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VIRGIDEMIARUM.

LIB. V.

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BOOK V.

SATIRE I.

Sit pæna merenti.

PARDON, ye glowing eares: needs will it out,
Tho' brazen wals compas'd my tongue about,
As thicke as welthy Scrobioe's quick-set rowes
In the wide common that he did inclose.
Pull out mine eyes, if I shall see no vice,
Or let me see it with detesting eyes.
Renowmed Aquine', now I follow thee,
Far as I may for feare of jeopardie;
And to thy hand yeeld up the Ivye-mace,
From crabbed Persius, and more smooth Horace ;
Or from that shrew, the Roman Poetesse,
That taught her gossips learned bitternesse ;
Or Lucile's muse, whom thou didst imitate,
Or Menip's olde, or Pasquiller's of late.
Yet name I not Mutius, or Tigilline,
Though they deserve a keener stile than mine;
Nor meane to ransacke up the quiet grave;
Nor burne dead bones, as he example gave.
I taxe the living: let dead ashes rest,
Whose faults are dead, and nayled in their chest.
Who can refrain that's guiltlesse of their crime,
Whiles yet he lives in such a cruell time?
When Titio's grounds, that in his grand-sire's daies
But one pound fine, one penny rent did raise,
A sommer-snow-ball, or a winter-rose,

Is growne to thousands as the world now goes.

Renowmed Aquine

i. e. Juvenal. See Note 133, on Book iv.

When Titio's grounds, that in his grand-sire's daies. The first edition reads this line, uncouthly,

When Titius his grounds, that in grand-sire's daies.

I have followed the edition of 1599.

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So thrift, and time, sets other things on flote,
That now his sonne sooups in a silken cote,
Whose grandsire happily, a poore hungry swayne,
Beg'd some cast abby in the churche's wayne:
And, but for that, whatever he may vaunt,
Who now's a monke had been a Mendicant*.
While freezing Matho, that for one leane fee
Wont terme ech Terme the Terme of Hilarie,
May now, in sted of those his simple fees,
Get the fee-simples of fayre manneryes'.
What, did he counterfait his prince's hand,
For some strave lord-ship of concealed land?
Or, on ech Michaell and Lady-Day,
Tooke he deepe forfaits for an houre's delay;
And gain'd no lesse by such injurious braule,
Than Gamius by his sixt wife's buriall?
Or hath he wonne some wider interest,
By hoary charters from his grand-sire's chest,
Which late some bribed scribe for slender
Writ in the characters of another age,
That Ploydon selfe might stammer to rehearse',
Whose date ore-lookes three Centuries of yeares?
Who ever yet the trackes of weale so tride,
But there hath beene one beaten way beside?
He, when he lets a lease for life, or yeares,
(As never he doth untill the date expeares;
For when the full state in his fist doth lie,
He may take vantage of the vacancy)
His fine affords so many trebled pounds
As he agreeth yeares to lease his grounds:
His rent in fair respondence must arise
To double trebles of his one yeare's price.

8

wage,

sooups-flaunts proudly. See Note 24, on Book I. Sat. 3.

• Who now's a monke had been a Mendicant.

The edition of 1599, followed as usual by the Oxford, reads this line without meaning,

Who KNOWS a monke had beene a Mendicant.
While freezing Matho, that for one leane fee
Wont terme ech Terme the Terme of Hilarie,
May now, in sted of those his simple fees,
Get the fee-simples of fayre manneryes.
A striking example of the taste of the age for

-strave—Qu. stray?

puns.

E.

'That Ploydon selfe might stammer to rehearse. Ploydon, or Plowdon, was an eminent lawyer of that day.

⚫ respondence-for correspondence. E.

Of one baye's breadth, God wot! a silly cote 10,
Whose thatched sparres are furr'd with sluttish soote
A whole inch thick, shining like black-moor's brows,
Through smok that down the head-les barrel blows":
At his bed's-feete feeden his stalled teme;

His swine beneath, his pullen ore the beame:
A starved tenement, such as I gesse

Stands stragling in the wasts of Holdernesse ;
Or such as shiver on a Peake-hill side,

When March's lungs beate on their turfe-clad hide;
Such as nice Lipsius would grudge to see
Above his lodging in wild West-phalye",
Or as the Saxon king his court might make
When his sides playned of the neat herd's cake.
Yet must he haunt his greedy land-lord's hall,
With often presents at ech festivall;

With crammed capons every New-yeare's morne,
Or with greene-cheeses when his sheepe are shorne;
Or many maunds-full of his mellow fruite,

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To make some way to win his waighty suite.
Whom cannot giftes at last cause to relent,
Or to win favour, or flee punishment:
When griple patrons turne their sturdy steele.
To waxe, when they the golden flame do feele;
When grand Maecenas casts a glavering" eye
On the cold present of a poesie;

And, least he might more frankly take than give,
Gropes for a French crowne in his emptie sleeve?

Of one baye's breadth

Bay is " a term, in architecture, used to signify the magnitude of a building; as, if a barn consists of a floor and two heads, where they lay corn, they call it a barn of two bays. These bays are from 14 to 20 feet long; and floors from 10 to 12 broad, and usually 20 feet long, which is the breadth of the barn". See Johnson.

[blocks in formation]

"Through smok that down the head-les barrel blows.

So mean, that the chimney consists of a barrel with the top and bottom knocked

out.

12 Such as nice Lipsius would grudge to see

Above his lodging in wild West-phalye.

See the same illustration in the " Mundus Alter et Idem," at p. 205 of this volume; “nil præter sordidissima tuguriola, quale Westphalum illud Lipsii hospitium,

cerneo."

13

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maunds-full—hand-baskets' full.

14 glavering-wheedling.

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