“That same Horace has the most ungodly 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 486 his rivals; and Decker makes Fannius reply, with noble 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 nobly 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.