There's an invention mountebank enough To make petards to blow up men's good

names,

Virtues and dignities, for vice's pleasure;
Take but an idle and ridiculous crew
Of base back-biters that it never knew
Virtue or worth to manage; great flesh-
flies

Slight all the clear and sound parts where they pass

And dwell upon the sores; and call to them

The common learned gatherer of poisons For envied merits that he cannot equal, And let him glean from malice and foul mouths

Devices long since done, and set them down

With spleen, stupid and dead as brutish rests,

Transforming all most wrathful fumes to jests,

Letting the king his royal ear allow;
And there's a reputation broke as small
And with as mighty arguments let fall
As the Greek man's pure bodies genital;
So that if scandals false bear free their spite
All guiltless forms are forced with rape and
flight,

And shall all other raisers of their names T'air's highest region by such shortwing'd fames

Hold not their titles, and whole states-like tenures?

May we not humblest things with highest

It does himself ease, and why them no good?

Come serve it in then give him golden food.

Nobody, he dares say, yet have sound parts

Of profound search and mastery in the arts;* And perfect then his English Grammar

too

To teach some what their nurses could not do,

The purity of language, and among
The rest his Journey into Scotland sung,
And twice-twelve-years stored-up humanity,
With humble gleanings in Divinity
After the Fathers, and those wiser guides
That faction had not drawn to steady
sides:

Canst thou lose these by fire, and live yet able

To write past Jove's wrath, fire, and air, things stable,

Yet curse as thou wert lost for every bable? Some poor thing write new ; a rich casket,

Ben,

All of rich gems, t' adorn most learned

men;

Or a reclaim of most facete supposes To teach full-habited men to blow their noses.

Make the king merry; would'st thou now

be known

The Devil and the Vice, and both in one Thou doest things backwards, are men thought to know

Masteries in th' arts, with saying they do so,

And crying fire out in a dream to kings, Burn things unborn, and that way generate things.

Write some new lactean way to thy high presence

And make not ever thy strong fancy

essence

To all thou would'st be thought in all worlds' worth,

Or else like Hercules Furens breaking forth

Biting the green-cloth, as a dog a stone And for ridiculous shadow of the bone Hazard the substance; will thy fortune still,

Spite of all learning, back the wit thy will,

*Note in the margin, in the same hand:William, then Lord Chamberlain and Earl of Pembroke, made him Master of Arts with his letter.

FF

score

As all earth's learned fires he gather'd for. What think'st thou, just friend? equall'd not this pride

All yet that ever Hell or Heaven defied?
And yet for all this, this club will inflict
His faultful pain, and him enough convict
He only reading show'd; learning, nor
wit;

Only Dame Gilian's fire his desk will fit.
But for his shift by fire to save the loss
Of his vast learning, this may prove it gross:
True Muses ever vent breaths mixt with
fire

Which, form'd in numbers, they in flames expire

Not only flames kindled with their own bless'd breath

That give th' unborn life, and eternize

death.

Great Ben, I know that this is in thy hand And how thou fix'd on heaven's fix'd star dost stand

In all men's admirations and command; For all that can be scribbled 'gainst the

sorter

Of thy dead repercussions and reporter.