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What name, what skill, what faith hast thou in things!

What sight in searching the most antique springs!
What weight, and what authority in thy speech!
Men scarce can make that doubt, but thou canst
teach.

Pardon free truth, and let thy modesty,
Which conquers all, be once o'ercome by thee.
Many of thine this better could, than I;
But for their powers, accept my piety.

XV. ON COURT-WORM.

All men are worms: but this no man. In silk 'Twas brought to court first wrapt, and white as milk;

Where afterwards it grew a butterfly,

Which was a caterpillar: so 'twill die.

XVI. TO BRAIN-HARDY.

Hardy, thy brain is valiant, 'tis confest;
Thou more, that with it every day dar'st jest
Thyself into fresh brawls; when, called upon,
Scarce thy week's swearing brings thee off, of one.
So, in short time, thou'rt in arrearage grown
Some hundred quarrels, yet dost thou fight none;
Nor need'st thou; for those few, by oath released,
Make good what thou dar'st do in all the rest.
Keep thyself there, and think thy valor right,
He that dares damn himself, dares more than

XVII. TO THE LEARNED CRITIC.

May others fear, fly, and traduce thy name,
As guilty men do magistrates; glad I,
That wish my poems a legitimate fame,
Charge them, for crown, to thy sole censure hie.
And but a sprig of bays, given by thee,
Shall outlive garlands stolen from the chaste tree.18

XVIII. TO MY MERE ENGLISH CENSURER.

13

To thee my way in Epigrams seems new,
When both it is the old way, and the true.
Thou sayest that cannot be, for thou hast seen
Davis, and Weever," and the best have been,
And mine come nothing like. I hope so. Yet,
As theirs did with thee, mine might credit get,
If thou'dst but use thy faith, as thou didst then,
When thou wert wont t'admire, not censure men.
Prythee, believe still and not judge so fast,
Thy faith is all the knowledge that thou hast.

XIX. ON SIR COD THE PERFUMED.15

That Cod can get no widow, yet a knight,
I sent the cause: he wooes with an ill sprite.

18 That is, the laurel; Daphne, rather than consent to the desires of Apollo, being changed into that tree.

W.

14 Contemporaries of Jonson; the former a writing-master at Oxford, who published a collection of epigrams called A Scourge of Folly, and the latter a compiler of old inscriptions and epitaphs which he published under the title of Funeral Monuments. - B.

15 A play on the double meaning of the last word, an evil

XX. TO THE SAME SIR COD.

Th' expense in odors is a most vain sin,
Except thou couldst, Sir Cod, wear them within.

XXI. ON REFORMED GAMESTER.

Lord, how is Gamester changed! his hair close cut!

His neck fenced round with ruff! his eyes half

shut!

His clothes two fashions off, and poor! his sword Forbid his side! and nothing but the Word Quick in his lips! 16 who hath this wonder wrought?

The late ta'en bastinado. So I thought:

What several ways men to their calling have! The body's stripes, I see, the soul may save.

XXII. ON MY FIRST DAUGHTER.

Here lies, to each her parents' ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth;
Yet, all heaven's gifts, being heaven's due,
It makes the father less to rue.

At six months' end she parted hence,

....

genius or spirit, and a stinking breath.. The name of the person to whom this epigram is addressed is borrowed from the cod, or little purse, in which civet and other perfumes were kept in the poet's day. - G.

16 The whole description strictly answers to that of the Puritans of a later date. Similar descriptions will be found in the poems of Cleveland and Butler.

With safety of her innocence;

Whose soul heaven's Queen, (whose name she

bears,)

In comfort of her mother's tears,

Hath placed amongst her virgin-train;

Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth;
Which cover lightly, gentle earth!

XXIII. TO JOHN DONNE."

17

Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each muse,
Who to thy one all other brains refuse;
Whose every work, of thy most early wit,
Came forth example and remains so yet;
Longer a knowing than most wits do live,
And which no affection praise enough can give!
To it thy language, letters, arts, best life,
Which might with half mankind maintain a
strife.

17 Of all his poetical contemporaries, Jonson appears to have held Donne's genius in the highest estimation, although he thought his Anniversary profane, and said that he deserved hanging for not "keeping of accent," and that he would perish from not being understood. "He esteemeth John Donne," records Drummond, "the first poet in the world in some things; his verses of the Lost Chain he hath by heart; and that passage of The Calm, 'That dust and feathers do not stir, all was so quiet.' He affirmeth Donne to have written all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old." There is no such passage in The Calm. The words are:

"In one place lay

Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday."— B.

All which I meant to praise, and yet I would; But leave, because I cannot as I should.

XXIV. TO THE PARLIAMENT.

There's reason good that you good laws should

make;

Men's manners ne'er were viler for

your sake.

XXV. ON SIR VOLUPTUOUS BEAST.

While Beast instructs his fair and innocent wife
In the past pleasures of his sensual life,
Telling the motions of each petticoat,
And how his Ganymede moved, and how his goat,
And now, her (hourly) her own cucquean makes,
In varied shapes, which for his lust she takes:
What doth he else, but say, Leave to be chaste,
Just wife, and, to change me, make woman's
haste!

XXVI. ON THE SAME BEAST.

Then his chaste wife, though Beast now know

no more,

He adulters still: his thoughts lie with a whore.

XXVII. ON SIR JOHN ROE.

18

In place of 'scutcheons that should deck thy

hearse,

Take better ornaments, my tears and verse.

18 Gifford conjectures that this gentleman was one of the four sons of Sir Thomas Roe, a London merchant of great

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