Is grateful to just states. Most spotless kingdom,
And men, O happy born under good stars, 340
Where what is honest you may freely think,
Speak what you think, and write what you do speak,
Not bound to servile soothings! But since our rank
Hath ever been afflicted with these flies
(That blow corruption on the sweetest virtues),
I will revenge us all upon you all
With the same stratagem we still are caught,
Flattery itself; and sure all know the sharpness
Of reprehensive language is even blunted
To full contempt. Since vice is now term’d fashion, 350
And most are grown to ill, even with defence
I vow to waste this most prodigious heat,
That falls into my age like scorching flames
In depth of numb’d December, in flattering all
In all of their extremest viciousness,
Till in their own lov’d race they fall most lame,
And meet full butt the close of Vice’s shame.
[Exit.
[129] Cf. Dekker and Webster’s Northward Ho (1606), iv. 3:—
“Bell. But what say you to such gentlemen as these are?
“Bawd. Foh! they, as soon as they come to their lands, get up to London and like squibs that run upon lines, they keep a spitting of fire and cracking till they ha’ spent all; and when my squib is out what says his punk? foh, he stinks!”
[130] “Ship of Fools”—an allusion to Sebastian Brandt’s famous work, translated by Alexander Barclay.
[131] “Bear brain” = be shrewd, wary.
[132] Eds. 1. and 3. “farre found.”
[133] Old eds. “If that they could have,” &c. (The speech is printed as prose in old eds.) The “far-famed friar” is of course Friar Bacon. See the extract from The Famous History of Fryer Bacon appended to Dyce’s edition of Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.
[134] Ed. 2. “hill.”