I WOULD have you to know, I am not so far in my dotage, but I have reason enough left plainly to discern I am very much affronted in your ironical letter: as for my part, Mr. mean it as you please, I take it in good earnest, for it is not consistent with my temper and gravity at these years, to like such unmannerly jesting. Time was, I was a young fellow, that would have scolded with a butter-whore, box’d a carman, or have scribled scurrilously with any Lilly in the universe; but, alas! when a man has liv’d in this world to the age of near seventy, and has had familiar conversation with all the foolish women in the town, puzzled his brains with more angles, circles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, and parallellopipedons, &c. than ever has been yet found in that most famous introduction to the mathematicks, call’d Euclid’s Gimcracks, pour’d as much Derby ale thro’ his guts every year as would have fill’d the great fatt at Heidelburg, and metamorphosed as much tobacco into smoak every month, as would have put a whole county into a mist; I think ’tis high time for a man to have done with discord, and begin to compose himself into a little harmony; therefore I take it ill you should attack me in my old age, especially when you have Hell on your side, and the devil and all to help you.
What, tho’ I was a joiner at Oxford, and once to shew myself a good workman, made a cedar close-stool case for the dean of Christ-Church, I question not but one time or other for the excellency of its work, it will be carried into the library, and be there preserv’d as a monument of its maker’s glory to all succeeding ages, when you will have no remains to put the world in mind of you, but your old conjuring countenance, painted upon a sign, and hung up over Black-friers gateway, subscribed with a little paultry poetry, fit for no body’s reading but a parcel of country hobbies, who have left the plow and the flayl, to come up to London to be cozen’d out of the fruits of their labour. It is well known, I was born and educated in a learned air, and tho’ a man be bred a cobler in that climate, he cannot help being a scholar, if he but furnish’d with as much brains as will fill a cockleshell. I confess, I have not had the honour to be entered of a college, yet by my own chamber-study, without a tutor, having a good natural genius, I could tell you how many parts of speech there were, by that time I was eighteen years of age; and I will appeal to the world, who may judge by my conversation, whether I have not made a wonderful advancement within these 50 years, insomuch that you may see I dare write Philomath, in the very title page of my almanack; and therefore, Mr. am not to be banter’d at these years. You have the confidence, in several parts of your letter to call me conjurer, tho’ I must tell you, Mr. by the way, you are the first person that ever thought me so. ’Tis true, I do sometimes when I am well paid for it, erect a scheme in search of lost goods, or stray’d cattle, and do presume secundum artem, to send the querent east, west, north, or south, a mile or two distance from the loser’s house, to search within six doors of the sign of the four-footed beast, and if they cannot find the thief one way, I can send them as far another for a new fee; and all this I can justify by the rules of Astrology as well as any man; but must an artist for this be called a conjurer, and by a person too who has been a professor of the same science? Indeed, old acquaintance, I take it very unkindly, because you yourself must needs know we are honest men that deserve no such character. As for my mistaking the lighted candle for a tankard of hot ale, I remember nothing of the matter; but Bacchus tho’ he be no planet, yet all men know he has a great ascendency over us mortals, and what he might influence me to do, when the light of reason, by which we see to distinguish, was eclipsed, I know not; but I am morally sure, when my senses are about me I am not easily to be so deceived; for I presume to know a pig from a dog, or the difference between a Thing and cartwheel, as well as Ptolomy himself were he now living.
You say, to my reputation, that my almanacks sell beyond any body’s in your subterranean country, and that Lucifer himself is never without one in his pocket: I am very glad to hear he is so much my friend, as to give mine the preference, and for his civility intend to send him one next year well gilt on the back, and bound up in calves-leather, by the hand of some friend or other, that shall swim in Derby ale to the very gates of his palace; such a wet soul that shall be as welcome as a shower of rain to your drowthy dominions. The pleasing news you have sent me is, that my works are so vendible in your parts, for I assure you, upon your intelligence, I shall raise the price of my copy the next year; for if my almanacks sell as well in hell as they do upon earth, I am sure the company of Stationers must get the devil and all by them. So I rest yours between enmity and friendship.
From Tony Lee to Cave Underhill.
Brother Cave,
COnsidering how often you have jested in the grave to please Betterton prince of Denmark, I wonder the grave by this day has not been in earnest with you, that in process of time, when the churchyard vermin have feasted themselves upon your cadaver, your own scull may become a jest to some other grave-digger. I must confess when I left you, you were a sociable sort of a drunkard, and pretty little peddling sort of a whoremaster, but I hear since, you have droop’d within a few years into such a dispirited condition, that ’tis as much as a plentiful dose of the best canary can do to remove the hyppocon for a few minutes, that you may entertain your friends with a little of your comick humour, grac’d with that agreeable smile that has always rendered what you say delightful, and that it is not in the subtile power of intoxicating Nantz to add new life to that decay’d member, which has in a manner taken leave of this world before the rest of your body; you have so often been used to a grave in your life-time, that I think you never wanted a memento mori to put you in mind of mortality: death sure can be no surprize to a merry mortal, who has so often jested with him upon the stage, and and I long to hear when the grinning skeleton shall shake you by the hand, and say, Come, old duke Trinculo, thy last sands are running, thy ultimate moment is at hand, and the worms are gaping for thee. What a jocular answer you will make to the thin-jaw’d executioner, for every comedian ought to die with a jest in his mouth to preserve his memory, for if he makes not the audience laugh as he goes off the stage, he forfeits his character, and his fame dies with his body; therefore I would advise you to set your wits on work to prepare yourself, that as you have always liv’d by repeating other peoples wit, you may not make your exit like a fool, but show you have some remains of your own juvenile sparklings to oblige the world with at your last minute.
I hear the effects of your debaucheries are tumbled into your pedestals, and make you walk with as much deliberation as Mr. Cant preaches; when a man is once so founder’d by the iniquity of his life, that his full speed is no faster than a snail’s gallop, and that his memory and his members both equally fail him, it is full time that he was travell’d to his journey’s end; for with what comfort can a man live in the world when it is grown weary of him? young men I know look upon you as superannuated, and had rather see a death’s-head and an hour-glass in their company, than see you make wry faces at your rheumatick twitches, or hear you banter upon your old gouty pains, and the past causes thereof between jest and earnest. When a man once comes to answer a bawdy question over the bottle silently, that is, with a feign’d simper and a shake of the head, no body cares a fart for him, he is good for nothing at those years, but, like Solomon’s proverbs, to let young men foresee that worldly pleasures, when they come to be old, are but vanity and vexation of spirit; and to stir up young women to despise the impotency of old age, which their fumbling fathers in vain admonish them to reverence. A young comedian is apt to make every body his jest; but when arriv’d at your years, himself becomes a jest to every body. Youth gives an air to wit that renders it delightful, but for an old man to pretend to talk wisely, is like a musician’s endeavouring to fumble out a fine sonata upon a wind-broach, tho’ the time be good, the instrument is imperfect, and the organs want that sound which should give a grace to the harmony. Some men at sixty, are apt to flatter themselves in publick under the imbecilities of nature, and will boastingly say, they can do every thing as well as they could at thirty; but experienced women, who are the best judges of human decay, are too sensible of their error, and, if modesty would give ’em leave, could easily demonstrate the difference. I thank my stars, I knew not by experience the winter of old age, but made my exit in the beginning of my autumn; but yet I found what nature at midsummer esteem’d a pleasure, was even then become a drudgery; and what used to be a refreshment to life, was found but a slavish exercise to the body; therefore I heartily pity your impotent condition, who has near twenty years surviv’d your grand climateric, till thou art forc’d to crawl about the world with a load of diseas’d flesh upon thy back, and art no less than a sumpter-horse to thy own infirmities. Methinks I see thee creeping upon the surface of the earth, upon a feeble pair of gouty supporters, thy loins swath’d up in flannel, leaning upon a crutch-head cane, and bending towards thy mother earth, who catches thee at every stumble, sometimes reflecting on the past pleasures of human life, and sometimes looking forward with imperfect eyes, towards the doubtful state of immortality, grinning as you walk at the gaiety of youth, and snarling in thy thoughts at those delights the weakness of thy age has put thee past enjoying; pursuing only that pleasure, which tho’ thy youth made vicious, is in age become thy support; that is, the bottle, which in thy younger days was oft made nauseous by excess; but wise experience now has taught thee sure to make the darling comfortable by a seasonable moderation: methinks I see thee use it now with caution, as if you hop’d by every glass you drank, to strengthen nature’s union, and keep your soul and body still from separation.
The ghost of a comedian in these shades is but an useless piece of immortality, for all the entertainments upon the stages of our infernal theatres are very tragical, no smile, no merry looks, or monky gestures us’d by your merry-andrews upon earth to provoke your listning audience to a laughter, are fashionable in these parts. If you intend to come among us, you must learn to howl, to grin, and gnash your teeth, unless you can make yourself so compleat a philosopher as to laugh at your own misery. Horror, darkness, and despair o’erspread the whole dominion, and our tyrannical prince is never better pleas’d than when he sees his subjects the most miserable. As for my part, as merry a representative of some foolish plebeian as I was in the upper world, I cannot in these melancholy grottos for the heart of me, frame so much as one chearful conceit to mitigate those torments, which by virtue of our diabolical laws are perpetually inflicted upon me: therefore those who betake themselves to these regions ought to arm themselves with abundance of resolution; for whoever flinches beneath their pains, do but encrease their punishment, for which reason I advise you to consider what you have to trust to, if your journey be downwards; and if you find it in your power, to divert your coming hither with prayers and tears to heaven, or else I must tell you in good earnest, you may jest on as I did, till you die and be damn’d like your humble servant,
Anthony Lee.