*Whatever subject is, is solid still: Wound him, and with your violent fingers feel

All parts within him, you shall never find An empty corner, or an abject mind.

He never lets his watchful lights descend, To those sweet sleeps that all just men attend,

Till all the acts the long day doth beget, With thought on thought laid, he doth oft repeat:

Examines what hath past him, as forgot: What deed or word was used in time, what not.

Why this deed of decorum felt defect?
Of reason, that? what left I by neglect?
Why set I this opinion down for true,
That had been better changed? Why did
+I rue

Need in one poor so, that I felt my mind
(To breach of her free powers) with grief

declined?

*Sit solidum quodcunque subest, nec inania in his sense; which the pressness and matter subtus. Subest and subtus Ascens. confounds of this Poem allows not: it being in a Translator sooner and better seen than a Commentator.

† He would turn digitis pellentibus to digitis palantibus, to which place the true order is hard to hit, and that truth in my conversion (how opposite soever any way stand) with any conference, I make no doubt I shall persuade.

Miseratus egentem, cur aliquem fracta persensi mente dolorem. Ascens. very judicially makes this good man in this ditty, opposite to a good Christian, since Christ (the president of all good men) enjoins us, ut supra omnia misericordes simus. But his meaning here is, that a good and wise man should not so pity the want of any, that he should want manly patience himself to sustain it. And his reason Servius allegeth for him is this, saying: In quem cadit una mentis perturbatio, posse in eum omnes cadere: sicut potest omni virtute pollere cui virtus una contigerit.

And damns before the fault hath any breath.

Weighs faith in falsehood's balance; justice does

To cloak oppression; tail-like downward grows;

Earth his whole end is; heaven he mocks, and hell:

†And thinks that is not, that in him doth dwell.

Good, with God's right hand given, his left takes t' evil;

When holy most he seems, he most is evil.

Ill upon ill he lays; th' embroidery Wrought on his state, is like a leprosy, The whiter, still the fouler. What his

Never is cheerful, but when flattery trails On *squatting profit; or when Policy veils Some vile corruption, that looks red with anguish,

Like waving reeds, his wind-shook comforts languish.

Pays never debt, but what he should not owe;

Is sure and swift to hurt, yet thinks him slow.

His bounty is most rare, but when it

comes,

'Tis most superfluous, and with strook-up drums.

Lest any true good pierce him, with such good

As ill breeds in him, mortar made with blood,

Heaps stone-walls in his heart to keep it

out.

His sensual faith his soul's truth keeps in doubt,

And, like a rude tunlearn'd Plebeian, Without him seeks his whole insulting

man.

Nor can endure, as a most dear prospect, To look into his own life, and reflect Reason upon it, like a Sun still shining, To give it comfort, ripening and refining; But his black soul, being so deform'd with sin,

He still abhors, with all things hid within ; And forth he wanders, with the outward fashion,

Feeding, and fatting up his reprobation.
Disorderly he sets forth every deed,
Good never doing, but where is no need.
If any sill he does (and hunts through
blood

For shame, ruth, right, religion) be withstood,

The mark'd withstander, his race, kin, least friend,

That never did in least degree offend,
He prosecutes, with hired intelligence
To fate, defying God and conscience,

*This alludeth to hounds upon the trail of a squat Hare, and making a cheerful cry about her, is applied to the forced cheer or flattery this great man showeth when he hunts for his profit.

Plebeii status et nota est nunquam à seipso vel damnum expectare, vel utilitatem, sed à rebus externis.

How a good great man should employ his greatness.

§ The most unchristian disposition of a great and ill man in following any that withstand his ill.

A SLEIGHT MAN.

A SLEIGHT and mix'd man (set as 'twere the mean

'Twixt both the first) from both their heaps doth glean :

Is neither good, wise, great, nor politic,
Yet tastes of all these with a natural trick.
Nature and Art sometimes meet in his
parts:

Sometimes divided are: the austere arts,
Splint him together, set him in a brake
Of form and reading. Nor is let partake
With judgment, wit, or fsweetness: but as
time,

Terms, language, and degrees, have let him climb,

To learn'd opinion; so he there doth stand,

Stark as a statue; stirs not foot nor hand.

This hath reference (as most of the rest hath) to the good man before, being this man's opposite.

1 Intending in his writing, &c.

Nor any truth knows: knowledge is a

mean

To make him ignorant, and rapts him clean,

In storms from truth. For what Hippocrates,

Says of *foul bodies (what most nourishes, That most annoys them) is more true of minds:

For there, their first inherent gravity

blinds

Their powers prejudicate; and all things

true

Proposed to them, corrupts, and doth eschew:

Some, as too full of toil; of prejudice

some:

Some fruitless, or past power to overcome : With which, it so augments, that he will

seem

Witht judgment, what he should hold, to contemn,

And is incurable. And this is he
Whose learning forms not life's integrity.

This the mere Artist; the mix'd naturalist,

With fool-quick memory, makes his hand a fist,

And catcheth flies, and nifles: and retains With hearty study, and unthrifty pains, What your composed man shuns. With these his pen

And prompt tongue tickles th'ears of vulgar

men :

Sometimes takes matter too, and utters it With an admired and heavenly strain of wit: Yet with all this, hath humours more than

can

Never sat Truth in a tribunal fit,
But in a modest, staid, and humble wit.
I rather wish to be a natural bred,
Than these great wits with madness
leavened.

He's bold, and frontless, passionate, and
mad,

Drunken, adulterous, good at all things bad.

Yet for one good, he quotes the best in pride,

And is enstyled a man well qualified.

These delicate shadows of things virtuous then

Cast on these vicious, pleasing, patch'd-up

men,

Are but the devil's cozenages to blind Men's sensual eyes, and choke the envied mind

And where the *truly learn'd is evermore
God's simple Image and true imitator :
These sophisters are emulators still
(Cozening, ambitious) of men true in skill.
Their imperfections yet are hid in sleight
Of the felt darkness breathed out by deceit,
The truly learn'd is likewise hid, and fails
To pierce eyes vulgar, but with other veils.
And they are the divine beams truth casts
round

About his beauties, that do quite confound
Sensual beholders. 'Scuse these rare seen

then,

Her household's fit provision to see spent, As fits her husband's will, and his consent:

Spends pleasingly her time, delighting still

To her just duty to adapt her will.
Virtue she loves, rewards and honours it,
And hates all scoffing, bold and idle wit:
Pious and wise she is, and treads upon
This foolish and this false opinion,
That learning fits not women; since it
may

Her natural cunning help, and make more way

To light, and close affects; for so it can Curb and compose them too, as in a man;

And, being noble, is the noblest mean To spend her time: thoughts idle and unclean

Preventing and suppressing; to which end

She entertains it; and doth more commend

Time spent in that, than housewiferies' low kinds,

As short of that, as bodies are of minds.
If it may hurt, is power of good less great,
Since food may lust excite, shall she not
eat?

She is not Moon-like, that the Sun, her spouse

And as *Geometricians approve
That lines, nor superficies do move
Themselves, but by their bodies' motions
go:

So your good woman never strives to grow

Strong in her own affections and delights, But to her husband's equal appetites,

Earnests and jests, and looks' austerities, Herself in all her subject powers applies. Since life's chief cares on him are ever laid,

tIn cares she ever comforts, undismay'd, Though her heart grieves, her looks yet makes it sleight,

Dissembling evermore without deceit.
And as the twins of learn'd Hippocrates,
If one were sick, the other felt disease:
If one rejoiced, joy th' other's spirits fed :
If one were grieved, the other sorrowed :
So fares she with her husband; every
thought

Weighty in him, still watch'd in her, and wrought.

And as those that in Elephants delight, Never come near them in weeds rich and bright,

Nor Bulls approach in scarlet; since those hues

Through both those beasts enraged affects diffuse;

And as from Tigers men the Timbrel's sound

And Cymbal's keep away; since they abound

Thereby in fury and their own flesh tear ; So when t' a good wife, it is made appear That rich attire and curiosity

In wires, tires, shadows, do displease the eye

Of her loved husband; music, dancing, breeds

Offence in him; she lays by all those weeds,

*Geometræ dicunt, lineas et superficies. non seipsis moveri, sed motus corporum comitari. [The same simile is used in almost the same words by Tamyra towards the close of the first Act of The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois.]

† A good wife in most cares should ever undismayed comfort her husband.

[ This simile is twice used by Chapman in his Plays; by Strozza in the fourth Act of The Gentleman Usher, and by Honour in The Masque of the Middle Temple (1613), almost in the words of the text.]

§ A good wife watcheth her husband's serious thoughts in his looks, and applies her own to

them.