What sex they are, since strumpets breeches use,
And all men’s eyes save Lynceus can abuse.
Nay, stead of shadow, lay the substance out,
Or else, fair Briscus, I shall stand in doubt
What sex thou art, since such hermaphrodites,
Such Protean shadows so delude our sights.
Look, look, with what a discontented grace
Bruto the traveller doth sadly[373] pace
’Long Westminster! O civil-seeming shade,
Mark his sad colours!—how demurely clad! 130
Staidness itself, and Nestor’s gravity,
Are but the shade of his civility.
And now he sighs: “O thou corrupted age,
Which slight regard’st men of sound carriage!
Virtue, knowledge, fly to heaven again;
Deign not ’mong these ungrateful sots remain!
Well, some tongues I know, some countries I have seen,
And yet these oily snails respectless been
Of my good parts.” O worthless puffy slave!
Didst thou to Venice go ought[374] else to have, 140
But buy a lute and use a courtesan,[375]
And there to live like a Cyllenian?[376]
And now from thence what hither dost thou bring,
But surphulings,[377] new paints, and poisoning,[378]
Aretine’s[379] pictures, some strange luxury,
And new-found use of Venice venery?
What art thou but black clothes? Sad Bruto, say,
Art anything but only sad[380] array?
Which I am sure is all thou brought’st from France,
Save Naples pox and Frenchmen’s dalliance; 150
From haughty Spain, what brought’st thou else beside
But lofty looks and their Lucifrian pride?
From Belgia, what but their deep bezeling,[381]
Their boot-carouse[382] and their beer-buttering?
Well, then, exclaim not on our age, good man,
But hence, polluted Neapolitan.
Now, Satire, cease to rub our gallèd skins,
And to unmask the world’s detested sins;
Thou shalt as soon draw Nilus river dry
As cleanse the world from foul impiety. 160
[364] A spring-lock to a gun; hence applied to anything that goes off sharply.
[365] Old ed. “Boetian.”
[366] Old ed. “Natales Comes.”—Noël Conti (1520-1580), a native of Milan, better known under his Latinised name, Natalis Comes, was the author of Mythologiæ, sive explicationis Fabularum, libri decem, first printed at Venice in 1551, and frequently reprinted. To some editions are appended Deorum Imagines ... M. Antonii Tritonii Vtinensis. Many old treatises on mythology have the title Imagines Deorum.
[367] We had the word “depaint” in vol. i., p. 90. It is as old as Chaucer.
[368] Dance trenchmore—a lively rustic dance.
[369] A sort of hard wood, used in dyeing to produce a red colour.—It is a very old word and is still in use.
[370] Old ed. “thurnged.”
[371] It has been suggested, without the slightest shadow of foundation, that the allusion is to the death of Marlowe. Dr. Nicholson (Grosart’s Marston, p. xlvi.) says:—“If Tubrio be Marlowe, then the hitherto unknown courtesan was the hermaphroditic ‘Moll Cutpurse’” At the earliest computation Moll was born in 1584-5 (see Middleton, iv. 3); and Marlowe died in 1593.—(In old ed. the line runs:—“For from good Tubrio looke the mortall stab.” The correction is made in the author’s list of errata.)