And much good do't you then,
Brave plush and velvet men
Can feed on orts, and safe in your stage clothes,
Dare quit, upon your oathes,
The stagers, and the stage-wrights too (your peers),
Of larding your large ears
With their foul comic socks,
Wrought upon twenty blocks:
Which if they're torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough
The gamesters share your gilt and you their stuff.
Leave things so prostitute,
And take the Alcæick lute,
Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre;
Warm thee by Pindar's fire;
And, tho' thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold,
Ere years have made thee old,
Strike that disdainful heat
Throughout, to their defeat;
As curious fools, and envious of thy strain,
May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.[103]
But when they hear thee sing
The glories of thy King,
His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men,
They may blood-shaken then,
Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers,
As they shall cry 'like ours,
In sound of peace, or wars,
No harp ere hit the stars,
In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raign,
And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his wain.'"
This Magisterial Ode, as Langbaine calls it, was answered by Owen Feltham, author of the admirable "Resolves," who has written with great satiric acerbity the retort courteous. His character of this poet should be attended to:—
AN ANSWER TO THE ODE, COME LEAVE THE LOATHED STAGE, &C.
Come leave this sawcy way
Of baiting those that pay
Dear for the sight of your declining wit:
'Tis known it is not fit
That a sale poet, just contempt once thrown,
Should cry up thus his own.
I wonder by what dower,
Or patent, you had power
From all to rape a judgment. Let't suffice,
Had you been modest, y'ad been granted wise.
'Tis known you can do well,
And that you do excell
As a translator; but when things require
A genius, and fire,
Not kindled heretofore by other pains,
As oft y'ave wanted brains
And art to strike the white,
As you have levell'd right:
Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal,
You bellow, rave, and spatter round your gall.
Jug, Pierce, Peek, Fly,[104] and all
Your jests so nominal,
Are things so far beneath an able brain,
As they do throw a stain
Thro' all th' unlikely plot, and do displease
As deep as Pericles.
Where yet there is not laid
Before a chamber-maid
Discourse so weigh'd,[105] as might have serv'd of old
For schools, when they of love and valour told.
Why rage, then? when the show
Should judgment be, and know-[106]
ledge, there are plush who scorn to drudge
For stages, yet can judge
Not only poet's looser lines, but wits,
And all their perquisits;
A gift as rich as high
Is noble poesie:
Yet, tho' in sport it be for Kings to play,
'Tis next mechanicks' when it works for pay.
Alcæus lute had none,
Nor loose Anacreon
E'er taught so bold assuming of the bays
When they deserv'd no praise.
To rail men into approbation
Is new to your's alone:
And prospers not: for known,
Fame is as coy, as you
Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove
A rape on her shall gather scorn—not love.