nor kisse the booke to be a perjurer:
Who else would scorne his silence to have solde,
And have his tongue tyed with stringes of gold?
Curius is dead, and buried long since,
And all that loved golden Abstinence.
Might he not well repine at his olde fee,
Would he but spare to speake of usurie?
Hirelings enow beside can be so base,
Tho' we should scorne ech bribing varlet's brasse :
Yet he and I could shun ech jealous head,
Sticking our thumbs close to our girdle-stead:
Tho' were they manicled behinde our backe,
Another's fist can serve our fees to take.
Yet pursy Euclio, chearly smiling, prayd
That my sharpe words might curtal their side trade:
For thousands beene in every governall 84,
That live by losse, and rise by others' fall.
Whatever sickly sheepe so secret dies,
But some foule raven hath bespoke his eyes?
What else makes N, when his lands are spent,
Go shaking like a threedbare malecontent;
Whose band-lesse bonnet vailes his ore-grown chin,
And sullen rags bewray his morphew'd 8 skin?
So ships he to the wolvish westerne ile,
Among the savage kernes in sad exile 86;
Or in the Turkish wars, at Cæsar's paye,
To rub his life out till the latest day.
Another shifting gallant to forecast
To gull his hostesse for a month's repast,
With some gal'd trunk, ballac'd" with straw and stone,
Left for the paune of his provision.
Had F's shop lyen fallow but from hence,
His doores close seal'd as in some pestilence,
Whiles his light heeles their fearfull flight can take,
To get some badg-lesse blew upon his backe"?
Tocullio was a welthy usurer,
Such store of incomes had he every yeare,
By bushels was he wont to meete his
coyne,
As did the olde wife of Trimalcion.
Could he doe more, that finds an idle roome
For many hundreth thousands on a toombe?
Or who reares up foure free-schooles in his age,
Of his olde pillage and damn'd surplusage?
Yet now he swore, by that sweete crosse he kist
(That silver crosse, where he had sacrific'd
His coveting soule, by his desire's owne doome,
Dayly to dye the Divel's martyrdome)
His angels were all flowne up to their sky,
And had forsooke his naked treasurie.
Farewell Astrea and her, weights of gold,
Untill his lingring calends once be told;
"So ships he to the wolvish westerne ile,
Among the savage kernes in sad exile.
Our author had probably seen Spenser's "View of the State of Ireland", composed a short time before the publication of these Satires, though not printed till many years afterwards. The Kernes are Irish foot-soldiers. Spenser's description of them is an ample justification of our Satirist's epithet of SAVAGE kernes; and it is probably in allusion to their character that Hall calls Ireland wolvish. "Marrie", he says, "those be the most barbarous and loathly conditions of any people (I thinke) under heaven: for, from the time that they enter into that course, they doe use all the beastly behaviour that may bee: they oppose all men: they spoile as well the subject, as the enemy: they steale: they are cruel and bloodie; full of revenge, and delighting in deadly execution; licentious; swearers, and blasphemers; common ravishers of women, and murtherers of children". See Todd's edit. vol. viii. p. 392.
——gal'd-fretted, torne.
-ballac'd-ballasted, loaded..
"To get some badg-lesse blew upon his backe.
Some dress, different from that which he had worne, in order to prevent detection.
Nought left behind but waxe and parchment scroles,
Like Lucian's dreame that silver turn'd to coles ".
Shouldst thou him credit, that nould " credit thee?
Yes, and mayst sweare he swore the verity.
The ding-thrift heyre his shift-got summe mispent,
Comes drouping like a pennylesse penitent,
And beats his faint fist on Tocullio's doore:
It lost the last, and now must call for more.
Now hath the spider caught a wandring flye,
And drags her captive at her cruell thigh:
Soone is his errand red in his pale face,
Which beares dumb Characters of every case.
So Cyned's dusky cheeke and fiery eye,
And hayre-les brow, tels where he last did lye.
So Matho doth bewray his guilty thought,
Whiles his pale face doth say his cause is nought.
Seest thou the wary angler trayle along
His feeble line, soone as some pike too strong
Hath swallowed the bayte that scornes the shore,
Yet now neare hand cannot resist no more.
So lyeth he aloofe in smooth pretence,
To hide his rough intended violence :
As he, that, under name of Christmas cheere,
Can starve his tennants all th' ensuing yeare.
Paper and waxe (God wot!) a weake repay
For such deepe debts and downstakt summs as they 92.
Write, seale, deliver, take, go spend and speede,
And yet full hardly could his present need
Part with such summe: for but as yester-late"
Did Furnus offer pen-worths at easy rate,
For small disbursment: he the bankes hath broke,
And needs mote now some further playne orelooke ;
Yet, ere he goe, fayne would he be releast,
Hy you, ye ravens, hy you to the feast.
Provided that thy lands are left entyre,
To be redeem'd or ere thy day expyre;
Then shalt thou teare those idle paper-bonds,
That thus had fettered thy pauned lands.
Ah foole! for sooner shalt thou sell the rest,
Than stake ought for thy former interest;
90 Like Lucian's dreame that silver turn'd to coles.
This may be a figurative allusion to what is related in the Somnium Luciani. If not, I am not aware to what other part of his writings it refers.
nould-quasi ne would, would not.
92 For such deepe debts and DOWNSTAKT summs as they.
The edition of 1599 reads downcast; and is followed, as usual, by the Oxford Editor.
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