Vast Wits must fathom you better than thus,
40You merit more than our praise: as for us
The beetles of our rhymes shall drive full fast in,
The wedges of your worth to everlasting,
My much Apocalyptic friend Sam. Austin.
To Mr. Sam. Austin.] Samuel Austin the younger (his father of the same name was a respectable divine and a writer of sacred verse of the preceding generation) was a Wadham man, a contemporary of Flatman's, and a common Oxford butt for conceit and affectation. His Panegyric on the Restoration appeared in 1661, and contained a statement that the author 'intended a larger book of poems according as these find acceptance'. He had taken his degree five years earlier, and his poetry, probably in MS., had been soon afterwards made the subject of one of the liveliest and naughtiest of Oxford skits, Naps on Parnassus (London, 1658), where some of Austin's own lucubrations, and more parodies and lampoons on him, appear—side-noted with quaint and scandalous adversaria. Flatman himself contributed, among others, some kitchen-Latin leonines:
O decus Anglorum! vates famose tuorum
Cujus pars nona facit Oxenford Helicona,
&c., sometimes dropping into a sort of Macaronic, or at least mongrel dialect:
Haec ratio non est—quid rides?—my meaning's honest.