And to the utmost mite he ravisheth
All they can yield him, rack'd past life and
death.

In all his acts he this doth verify,
The greater man, the less humanity.

While *Phoebus runs his course through all the signs,

He never studies; but he undermines, Blows up, and ruins, with pretext to save; Plots treason, and lies hid in th' actor's grave.

Vast crannies gasp in him, as wide as hell,

And angles, gibbet-like, about him swell; Yet seems he smooth and polish'd, but no

more

Solid within, than is a medlar's core. The king's frown fells him, like a gunstrook fowl:

When down he lies, and casts the calf his soul.

He never sleeps but being tired with lust;

Examines what past, not enough unjust; Not bringing wealth enough, not state, not

grace,

Not showing misery bed-rid in his face; Not scorning virtue, not depraving her, Whose ruth so flies him, that her bane's his cheer.

In short, exploring all that pass his guards, Each good he plagues, and every ill rewards.

A SLEIGHT MAN.

A SLEIGHT and mix'd man (set as 'twere the mean

'Twixt both the first) from both their heaps doth glean :

Is neither good, wise, great, nor politic,
Yet tastes of all these with a natural trick.
Nature and Art sometimes meet in his
parts:

Sometimes divided are: the austere arts,
Splint him together, set him in a brake
Of form and reading. Nor is let partake
With judgment, wit, or fsweetness: but as
time,

Terms, language, and degrees, have let him climb,

To learn'd opinion; so he there doth stand,

Stark as a statue; stirs not foot nor hand.

*This hath reference (as most of the rest hath) to the good man before, being this man's opposite.

1 Intending in his writing, &c.

Nor any truth knows: knowledge is a

mean

To make him ignorant, and rapts him clean,

In storms from truth. For what Hippo

crates,

Says of foul bodies (what most nourishes, That most annoys them) is more true of minds :

For there, their first inherent gravity blinds

Their powers prejudicate; and all things

true

Proposed to them, corrupts, and doth eschew:

Some, as too full of toil; of prejudice

some:

Some fruitless, or past power to overcome : With which, it so augments, that he will

seem

Witht judgment, what he should hold, to

contemn,

And is incurable. And this is he
Whose learning forms not life's integrity.

This the mere Artist; the mix'd naturalist,

With fool-quick memory, makes his hand a fist,

And catcheth flies, and nifles: and retains With hearty study, and unthrifty pains, What your composed man shuns. With these his pen

And prompt tongue tickles th'ears of vulgar

men:

Sometimes takes matter too, and utters it With an admired and heavenly strain of wit: Yet with all this, hath humours more than

can

Be thrust into a fool, or to a woman. As nature made him, reason came by chance,

Held her torch to him, cast him in a trance;

And makes him utter things that (being awake

In life and manners) he doth quite forsake. He will be grave, and yet is light as air; He will be proud, yet poor even to despair.

Quo magis alantur, eo magis ea lædi.
To be therefore instructed in the truth of

knowledge, or aspire to any egregious virtue, not stiff and unjointed Art serves; but he must be helped besides, benigniore nascendi hora. According to this of Juvenal:

Plus etenim fati valet hora benigni, Quam si te Veneris commendet epistola Marti.

Are but the devil's cozenages to blind Men's sensual eyes, and choke the envied mind

And where the *truly learn'd is evermore
God's simple Image and true imitator :
These sophisters are emulators still
(Cozening, ambitious) of men true in skill.
Their imperfections yet are hid in sleight
Of the felt darkness breathed out by deceit,
The truly learn'd is likewise hid, and fails
To pierce eyes vulgar, but with other veils.
And they are the divine beams truth casts
round

About his beauties, that do quite confound Sensual beholders. 'Scuse these rare seen then,

Her household's fit provision to see spent, As fits her husband's will, and his consent:

Spends pleasingly her time, delighting still

To her just duty to adapt her will.
Virtue she loves, rewards and honours it,
And hates all scoffing, bold and idle wit :
Pious and wise she is, and treads upon
This foolish and this false opinion,
That learning fits not women; since it
may

Her natural cunning help, and make more

way

To light, and close affects; for so it can Curb and compose them too, as in a

man;

And, being noble, is the noblest mean To spend her time: thoughts idle and unclean

Preventing and suppressing; to which end

She entertains it; and doth more commend

Time spent in that, than housewiferies' low kinds,

As short of that, as bodies are of minds.
If it may hurt, is power of good less great,
Since food may lust excite, shall she not
eat?

She is not Moon-like, that the Sun, her spouse

And as Geometricians approve
That lines, nor superficies do move
Themselves, but by their bodies' motions

go:

So your good woman never strives to grow

Strong in her own affections and delights, But to her husband's equal appetites, Earnests and jests, and looks' austerities, Herself in all her subject powers applies. Since life's chief cares on him are ever laid,

tIn cares she ever comforts, undismay'd, Though her heart grieves, her looks yet makes it sleight,

Dissembling evermore without deceit.
And as the twins of learn'd Hippocrates,
If one were sick, the other felt disease:
If one rejoiced, joy th' other's spirits fed :
If one were grieved, the other sorrowed :
So fares she with her husband; every
thought

Weighty in him, still watch'd in her, and wrought.

And as those that in Elephants delight, Never come near them in weeds rich and bright,

Nor Bulls approach in scarlet; since those

hues

Through both those beasts enraged affects diffuse;

And as from Tigers men the Timbrel's sound

And Cymbal's keep away; since they abound

Thereby in fury and their own flesh tear; So when t' a good wife, it is made appear That rich attire and curiosity

In wires, tires, shadows, do displease the

eye

Of her loved husband; music, dancing, breeds

Offence in him; she lays by all those weeds,

Geometræ dicunt, lineas et superficies. non seipsis moveri, sed motus corporum comitari. [The same simile is used in almost the same words by Tamyra towards the close of the first Act of The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois.]

† A good wife in most cares should ever undismayed comfort her husband.

[This simile is twice used by Chapman in his Plays; by Strozza in the fourth Act of The Gentleman Usher, and by Honour in The Masque of the Middle Temple (1613), almost in the words of the text.]

§ A good wife watcheth her husband's serious thoughts in his looks, and applies her own to

them.

(To sensual eyes) with difficult affair ; But when ye once have climb'd the highest stair,

The beauty and the sweetness it contains, Give rest and comfort, far past all your pains.

To all his creatures and had virtue's

hand

To my deliverance, decking every land (Where war was banish'd) with religious temples, Cloisters and monuments in admired

examples

Of Christian piety, and respect of souls, Now drunk with avarice and th' adulterous bowls

Of the light Cyprian, and by Dis deflower'd,

I bring forth seed by which I am devour'd:

Infectious darkness from my entrails flies, That blasts Religion, breeds black heresies,

Strikes virtue bed-rid, fame dumb, knowledge blind,

And for free bounties (like an Eastern Knits nets of caterpillars, that all fruits wind) Of planting peace, catch with contentious suits.

And see, O heaven, a war that inward breeds

Worse far than civil, where in brazen steeds

worth;

sword

Wound and consume men with the ravenous hoard

Of private riches, like prick'd pictures

charm'd,

And hid in dunghills, where some one is

arm'd

With arms of thousands; and in such

small time

And makes Mars wear the long robe, to perform

A fight more black and cruel, with less storm,

To make for stratagem, a policy driven Even to the conquest, ere th' alarm be given.

And for set battles where the quarrel dies, Wars that make lanes through whole posterities.

Arachne wins from Pallas all good parts,
To take her part, and every part converts
His honey into poison: abused Peace
Is turn'd to fruitless and impostumed ease,
For whom the dwarf Contraction is at
work

In all professions; and makes heaven lurk
In corner pleasures: learning in the brain
Of a dull linguist, and all right in gain,
All rule in only power, all true zeal

In trustless avarice: all the common weal In few men's purses. Volumes fill'd with fame

Of deathless souls, in signing a large

name.

Love of all good in self-love: all deserts In sole desert of hate. Thus Ease inverts *My fruitful labours, and swoln blind with lust,

Creeps from herself, travails in yielding dust;

Even reeking in her never-shifted bed : Where with benumb'd security she is fed: Held up in Ignorance, and Ambition's

arms,

Lighted by Comets, sung to by blind charms.

Behind whom Danger waits, subjection, spoil,

Disease and massacre, and uncrown'd Toil:

Earth sinks beneath her, heaven falls: yet she, deaf,

Hears not their thundering ruins : nor one leaf

Of all her aspen pleasures, ever stirs ;
In such dead calms her stark presumption

errs.

FOR GOOD MEN.

A GOOD man want? will God so much deny

His laws, his witnesses, his ministry? Which only for examples he maintains Against th' unlearn'd, to prove he is, and reigns:

* Ease and Security described.

And all things governs justly: nor neglects
Things humane, but at every part protects
A good man so, that if he lives or dies,
All things sort well with him. If he denies
A plenteous life to me, and sees it fit
I should live poorly; what, alas, is it?
But that (refusing to endanger me
In the forlorn hope of men rich and high),
Like a most careful Captain, he doth
sound

Retreat to me; makes me come back, give ground

To any, that hath least delight to be
A scuffler in man's war for vanity?
And I obey, I follow, and I praise
My good Commander. All the cloudy
days

Of my dark life, my envied Muse shall sing

His secret love to goodness; I will bring Glad tidings to the obscure few he keeps; Tell his high deeds, his wonders, which the deeps

Of poverty and humblesse, most express, And weep out (for kind joy) his holiness.

OF SUDDEN DEATH.

WHAT action wouldst thou wish to have in hand, If sudden death should come for his command?

I would be doing good to most good men That most did need, or to their childeren, And in advice (to make them their true heirs)

I would be giving up my soul to theirs. To which effect if Death should find me given,

I would with both my hands held up to heaven,

Make these my last words to my Deity:
"Those faculties thou hast bestow'd on me
To understand thy government and will,
I have, in all fit actions offer'd still
To thy divine acceptance, and as far
As I had influence from thy bounty's
star,

I have made good thy form infused in me;
Th' anticipations given me naturally,
I have with all my study, art, and prayer,
Fitted to every object and affair
My life presented, and my knowledge
taught.

My poor sail, as it hath been ever fraught
With thy free goodness, hath been ballast

too

With all my gratitude. What is to do,