kind of hypocritical and hackney course of literature to get their living by, and dazzle the ignorant, or else fondly over-studied in useless controversies, except those which they use with all the specious and delusive subtlety they are able, to defend their prelatical Sparta.'
P. [72]. wisses: knows.
P. [72]. the bird that first rouses: the lark; see 'L'Allegro,' 41 et seq.
P. [72]. old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers, and salt lotion: the passage alluded to in the 'Animadversions,' is the following: 'We know where the shoe wrings you, you fret and are galled at the quick; and oh what a death it is to the prelates to be thus unvisarded, thus uncased, to have the periwigs plucked off, that cover your baldness, your inside nakedness thrown open to public view! The Romans had a time, once every year, when their slaves might freely speak their minds; it were hard if the free-born people of England, with whom the voice of truth for these many years, even against the proverb, hath not been heard but in corners, after all your monkish prohibitions, and expurgatorious indexes, your gags and snaffles, your proud Imprimaturs not to be obtained without the shallow surview, but not shallow hand of some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain; when liberty of speaking, than which nothing is more sweet to man, was girded and strait-laced almost to a brokenwinded phthisic, if now, at a good time, our time of parliament, the very jubilee and resurrection of the state, if now the concealed, the aggrieved, and long-persecuted truth, could not be suffered to speak; and though she burst out with some efficacy of words, could not be excused after such an injurious strangle of silence, nor avoid the censure of libelling, it were hard, it were something pinching in a kingdom of free spirits. Some princes, and great statists, have thought it a prime piece of necessary policy, to thrust themselves under disguise into a popular throng, to stand the night long under eaves of houses, and low windows, that they might hear everywhere the utterances of private breasts, and amongst them find out the precious gem of truth, as amongst the numberless pebbles of the shore; whereby they might be the abler to discover, and avoid, that deceitful and close-couched evil of flattery, that ever attends them, and misleads them, and might skilfully know how to apply the several redresses to each malady of state, without trusting the disloyal information of parasites and sycophants; whereas now this permission of free writing, were there no good else in it, yet at some time thus licensed, is such an unripping, such an anatomy of the shyest and tenderest particular truths, as makes not only the whole nation in many points the wiser, but also presents and
carries home to princes, men most remote from vulgar concourse, such a full insight of every lurking evil, or restrained good among the commons, as that they shall not need hereafter, in old cloaks and false beards, to stand to the courtesy of a night-walking cudgeller for eaves-dropping, not to accept quietly as a perfume, the overhead emptying of some salt lotion. Who could be angry, therefore, but those that are guilty, with these free-spoken and plain-hearted men, that are the eyes of their country, and the prospective glasses of their prince? But these are the nettlers, these are the blabbing books that tell, though not half your fellows' feats. You love toothless satires; let me inform you, a toothless satire is as improper as a toothed sleekstone, and as bullish.'
P. [73]. antistrophon: reasoning turned upon an opponent.
P. [73]. mime: a kind of buffoon play, in which real persons and events were ridiculously mimicked and represented.
P. [73]. Mundus alter et idem (another world and the same): a satire by Bishop Hall.
P. [73]. Cephalus: son of Mercury (Hermes), carried off by Aurora (Eos).
P. [73]. Hylas: accompanied Hercules in the Argonautic expedition. His beauty excited the love of the Naiads, as he went to draw water from a fountain, on the coast of Mysia, and he was drawn by them into the water, and never again seen.