Curio, know’st me? Why, thou bottle-ale,[497]
Thou barmy[498] froth! O stay me, lest I rail
Beyond Nil ultra! to see this butterfly,
This windy bubble, task my balladry
With senseless censure. Curio, know’st my sprite?
Yet deem’st that in sad[499] seriousness I write
Such nasty stuff as is Pygmalion?
Such maggot-tainted, lewd corruption!
Ha, how he glavers[500] with his fawning snout,
And swears he thought I meant but faintly flout 10
My fine smug rhyme. O barbarous dropsy-noul![501]
Think’st thou that genius that attends my soul,
And guides my fist to scourge magnificos,
Will deign my mind be rank’d in Paphian shows?
Think’st thou that I, which was create to whip
Incarnate fiends, will once vouchsafe to trip
A pavin’s[502] traverse, or will lisp “Sweet love,”
Or pule “Aye me,” some female soul to move?
Think’st thou that I in melting poesy
Will pamper itching sensuality 20
(That in the body’s scum all fatally
Entombs the soul’s most sacred faculty)?
Hence, thou misjudging censor: know I wrot
Those idle rhymes to note the odious spot
And blemish that deforms the lineaments
Of modern poesy’s habiliments.
O that the beauties of invention,
For want of judgment’s disposition,
Should all be spoil’d![503] O that such treasury,
Such strain of well-conceited poesy, 30
Should moulded be in such a shapeless form,
That want of art should make such wit a scorn!
Here’s one must invocate some loose-legg’d dame,
Some brothel drab, to help him stanzas frame,
Or else (alas!) his wits can have no vent,
To broach conceit’s industrious intent.
Another yet dares tremblingly come out;
But first he must invoke good Colin Clout.
Yon’s one hath yean’d a fearful prodigy,
Some monstrous misshapen balladry; 40
His guts are in his brains, huge jobbernoul,[504]
Right gurnet’s-head;[505] the rest without all soul.
Another walks, is lazy, lies him down,
Thinks, reads, at length some wonted sleep doth crown
His new-fall’n lids, dreams; straight, ten pound to one,
Out steps some fairy with quick motion,
And tells him wonders of some flow’ry vale;
Awakes, straight rubs his eyes, and prints his tale.
Yon’s one whose strains have flown so high a pitch,
That straight he flags and tumbles in a ditch. 50
His sprightly hot high-soaring poesy
Is like that dreamèd of imagery,
Whose head was gold, breast silver, brassy thigh,
Lead legs, clay feet;[506] O fair-framed poesy!
Here’s one, to get an undeserved repute
Of deep deep learning, all in fustian suit
Of ill passed, far-fetch’d words attiereth
His period, that sense forsweareth.
Another makes old Homer Spenser cite,
Like my Pygmalion, where, with rare[507] delight, 60
He cries, “O Ovid!” This caus’d my idle quill,
The world’s dull ears with such lewd stuff to fill,
And gull with bumbast lines the witless sense
Of these odd nags, whose pates’ circumference
Is fill’d with froth. O these same buzzing gnats
That sting my sleeping brows, these Nilus’ rats,[508]
Half dung, that have their life from putrid slime—
These that do praise my loose lascivious rhyme!
For these same shades, I seriously protest,
I slubbered up that chaos indigest, 70
To fish for fools that stalk in goodly shape;
“What, though in velvet cloak, yet still an ape.”
Capro reads, swears, scrubs, and swears again,
“Now by my soul an admirable strain;”
Strokes up his hair, cries, “Passing passing good;”
O, there’s a line incends his lustful blood!
Then Muto comes, with his new glass-set face,
And with his late-kiss’d hand my book doth grace,
Straight reads, then smiles, and lisps, “’Tis pretty good,”
And praiseth that he never understood. 80
But room for Flaccus, he’ll my Satires read;
O how I trembled straight with inward dread!
But when I saw him read my fustian,
And heard him swear I was a Pythian,
Yet straight recall’d, and swears I did but quote
Out of Xylinum[509] to that margent’s note,
I could scarce hold and keep myself conceal’d,
But had well-nigh myself and all reveal’d.
Then straight comes Friscus, that neat gentleman,
That new-discarded academian, 90
Who, for he could cry Ergo in the school,
Straightway with his huge judgment dares control
Whatsoe’er he views: “That’s pretty, pretty[510] good;
That epithet hath not that sprightly blood
Which should enforce it speak; that’s Persius’ vein;
That’s Juvenal’s; here’s Horace’ crabbèd strain;”
Though he ne’er read one line in Juvenal,
Or, in his life, his lazy eye let fall
On dusky Persius. O, indignity
To my respectless free-bred poesy! 100
Hence, ye big-buzzing little-bodied gnats,
Ye tattling echoes, huge-tongued pigmy brats:
I mean to sleep: wake not my slumb’ring brain
With your malignant, weak, detracting vein.
What though the sacred issue of my soul
I here expose to idiots’ control;
What though I bare to lewd opinion,
Lay ope to vulgar profanation,
My very genius,—yet know, my poesy
Doth scorn your utmost, rank’st indignity; 110
My pate was great with child, and here ’tis eased;
Vex all the world, so that thyself be pleased.
[497] So Doll Tearsheet to Pistol:—“Away, you bottle-ale rascal, you basket-hilt juggler you.”—2 Henry IV., ii. 4.
[499] “Sad seriousness”—sober earnestness.
[501] “Dropsy-noul”—grouthead.