AUT. Servos fideles liberalitas facit;
Where on the contrary, servitutem—
Those that attend upon illiberal lords,
Whose covetise yields nought else but fair looks,
Even of those fair looks make their gainful use.
For, as in Ireland and in Denmark both,
Witches for gold will sell a man a wind[105]
Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapp'd,
Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will;
So make ill-servants sale of their lord's wind
Which, wrapp'd up in a piece of parchment,
Blows many a knave forth danger of the law.
SUM. Enough of this: let me go make my will.
Ah! it is made, although I hold my peace:
These two will share betwixt them what I have.
The surest way to get my will perform'd
Is to make my executor my heir;
And he, if all be given him, and none else,
Unfallibly will see it well-perform'd.
Lions will feed though none bid them go to.
Ill-grows the tree affordeth ne'er a graft:
Had I some issue to sit on my throne,
My grief would die, death should not hear me groan;
But when, perforce, these must enjoy my wealth,
Which thank me not, but enter't as a prey,
Bequeath'd it is not, but clean cast away.
Autumn, be thou successor to my seat:
Hold, take my crown:—look, how he grasps for it!
Thou shalt not have it yet—but hold it, too;
Why should I keep what needs I must forego?
WIN. Then, duty laid aside, you do me wrong.
I am more worthy of it far than he:
He hath no skill nor courage for to rule.
A weatherbeaten, bankrupt ass it is
That scatters and consumeth all he hath:
Each one do pluck from him without control.
He is not hot nor cold; a silly soul,
That fain would please each part[106], if so he might.
He and the Spring are scholars' favourites:
What scholars are, what thriftless kind of men,
Yourself be judge; and judge of him by them.
When Cerberus was headlong drawn from hell,
He voided a black poison from his mouth,
Call'd Aconitum, whereof ink was made:
That ink, with reeds first laid on dried barks,
Serv'd me awhile to make rude works withal,
Till Hermes, secretary to the gods,
Or Hermes Trismegistus, as some will,
Weary with graving in blind characters
And figures of familiar beasts and plants,
Invented letters to write lies withal.
In them he penn'd the fables of the gods,
The giants' war, and thousand tales besides.
After each nation got these toys in use[107]
There grew up certain drunken parasites,
Term'd poets, which, for a meal's meat or two.
Would promise monarchs immortality.
They vomited in verse all that they knew;
Feign'd causes and beginnings of the world;
Fetch'd pedigrees of mountains and of floods
From men and women whom the gods transform'd.
If any town or city they pass'd by
Had in compassion (thinking them madmen)
Forborne to whip them, or imprison them,
That city was not built by human hands;
'Twas rais'd by music, like Megara walls:
Apollo, poets' patron, founded it,
Because they found one fitting favour there.
Musaeus, Linus, Homer, Orpheus,
Were of this trade, and thereby won their fame.
WILL SUM. Fama malum, quo non [aliud] velocius ullum[108].
WIN. Next them a company of ragged knaves,
Sun-bathing beggars, lazy hedge-creepers,
Sleeping face upwards in the fields all night,
Dream'd strange devices of the sun and moon;
And they, like gipsies, wandering up and down,
Told fortunes, juggled, nicknam'd all the stars,
And were of idiots term'd philosophers.
Such was Pythagoras the silencer;
Prometheus, Thales, Milesius,
Who would all things of water should be made:
Anaximander, Anaxamines,
That positively said the air was God:
Zenocrates, that said there were eight gods;
And Cratoniates and Alcmaeon too,
Who thought the sun and moon and stars were gods.
The poorer sort of them, that could get nought,
Profess'd, like beggarly Franciscan friars,
And the strict order of the Capuchins,
A voluntary, wretched poverty,
Contempt of gold, thin fare, and lying hard.
Yet he that was most vehement in these,
Diogenes, the cynic and the dog,
Was taken coining money in his cell.
WILL SUM. What an old ass was that. Methinks he should have coined carrot-roots rather; for, as for money, he had no use for['t], except it were to melt, and solder up holes in his tub withal.
WIN. It were a whole Olympiad's work to tell
How many devilish, ergo, armed arts,
Sprung all as vices of this idleness:
For even as soldiers not employ'd in wars,
But living loosely in a quiet state—
Not having wherewithal to maintain pride,
Nay, scarce to find their bellies any food—
Nought but walk melancholy, and devise,
How they may cozen merchants, fleece young heirs,
Creep into favour by betraying men,
Rob churches, beg waste toys, court city dames,
Who shall undo their husbands for their sakes;
The baser rabble how to cheat and steal,
And yet be free from penalty of death:[109]
So these word-warriors, lazy star-gazers,
Us'd to no labour but to louse themselves,
Had their heads fill'd with cozening fantasies.
They plotted how to make their poverty
Better esteem'd of than high sovereignty.
They thought how they might plant a heaven on earth,
Whereof they would be principal low-gods;[110]
That heaven they called Contemplation:
As much to say as a most pleasant sloth,
Which better I cannot compare than this,
That if a fellow, licensed to beg,
Should all his lifetime go from fair to fair
And buy gape-seed, having no business else.
That contemplation, like an aged weed,
Engender'd thousand sects, and all those sects
Were but as these times, cunning shrouded rogues.
Grammarians some, and wherein differ they
From beggars that profess the pedlar's French?[111]
The poets next, slovenly, tatter'd slaves,
That wander and sell ballads in the streets.
Historiographers others there be,
And they, like lazars, lie[112] by the highway-side,
That for a penny or a halfpenny
Will call each knave a good-fac'd gentleman,
Give honour unto tinkers for good ale,
Prefer a cobbler 'fore the black prince far,
If he bestow but blacking on their shoes:
And as it is the spittle-houses' guise
Over their gate to write their founders' names,
Or on the outside of their walls at least,
In hope by their example others mov'd
Will be more bountiful and liberal;
So in the forefront of their chronicles,
Or peroratione operis,
They learning's benefactors reckon up,
Who built this college, who gave that free school,
What king or queen advanced scholars most,
And in their times what writers flourished.
Rich men and magistrates, whilst yet they live,
They flatter palpably, in hope of gain.
Smooth-tongued orators, the fourth in place—
Lawyers our commonwealth entitles them—
Mere swash-bucklers and ruffianly mates,
That will for twelvepence make a doughty fray,
Set men for straws together by the ears.
Sky-measuring mathematicians,
Gold-breathing alchemists also we have,
Both which are subtle-witted humourists,
That get their meals by telling miracles,
Which they have seen in travelling the skies.
Vain boasters, liars, makeshifts, they are all;
Men that, removed from their ink-horn terms,[113]
Bring forth no action worthy of their bread.
What should I speak of pale physicians,
Who as Fismenus non nasatus was
(Upon a wager that his friends had laid)
Hir'd to live in a privy a whole year,
So are they hir'd for lucre and for gain,
All their whole life to smell on excrements.
WILL SUM. Very true, for I have heard it for a proverb many a time and oft, Hinc os faetidum; Fah! he stinks like a physician.
WIN. Innumerable monstrous practices
Hath loitering contemplation brought forth more,
Which were too long particular to recite:
Suffice they all conduce unto this end,
To banish labour, nourish slothfulness,
Pamper up lust, devise new-fangled sins.
Nay, I will justify, there is no vice
Which learning and vile knowledge brought not in,
Or in whose praise some learned have not wrote.
The art of murder Machiavel hath penn'd;[114]
Whoredom hath Ovid to uphold her throne,
And Aretine of late in Italy,
Whose Cortigiana teacheth[115] bawds their trade.
Gluttony Epicurus doth defend,
And books of the art of cookery confirm,
Of which Platina hath not writ the least.
Drunkenness of his good behaviour
Hath testimonial from where he was born;
That pleasant work De Arte Bibendi,
A drunken Dutchman spew'd out few years since.[116]
Nor wanteth sloth, although sloth's plague be want,
His paper pillars for to lean upon.[117]
The praise of nothing pleads his worthiness.[118]
Folly Erasmus sets a flourish on:
For baldness a bald ass I have forgot
Patch'd up a pamphletary periwig.[119]
Slovenry Grobianus magnifieth:[120]
Sodomitry a cardinal commends,
And Aristotle necessary deems.
In brief, all books, divinity except,
Are nought but tales of the devil's laws,
Poison wrapt up in sugar'd words,
Man's pride, damnation's props, the world's abuse.
Then censure, good my lord, what bookmen are:
If they be pestilent members in a state,
He is unfit to sit at stern of state,
That favours such as will o'erthrow his state.
Blest is that government, where no art thrives;
Vox pupuli, vox Dei,
The vulgar's voice it is the voice of God.
Yet Tully saith, Non est concilium in vulgo,
Non ratio, non discrimen, non differentia,
The vulgar have no learning, wit, nor sense.
Themistocles, having spent all his time
In study of philosophy and arts,
And noting well the vanity of them,
Wish'd, with repentance for his folly pass'd,
Some would teach him th'art of oblivion,
How to forget the arts that he had learn'd.
And Cicero, whom we alleged before,
(As saith Valerius), stepping into old age,
Despised learning, loathed eloquence.
Naso, that could speak nothing but pure verse,
And had more wit than words to utter it,
And words as choice as ever poet had,
Cried and exclaim'd in bitter agony,
When knowledge had corrupted his chaste mind:
Discite, qui sapitis, non haec quae scimus inertes,
Sed trepidas acies et fera bella sequi.[121]
You that be wise, and ever mean to thrive,
O, study not these toys we sluggards use,
But follow arms, and wait on barbarous wars.
Young men, young boys, beware of schoolmasters;
They will infect you, mar you, blear your eyes:
They seek to lay the curse of God on you,
Namely, confusion of languages,
Wherewith those that the Tower of Babel built
Accursed were in the world's infancy.
Latin, it was the speech of infidels;
Logic hath nought to say in a true cause;
Philosophy is curiosity;
And Socrates was therefore put to death,
Only for he was a philosopher.
Abhor, contemn, despise these damned snares.
WILL SUM. Out upon it! who would be a scholar? not I, I promise you: my mind always gave me this learning was such a filthy thing, which made me hate it so as I did. When I should have been at school construing, Batte, mi fili, mi fili, mi Batte, I was close under a hedge, or under a barn-wall, playing at span-counter or jack-in-a-box. My master beat me, my father beat me, my mother gave me bread and butter, yet all this would not make me a squitter-book.[122] It was my destiny; I thank her as a most courteous goddess, that she hath not cast me away upon gibridge. O, in what a mighty vein am I now against horn-books! Here, before all this company, I profess myself an open enemy to ink and paper. I'll make it good upon the accidence, body [of me,] that in speech is the devil's paternoster. Nouns and pronouns, I pronounce you as traitors to boys' buttocks; syntaxis and prosodia, you are tormentors of wit, and good for nothing, but to get a schoolmaster twopence a-week. Hang, copies! Fly out, phrase-books! let pens be turn'd to pick-tooths! Bowls, cards, and dice, you are the true liberal sciences! I'll ne'er be a goosequill, gentlemen, while I live.