Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 57

Horace is allowed by Augustus to make _Crispinus_ swallow a certain pill; the light vomit discharges a great quant.i.ty of hard matter, to clear

His brain and stomach of their tumorous heats.

These consist of certain affectations in style, and adulteration of words, which offended the Horatian taste: "the basin" is called quickly for and _Crispinus_ gets rid easily of some, but others were of more difficult pa.s.sage:--

'Magnificate!' that came up somewhat hard!

_Crispinus._ 'O barmy froth----'

_Augustus._ What's that?

_Crispinus._ 'Inflate!--Turgidous!--and Ventositous'--

_Horace._ 'Barmy froth, inflate, turgidous, and ventosity are come up.'

_Tibullus._ O terrible windy words!

_Gallus._ A sign of a windy brain.

But all was not yet over: "Prorumpt" made a terrible rumbling, as if his spirit was to have gone with it; and there were others which required all the kind a.s.sistance of the Horatian "light vomit." This satirical scene closes with some literary admonitions from the grave Virgil, who details to _Crispinus_ the wholesome diet to be observed after his surfeits, which have filled

His blood and brain thus full of crudities.

Virgil's counsels to the vicious neologist, who debases the purity of English diction by affecting new words or phrases, may too frequently be applied.

You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms To stuff out a peculiar dialect; But let your matter run before your words.

And if at any time you chance to meet Some Gallo-Belgick phrase, you shall not straight Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment, But let it pa.s.s; and do not think yourself Much d.a.m.nified, if you do leave it out When not the sense could well receive it.

Virgil adds something which breathes all the haughty spirit of Ben: he commands _Crispinus_:

------------Henceforth, learn To bear yourself more humbly, nor to swell Or breathe your insolent and idle spite On him whose laughter can your worst affright:

and dismisses him

To some dark place, removed from company; He will talk idly else after his physic.

"The Satiromastix" may be considered as a parody on "The Poetaster."

Jonson, with cla.s.sical taste, had raised his scene in the court of Augustus: Decker, with great unhappiness, places it in that of William Rufus. The interest of the piece arises from the dexterity with which Decker has accommodated those very characters which Jonson has satirised in his "Poetaster." This gratified those who came every day to the theatre, delighted to take this mimetic revenge on the arch bard.

In Decker's prefatory address "To the World," he observes, "Horace haled his Poetasters to the bar;[392] the Poetasters untrussed Horace: Horace made himself believe that his Burgonian wit[393] might desperately challenge all comers, and that none durst take up the foils against him." But Decker is the Earl Rivers! He had been blamed for the personal attacks on Jonson; for "whipping his fortunes and condition of life; where the more n.o.ble reprehension had been of his mind's deformity:" but for this he retorts on Ben. Some censured Decker for barrenness of invention, in bringing on those characters in his own play whom Jonson had stigmatised; but "it was not improper,"

he says, "to set the same dog upon Horace, whom Horace had set to worry others." Decker warmly concludes with defying the Jonsonians.

"Let that mad dog Detraction bite till his teeth be worn to the stumps; Envy, feed thy snakes so fat with poison till they burst; World, let all thy adders shoot out their Hydra-headed forked stings!

I thank thee, thou true Venusian Horace, for these good words thou givest me. _Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo._"

The whole address is spirited. Decker was a very popular writer, whose numerous tracts exhibit to posterity a more detailed narrative of the manners of the town in the Elizabethan age than is elsewhere to be found.

In Decker's Satiromastix, Horace junior is first exhibited in his study, rehearsing to himself an ode: suddenly the Pindaric rapture is interrupted by the want of a rhyme; this is satirically applied to an unlucky line of Ben's own. One of his "sons," Asinius Bubo, who is blindly wors.h.i.+pping his great idol, or "his Ningle," as he calls him, amid his admiration of Horace, perpetually breaks out into digressive accounts of what sort of a man his friends take him to be. For one, Horace in wrath prepares an epigram: and for _Crispinus_ and _Fannius_, brother bards, who threaten "they'll bring your life and death on the stage, as a bricklayer in a play," he says, "I can bring a prepared troop of gallants, who, for my sake, shall distaste every unsalted line in their fly-blown comedies." "Ay," replies Asinius, "and all men of my rank!" _Crispinus_, Horace calls "a light voluptuous reveller," and _Fannius_ "the slightest cobweb-lawn piece of a poet." Both enter, and Horace receives them with all friends.h.i.+p.

The scene is here conducted not without skill. Horace complains that

----------------When I dip my pen In distill'd roses, and do strive to drain Out of mine ink all gall-- Mine enemies, with sharp and searching eyes, Look through and through me.

And when my lines are measured out as straight As even parallels, 'tis strange, that still, Still some imagine that they're drawn awry.

The error is not mine, but in their eye, That cannot take proportions.

To the querulous satirist, _Crispinus_ replies with dignified gravity--

Horace! to stand within the shot of galling tongues Proves not your guilt; for, could we write on paper Made of these turning leaves of heaven, the clouds, Or speak with angels' tongues, yet wise men know That some would shake the head, though saints should sing; Some snakes must hiss, because they're born with stings.

------------Be not you grieved If that which you mould fair, upright, and smooth, Be screw'd awry, made crooked, lame, and vile, By racking comments.-- So to be bit it rankles not, for Innocence May with a feather brush off the foul wrong.

But when your _dastard wit will strike at men In corners, and in riddles fold the vices Of your best friends_, you must not take to heart If they take off all gilding from their pills, And only offer you the bitter core.--

At this the galled Horace winces. _Crispinus_ continues, that it is in vain Horace swears, that

--------------He puts on The office of an executioner, Only to strike off the swoln head of sin, Where'er you find it standing. Say you swear, And make d.a.m.nation, parcel of your oath, That when your las.h.i.+ng jests make all men bleed, Yet you whip none--court, city, country, friends, Foes, all must smart alike.--

_Fannius_, too, joins, and shows Ben the absurd oaths he takes, when he swears to all parties, that he does not mean them. How, then, of five hundred and four, five hundred

Should all point with their fingers in one instant, At one and the same man?

Horace is awkwardly placed between these two friendly remonstrants, to whom he promises perpetual love.

Captain Tucca, a dramatic personage in Jonson's Poetaster, and a copy of his own Bobadil, whose original the poet had found at "Powles," the fas.h.i.+onable lounge of that day, is here continued with the same spirit; and as that character permitted from the extravagance of its ribaldry, it is now made the vehicle for those more personal retorts, exhibiting the secret history of Ben, which perhaps twitted the great bard more than the keenest wit, or the most solemn admonition which Decker could ever attain. Jonson had cruelly touched on Decker being out at elbows, and made himself too merry with the histrionic tribe: he, who was himself a poet, and had been a Thespian! The bl.u.s.tering captain thus attacks the great wit:--"Do'st stare, my Saracen's head at Newgate? I'll march through thy Dunkirk guts, for shooting jests at me." He insists that as Horace, "that sly knave, whose shoulders were once seen lapp'd in a player's old cast cloak," and who had reflected on _Crispinus's_ satin doublet being ravelled out; that he should wear one of _Crispinus's_ "old cast sattin suits," and that _Fannius_ should write a couple of scenes for his own "strong garlic comedies,"

and Horace should swear that they were his own--he would easily bear "the guilt of conscience." "Thy Muse is but a hagler, and wears clothes upon best be trust (a humorous Deckerian phrase)--thou'rt _great_ in somebody's books for this!" Did it become Jonson to gibe at the histrionic tribe, who is himself accused of "treading the stage, as if he were treading mortar."[394] He once put up--"a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set _a good face_ upon't. Thou hast forget how thou ambled'st in leather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the highway; and took'st mad Jeronimo's part, to get service among the mimics," &c.

Ben's person was, indeed, not gracious in the playfulness of love or fancy. A female, here, thus delineates Ben:--

"That same Horace has the most unG.o.dly face, by my fan; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet-apple, when 'tis bruised. It's better than a spoonful of cinnamon-water next my heart, for me to hear him speak; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks and rants like the poor fellows under Ludgate--to see his face make faces, when he reads his songs and sonnets."

Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of his favourite, Horace's--"You staring Leviathan! look on the sweet visage of Horace; look, parboil'd face, look--he has not his face punchtfull of eyelet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan."

Joseph Warton has oddly remarked that most of our poets were handsome men. Jonson, however, was not poetical on that score; though his bust is said to resemble Menander's.

Such are some of the personalities with which Decker recriminated.

Horace is thrown into many ludicrous situations. He is told that "admonition is good meat." Various persons bring forward their accusations; and Horace replies that they envy him,

Because I hold more worthy company.

The greatness of Ben's genius is by no means denied by his rivals; and Decker makes _Fannius_ reply, with n.o.ble feelings, and in an elevated strain of poetry:--

Good Horace, no! my cheeks do blush for thine, As often as thou speakst so; where one true And n.o.bly virtuous spirit, for thy best part Loves thee, I wish one, ten; even from my heart!

I make account, I put up as deep share In any good man's love, which thy worth earns, As thou thyself; we envy not to see Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy.

No, here the gall lies;--We, that know what stuff Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk On which thy learning grows, and can give life To thy, once dying, baseness; yet must we Dance anticke on your paper--.

But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould, I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold.

To which one adds, that "jewels, master Horace, must be hanged, you know." This "Whip of Men," with Asinius his admirer, are brought to court, transformed into satyrs, and bound together: "not lawrefied, but nettle-fied;" crowned with a wreath of nettles.

With stinging-nettles crown his stinging wit.