Come, somewhat say (but hang me when ’tis done)
Worthy of brass and hoary marble stone;
Speak, ye attentive swains, that heard him never,
Will not his pastorals[399] endure for ever?
Speak, ye that never heard him ought but rail,
Do not his poems bear a glorious sail? 150
Hath not he strongly justled from above
The eagle from the stairs of friendly Jove?
May be, may be; tut! ’tis his modesty;
He could, if that he would: nay, would, if could, I see.
Who cannot rail, and with a blasting breath
Scorch even the whitest lilies of the earth?
Who cannot stumble in a stuttering style,
And shallow heads with seeming shades beguile?
Cease, cease, at length to be malevolent
To fairest blooms of virtues eminent; 160
Strive not to soil the freshest hues on earth
With thy malicious and upbraiding breath.
Envy, let pines of Ida rest alone,
For they will grow spite of thy thunder-stone;
Strive not to nibble in their swelling grain
With toothless gums of thy detracting brain;
Eat not thy dam, but laugh and sport with me
At strangers’ follies with a merry glee.
Let’s not malign our kin. Then, satirist,
I do salute thee with an open fist.[400] 170
[388] The allusion in the following lines is to Hall’s Satires, i. 8. See Introduction, vol. i.—Grillus was one of Ulysses’ companions who were turned into swine. When the others rejoiced at resuming their human shape, Grillus preferred to remain a swine.
[389] An allusion to Southwell’s poems Saint Peter’s Complaint and The Virgin Mary to Christ on the Cross.
[390] The allusion is to Sylvester’s once famous translations of Du Bartas.
[391] James in his Poetical Exercises (1591) published a translation of Du Bartas’ poem The Furies; but there seems also to be a reference to the metrical translation of the psalms (first published in 1631), on which James was known to be engaged.
[392] Dash.
[393] Often used for sometime.
[394] In Hall’s Satires, i. 5, the Mirror of Magistrates is ridiculed.
[395] The allusion is to Daniel’s Complaint of Rosamond, 1592, and to Michael Drayton’s Complaint of Gaveston, 1593. I cannot discover any abuse of Daniel or Drayton in Hall’s Satires. I have elsewhere suggested (Marlowe, iii. 243) that Marston is here glancing at Sir John Davies’ forty-fifth epigram, in which a conceit from Daniel’s Rosamond is ridiculed.