To Mrs. K. T.
(Who asked him why he was dumb.)
Stay, should I answer, Lady, then
In vain would be your question:
Should I be dumb, why then again
Your asking me would be in vain.
Silence nor speech, on neither hand,
Can satisfy this strange demand.
Yet, since your will throws me upon
This wished contradiction,
I'll tell you how I did become
10So strangely, as you hear me, dumb.
Ask but the chap-fallen Puritan;
'Tis zeal that tongue-ties that good man.
(For heat of conscience all men hold
Is th' only way to catch their cold.)
How should Love's zealot then forbear
To be your silenced minister?
Nay, your Religion which doth grant
A worship due to you, my Saint,
Yet counts it that devotion wrong
20That does it in the Vulgar Tongue.
My ruder words would give offence
To such an hallowed excellence,
As th' English dialect would vary
The goodness of an Ave Mary.
How can I speak that twice am checked
By this and that religious sect?
Still dumb, and in your face I spy
Still cause and still divinity.
As soon as blest with your salute,
30My manners taught me to be mute.
For, lest they cancel all the bliss
You signed with so divine a kiss,
The lips you seal must needs consent
Unto the tongue's imprisonment.
My tongue in hold, my voice doth rise
With a strange E-la to my eyes,
Where it gets bail, and in that sense
Begins a new-found eloquence.
Oh listen with attentive sight
40To what my pratling eyes indite!
Or, lady, since 'tis in your choice
To give or to suspend my voice,
With the same key set ope the door
Wherewith you locked it fast before.
Kiss once again, and when you thus
Have doubly been miraculous,
My Muse shall write with handmaid's duty
The Golden Legend of your beauty.
He whom his dumbness now confines
50But means to speak the rest by signs.
I. C.
To Mrs. K. T., &c. (1647). To this title 1677 and its followers add 'Written calente calamo'. The variant on currente is of some interest, and the statement may have been made to excuse the bad opening rhyme.
5 neither] either 1677.
14 'their cold' 1651, 1653: 'that cold' 1647, 1677.
16 silenced] As some Puritans were before Cleveland wrote, and all, or almost all, Churchmen afterwards.
31 1677 'Lest I should cancel all the bliss'.
37 bail] 1653 &c. 'hail', which is doubtless a misprint.
40 'prating' 1677.
47 'handmaid' 1677.
50 1677 'Intends to speak'—an obvious correction of the 'red-hot pen'. But whether Cleveland's or his vindicators' who shall say?
51 So 1647, 1651, 1653. The couplet is meaningless without them.
A Fair Nymph scorning a Black Boy courting her.
Nymph. Stand off, and let me take the air;
Why should the smoke pursue the fair?
Boy. My face is smoke, thence may be guessed
What flames within have scorched my breast.
Nymph. The flame of love I cannot view
For the dark lantern of thy hue.
Boy. And yet this lantern keeps Love's taper
Surer than yours, that's of white paper.
Whatever midnight hath been here,
10The moonshine of your light can clear.
Nymph. My moon of an eclipse is 'fraid,
If thou shouldst interpose thy shade.
Boy. Yet one thing, Sweetheart, I will ask;
Take me for a new-fashioned mask.
Nymph. Yes, but my bargain shall be this,
I'll throw my mask off when I kiss.
Boy. Our curled embraces shall delight
To checker limbs with black and white.
Nymph. Thy ink, my paper, make me guess
20Our nuptial bed will prove a press,
And in our sports, if any came,
They'll read a wanton epigram.
Boy. Why should my black thy love impair?
Let the dark shop commend the ware;
Or, if thy love from black forbears,
I'll strive to wash it off with tears.
Nymph. Spare fruitless tears, since thou must needs
Still wear about thee mourning weeds.
Tears can no more affection win
30Than wash thy Ethiopian skin.
A Fair Nymph, &c. (1647.)
2 An odd fancy included by Browne among the Vulgar Errors.
5 'Thy flaming love' 1677 &c.
10 'face will clear' 1677 &c.
14 1677 'Take me for a new-fashioned mask': 1647, 1651 'Buy me for a new false mask', varied in 1653 'Buy for me'—apparently a misprint, as the boy does not seem to wish to disguise himself.
15 Yes] Done 1677.
20 1647, 1651, 1653, 'make a press', ill repeated from above.
24 'the ware' 1677: 1647, 1651, 1653, not so well, 'thy ware'.
28 1677 changed 'thee' to 'thy'.
30 Some inferior copies 'the Ethiopian'.
A Dialogue between two Zealots upon the &c. in the Oath.
Sir Roger, from a zealous piece of frieze
Raised to a vicar of the children's threes;
Whose yearly audit may by strict account
To twenty nobles and his vails amount;
Fed on the common of the female charity
Until the Scots can bring about their parity;
So shotten that his soul, like to himself,
Walks but in cuerpo; this same clergy-elf,
Encountering with a brother of the cloth,
10Fell presently to cudgels with the Oath.
The quarrel was a strange misshapen monster,
&c., (God bless us) which they conster
The brand upon the buttock of the Beast,
The Dragon's tail tied on a knot, a nest
Of young Apocryphas, the fashion
Of a new mental Reservation.
While Roger thus divides the text, the other
Winks and expounds, saying, 'My pious brother,
Hearken with reverence, for the point is nice.
20I never read on 't, but I fasted twice,
And so by revelation know it better
Than all the learn'd idolaters o'th' letter.'
With that he swelled, and fell upon the theme
Like great Goliah with his weaver's beam.
'I say to thee, &c., thou li'st!
Thou art the curléd lock of Antichrist;
Rubbish of Babel; for who will not say
Tongues were confounded in &c.?
Who swears &c., swears more oaths at once
30Than Cerberus out of his triple sconce.
Who views it well, with the same eye beholds
The old half Serpent in his numerous folds.
Accurst &c. thou, for now I scent
What lately the prodigious oysters meant!
Oh Booker! Booker! How camest thou to lack
This sign in thy prophetic almanac?
It 's the dark vault wherein th' infernal plot
Of powder 'gainst the State was first begot.
Peruse the Oath and you shall soon descry it
40By all the Father Garnets that stand by it;
'Gainst whom the Church, (whereof I am a member,)
Shall keep another Fifth Day of November.
Yet here's not all; I cannot half untruss
&c.—it's so abhominous!
The Trojan nag was not so fully lined;
Unrip &c., and you shall find
Og the great commissary, and (which is worse)
The apparitor upon his skew-bald horse.
Then finally, my babe of grace, forbear,
50&c. will be too far to swear,
For 'tis (to speak in a familiar style)
A Yorkshire wee bit longer than a mile.'
Here Roger was inspired, and by God's diggers
He'll swear in words at large but not in figures.
Now by this drink, which he takes off, as loath
To leave &c. in his liquid oath.
His brother pledged him, and that bloody wine
He swears shall seal the Synod's Catiline.
So they drunk on, not offering to part
60'Till they had quite sworn out th' eleventh quart,
While all that saw and heard them jointly pray
They and their tribe were all &c.
A Dialogue, &c. (1647.) This occurs also in the Rump (1662, reprinted London, n. d.). A MS. copy is found in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 26 of the Bodleian, at fol. 94, with the title 'A Dialogue between 2. Zelots concerning &c. in the new Oath.' 'The Oath' is the famous one formulated in 1640 by Convocation. Fuller, who was proctor for the diocese of Bristol (and who would have been fined heavily for his part, 'moderate' as he was, if the Puritan Ultras of the Commons could have had their way), has left much about it. This oath, to be taken by all the clergy, imported approval of the doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church, and disclaimed, twice over, 'Popish' doctrine and the usurpations of the see of Rome. Unluckily the government of the Church was defined as 'by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c.', which last was, in the absence of any other handle, seized by the Puritan party as possibly implying all sorts of horrors. Cleveland banters them well enough, but hardly with the force and directness which he was to show later. The Royalists were then under the fatal error of underrating the strength of their opponents, and the gullibility of the people of England.
2 'vicar', 1647, 1651, 1653, MS.: 'vicarage' 1677. 'children' 1651, 1653: I have been waiting a long time to know what 'children's threes' means. It occurs elsewhere, but to my thinking as an obvious reminiscence of Cleveland.
7 shotten] 'like a herring that has spawned', 'thin'.
8 in cuerpo] 'in body-clothes', 'cloakless'. 1647, 1651, 1653 'Querpo': MS. 'Quirpo', with 'cuerpo' written above it.
12 1677 extends '&c.' to 'et caetera'. This is a mistake, as the actual ampersand occurred in the oath and gave some slight assistance to the cavillers. Cleveland's expressions—'tail tied on a knot' (l. 14), 'curled lock' (l. 26), 'numerous folds' (l. 32)—lose their point without the ampersand. 1677 also has 'may conster', which though possible enough, seems to me neither necessary nor even much of an improvement.
17 1677, less euphoniously, 'Whilst'.
22 A reading of the Rump version, 'Than all the Idolaters of the letter', though almost certainly a mere mistaken correction, has some interest.
23 fell] sett MS.
24 Goliah] This form occurs in all the texts.
25 In this and other lines that follow much of the quaintness is lost by 'extending' the '&c.' of the older editions.
28 were] are 1677, MS.
32 All editions, I think, before 1677 (which substitutes 'false') have 'half'. 'False' is very feeble; 'half' refers picturesquely to the delineation of the Serpent tempting Eve with a human head, being coiled below like the curves of the &c. 'False' MS.
33 1677, MS. 'Accurst Et Caetera! now, now I scent'.
34 I do not know whether these very Livyish oysters have been traced. 1677 and MS. omit 'lately' and read 'prodigious bloody oysters'.
35 John Booker (1603-1677), Manchester man, haberdasher, writing-master, and astrologer, gained a great deal of credit by interpreting an eclipse after the usual fashion as portending disaster to kings and princes, the great Gustavus Adolphus and the unfortunate Frederick, 'Winter'-King of Bohemia, being complaisant enough to die in accordance.
36 This sign] 1677, MS. 'This fiend'—more energetically.
37 ''Tis the dark vault where the' MS.
40 The sting of 'the Father Garnets that stand by it' lies in the words immediately preceding the obnoxious '&c.'—'archbishops, bishops, &c.'—whom the Puritan divine stigmatizes as Jesuits and traitors to Church and State. As has been stated, the oath distinctly, in set terms and twice over, abjured Rome and all things Roman; but the Puritans of those days, like their descendants, paid no attention to trifles of this kind. For 'stand' MS. reads 'stood'.
43 Yet] Nay MS.
44 1647, 1651 'abominous'; 1653 'abhominous'. The 'h' must be kept in 'abhominous', though not unusual for 'abom-', because it helps to explain, and perhaps to justify, 1677 and MS. in reading 'abdominous'. This, though something suggestive of a famous Oxford story, derives some colour from 'untruss' and may be right, especially as I do not know another example of 'abominous' for 'abominable'.
47 Og] v. sup., [p. 31]. MS. has marginal note 'Roan'.
48 'Skew-bald' is not = 'piebald', though most horses commonly called piebald are skewbalds. 'Pie[magpie]bald' is black and white; skewbald brown (or some other colour not black) and white. The Church-courts were much more unpopular, in these as in mediaeval times, than the Church, and High Commissioners and commissaries and apparitors were alleged to lurk under the guileful and dreadful '&c.'
49 'babes' 1677.
52 Blount's Glossographia (1656), a useful book, shows the ignorance of Northern English then prevailing by supposing 'wea-bit' (the form found in Cleveland originally) to be 'way-bit'. It is, of course, 'little bit', the Scotch 'mile and a bittock'.
53 Here] Then 1647, 1651, 1653. God's diggers] = nails or fingers. Commoner in the corruption 'Ods niggers'.
54 'in words at large' 1647 ('at length', one issue of 1647): 'at words in large' 1651, 1653: 'in words at length, and not in figures' MS.
58 Edd. 'Cataline', as usual, but 1677 'Catiline'. 'He swears he'll be the Synod's' MS.
59 'Thus they drink on, not offering to depart' MS.
60 1677 omits 'quite'—no doubt for the old syllabic reason. MS. substitutes 'fully'.
62 Perhaps nowhere is the comic surprise of the symbol more wanted than here, and more of a loss when that symbol is extended.
Smectymnuus, or the Club-Divines.
Smectymnuus! The goblin makes me start!
I' th' name of Rabbi Abraham, what art?
Syriac? or Arabic? or Welsh? what skill't?
Ap all the bricklayers that Babel built,
Some conjurer translate and let me know it;
Till then 'tis fit for a West Saxon poet.
But do the brotherhood then play their prizes
Like mummers in religion with disguises,
Out-brave us with a name in rank and file?
10A name, which, if 'twere trained, would spread a mile!
The saints' monopoly, the zealous cluster
Which like a porcupine presents a muster
And shoots his quills at bishops and their sees,
A devout litter of young Maccabees!
Thus Jack-of-all-trades hath devoutly shown
The Twelve Apostles on a cherry-stone;
Thus faction 's à la mode in treason's fashion,
Now we have heresy by complication.
Like to Don Quixote's rosary of slaves
20Strung on a chain; a murnival of knaves
Packed in a trick, like gipsies when they ride,
Or like colleagues which sit all of a side.
So the vain satyrists stand all a row
As hollow teeth upon a lute-string show.
Th' Italian monster pregnant with his brother,
Nature's diæresis, half one another,
He, with his little sides-man Lazarus,
Must both give way unto Smectymnuus.
Next Sturbridge Fair is Smec's; for, lo! his side
30Into a five-fold lazar's multiplied.
Under each arm there 's tucked a double gizzard;
Five faces lurk under one single vizard.
The Whore of Babylon left these brats behind,
Heirs of confusion by gavelkind.
I think Pythagoras' soul is rambled hither
With all the change of raiment on together.
Smec is her general wardrobe; she'll not dare
To think of him as of a thoroughfare.
He stops the gossiping dame; alone he is
40The purlieu of a metempsychosis;
Like a Scotch mark, where the more modest sense
Checks the loud phrase, and shrinks to thirteen pence:
Like to an ignis fatuus whose flame,
Though sometimes tripartite, joins in the same;
Like to nine tailors, who, if rightly spelled,
Into one man are monosyllabled.
Short-handed zeal in one hath cramped many
Like to the Decalogue in a single penny.
See, see how close the curs hunt under sheet
50As if they spent in quire and scanned their feet.
One cure and five incumbents leap a truss;
The title sure must be litigious.
The Sadducees would raise a question
Who must be Smec at th' Resurrection.
Who cooped them up together were to blame.
Had they but wire-drawn and spun out their name,
'Twould make another Prentices' Petition
Against the bishops and their superstition.
Robson and French (that count from five to five,
60As far as nature fingers did contrive—
She saw they would be 'sessors, that 's the cause
She cleft their hoof into so many claws)
May tire their carrot-bunch, yet ne'er agree
To rate Smectymnuus for poll-money.
Caligula—whose pride was mankind's bail,
As who disdained to murder by retail,
Wishing the world had but one general neck,—
His glutton blade might have found game in Smec.
No echo can improve the author more
70Whose lungs pay use on use to half a score.
No felon is more lettered, though the brand
Both superscribes his shoulder and his hand.
Some Welshman was his godfather, for he
Wears in his name his genealogy.
The banns are asked, would but the times give way,
Betwixt Smectymnuus and Et Caetera.
The guests, invited by a friendly summons,
Should be the Convocation and the Commons.
The priest to tie the foxes' tails together
80Mosely, or Sancta Clara, choose you whether.
See what an offspring every one expects,
What strange pluralities of men and sects!
One says he'll get a vestry, but another
Is for a synod; Bet upon the mother.
Faith, cry St. George! Let them go to 't and stickle
Whether a conclave or a conventicle.
Thus might religions caterwaul, and spite
Which uses to divorce, might once unite.
But their cross fortunes interdict their trade;
90The groom is rampant but the bride displayed.
My task is done, all my he goats are milked.
So many cards i' th' stock, and yet be bilked?
I could by letters now untwist the rabble,
Whip Smec from constable to constable;
But there I leave you to another dressing;
Only kneel down and take your father's blessing.
May the Queen Mother justify your fears
And stretch her patent to your leather ears!
Smectymnuus, &c. (1647.) Whether this lively skit on the five 'reverend men whose friend' Milton was (as far as he could be proud of being anything but himself) proud of being was in Milton's own mind when he wrote his Apology for the acrostically named treatise, one cannot say. It is a lively 'mime' enough, and he seems to throw back that word with some special meaning. Cleveland's poem may have appeared in the summer of 1641. Naturally, it is in the Rump poems.
3 All editions 'skilt'. It apparently must be as in text: 'skill't' for 'skill'st' = 'dost thou [or 'does it'] signify?'
4 1677, &c. 'Ape', but 'Ap' in the Welsh sense (Welsh having just been mentioned) does well enough. It would go, not too roughly for Cleveland's syntax, with 'conjurer'. Let some wizard, descended from all these, and therefore knowing all tongues, translate.
6 This is rather interesting. Does it refer to Wessex or Devonshire dialect of the day, or to old West Saxon? Junius did not edit Cædmon till fourteen years later, but there was study of Anglo-Saxon from Parker's time at Cambridge.
7 the brotherhood] 'Brother' and 'sister' being constant sneers at the Puritan.
play their prizes] = 'fight'.
10 Perhaps another sneer at the 'train-bands' of the City.
15 'distinctly' 1677.
16 'in a' 1677.
18 I suppose à la mode, which is in 1677, is right; but the 'all-a-mode' of 1647, 1651, 1653 is tempting.
20 'murnival' or 'mournival'. Four aces, kings, &c., especially at gleek.
22 1677, &c. 'Or like the College'.
24 'hallow' 1653.
25 I knew not this monster, and suspected that he would not be a delicate monster to know. But Mr. Thorn-Drury has found him in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1777, p. 482. Lazarus Collondo, a Genoese, had a small brother growing out of his side, with one leg, two arms, &c., &c.
29 'Smec' will now be an even greater attraction at the Sturbridge fair at Cambridge. All fairs rejoiced in monsters.
36 'The change', as in 1647, 1651, 1653 and its group, including the Rump version, is not so good as 'her', which 1677 reads.
38 i.e. 'to go on to any other body'.
40 'Purlieu' seems to be used in the sense of 'precinct' or 'province'.
41-2 These lines are in all the seventeenth-century editions I have seen, but not in Mr. Berdan's. The Scots pound was of course only twenty English pence, and so the mark (two thirds) 'shrank' accordingly.
49 1647, 1651, 1677 insert 'a' before 'sheet'. The metaphor is probably as old as hunting. 'Spend', as Professor Case reminds me, has had already in The Miser, l. 67, the sense of 'give tongue'. 'Scanned their feet' for 'kept pace' is good enough; but why the five should leap a truss, and why this should be litigious, I again frankly confess myself to have been ignorant. Mr. Simpson, however, quotes R. Fletcher in Ex Otio Negotium, 1656, p. 202, 'The model of the new Religion':
How many Queere-religions? clear your throat,
May a man have a penyworth? four a groat?
Or do the Iuncto leap at truss a fayle?
Three tenents clap while five hang on the tayle?
Cleveland seems to have tried in this piece to equal the mystery of the title of 'Smec' by his own matter, and to have succeeded very fairly.
54 1677, &c. 'shall be'. 'at th'' 1647, 1677: 'at the' 1651, 1653.
55 cooped] cooked 1647, 1651.
56 1677, &c. 'the name'.
57 An absurd, but doubtless in the circumstances dangerous, document of the kind was actually disseminated, in which the prentices bold engaged 'to defend his Sacred Majesty against Popish innovations such as archbishops and bishops appear to be'.
63 carrot-bunch] Cant for 'fingers'.
70 'pay' 1653, 1677: 'pays' 1647, 1651. 1677 'and use'.
75 'Banns' 1677: 'Banes' in earlier texts. 1653 'time'.
78 The Convocation which had been guilty of '&c.', and the Commons who mostly sympathized with 'Smec'.
79 foxes' tails] As at Samson's marriage (Judges xv. 4-7.)
80 Mosel[e]y, Milton's printer; and Sancta Clara, the Jesuit?
82 1677 'plurality'.
83 'Vestry, but' 1677: 'Vestery' 1647, 1651, 1653.
84 1677 'Bets'.
90 The heraldic terms are pretty plain, but 1677 reads 'is spade' i.e. 'spayed', as in The Hecatomb to his Mistress, l. 2.
94 Rhyme here really badly managed.
95 1677 'another's'.
97 The fear and dislike of Henrietta Maria (whom Mr. Berdan supposes to be meant) among the disaffected is only too certain: and the fate of Prynne's ears for his scandal of her is notorious. But why at this time she should be called a Queen Mother (it was her proper title afterwards, and she was one of the very few to whom it was actually given), and what the last line means, I know not. Nor does Professor Firth, unless Marie de Médicis (who was Queen Mother in France and had visited England) had, as he suggests, a share in some leather patent, and is meant here. Smec's ears are 'vellum' in Rupertismus, 169 (v. inf., [p. 67]).