Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Vol III

To Mrs. K. T., &c. (1647). To this title 1677 and its followers add 'Written calente calamo'. The variant on currente is of some interest, and the statement may have been made to excuse the bad opening rhyme.

5 neither] either 1677.

14 'their cold' 1651, 1653: 'that cold' 1647, 1677.

16 silenced] As some Puritans were before Cleveland wrote, and all, or almost all, Churchmen afterwards.

31 1677 'Lest I should cancel all the bliss'.

37 bail] 1653 &c. 'hail', which is doubtless a misprint.

40 'prating' 1677.

47 'handmaid' 1677.

50 1677 'Intends to speak'-an obvious correction of the 'red-hot pen'. But whether Cleveland's or his vindicators' who shall say?

51 So 1647, 1651, 1653. The couplet is meaningless without them.

A Fair Nymph scorning a Black Boy courting her.

Nymph. Stand off, and let me take the air;

Why should the smoke pursue the fair?

Boy. My face is smoke, thence may be guessed

What flames within have scorched my breast.

Nymph. The flame of love I cannot view

For the dark lantern of thy hue.

Boy. And yet this lantern keeps Love's taper

Surer than yours, that's of white paper.

Whatever midnight hath been here,

10The moonshine of your light can clear.

Nymph. My moon of an eclipse is 'fraid,

If thou shouldst interpose thy shade.

Boy. Yet one thing, Sweetheart, I will ask;

Take me for a new-fashioned mask.

Nymph. Yes, but my bargain shall be this,

I'll throw my mask off when I kiss.

Boy. Our curled embraces shall delight

To checker limbs with black and white.

Nymph. Thy ink, my paper, make me guess

20Our nuptial bed will prove a press,

And in our sports, if any came,

They'll read a wanton epigram.

Boy. Why should my black thy love impair?

Let the dark shop commend the ware;

Or, if thy love from black forbears,

I'll strive to wash it off with tears.

Nymph. Spare fruitless tears, since thou must needs

Still wear about thee mourning weeds.

Tears can no more affection win

30Than wash thy Ethiopian skin.

A Fair Nymph, &c. (1647.)

2 An odd fancy included by Browne among the Vulgar Errors.

5 'Thy flaming love' 1677 &c.

10 'face will clear' 1677 &c.

14 1677 'Take me for a new-fashioned mask': 1647, 1651 'Buy me for a new false mask', varied in 1653 'Buy for me'-apparently a misprint, as the boy does not seem to wish to disguise himself.

15 Yes] Done 1677.

20 1647, 1651, 1653, 'make a press', ill repeated from above.

24 'the ware' 1677: 1647, 1651, 1653, not so well, 'thy ware'.

28 1677 changed 'thee' to 'thy'.

30 Some inferior copies 'the Ethiopian'.

A Dialogue between two Zealots upon the &c. in the Oath.

Sir Roger, from a zealous piece of frieze

Raised to a vicar of the children's threes;

Whose yearly audit may by strict account

To twenty nobles and his vails amount;

Fed on the common of the female charity

Until the Scots can bring about their parity;

So shotten that his soul, like to himself,

Walks but in cuerpo; this same clergy-elf,

Encountering with a brother of the cloth,

10Fell presently to cudgels with the Oath.

The quarrel was a strange misshapen monster,

&c., (God bless us) which they conster

The brand upon the buttock of the Beast,

The Dragon's tail tied on a knot, a nest

Of young Apocryphas, the fashion

Of a new mental Reservation.

While Roger thus divides the text, the other

Winks and expounds, saying, 'My pious brother,

Hearken with reverence, for the point is nice.

20I never read on 't, but I fasted twice,

And so by revelation know it better

Than all the learn'd idolaters o'th' letter.'

With that he swelled, and fell upon the theme

Like great Goliah with his weaver's beam.

'I say to thee, &c., thou li'st!

Thou art the curléd lock of Antichrist;

Rubbish of Babel; for who will not say

Tongues were confounded in &c.?

Who swears &c., swears more oaths at once

30Than Cerberus out of his triple sconce.

Who views it well, with the same eye beholds

The old half Serpent in his numerous folds.

Accurst &c. thou, for now I scent

What lately the prodigious oysters meant!

Oh Booker! Booker! How camest thou to lack

This sign in thy prophetic almanac?

It 's the dark vault wherein th' infernal plot

Of powder 'gainst the State was first begot.

Peruse the Oath and you shall soon descry it

40By all the Father Garnets that stand by it;

'Gainst whom the Church, (whereof I am a member,)

Shall keep another Fifth Day of November.

Yet here's not all; I cannot half untruss

&c.-it's so abhominous!

The Trojan nag was not so fully lined;

Unrip &c., and you shall find

Og the great commissary, and (which is worse)

The apparitor upon his skew-bald horse.

Then finally, my babe of grace, forbear,

50&c. will be too far to swear,

For 'tis (to speak in a familiar style)

A Yorkshire wee bit longer than a mile.'

Here Roger was inspired, and by God's diggers

He'll swear in words at large but not in figures.

Now by this drink, which he takes off, as loath

To leave &c. in his liquid oath.

His brother pledged him, and that bloody wine

He swears shall seal the Synod's Catiline.

So they drunk on, not offering to part

60'Till they had quite sworn out th' eleventh quart,

While all that saw and heard them jointly pray

They and their tribe were all &c.

A Dialogue, &c. (1647.) This occurs also in the Rump (1662, reprinted London, n. d.). A MS. copy is found in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 26 of the Bodleian, at fol. 94, with the title 'A Dialogue between 2. Zelots concerning &c. in the new Oath.' 'The Oath' is the famous one formulated in 1640 by Convocation. Fuller, who was proctor for the diocese of Bristol (and who would have been fined heavily for his part, 'moderate' as he was, if the Puritan Ultras of the Commons could have had their way), has left much about it. This oath, to be taken by all the clergy, imported approval of the doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church, and disclaimed, twice over, 'Popish' doctrine and the usurpations of the see of Rome. Unluckily the government of the Church was defined as 'by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c.', which last was, in the absence of any other handle, seized by the Puritan party as possibly implying all sorts of horrors. Cleveland banters them well enough, but hardly with the force and directness which he was to show later. The Royalists were then under the fatal error of underrating the strength of their opponents, and the gullibility of the people of England.

2 'vicar', 1647, 1651, 1653, MS.: 'vicarage' 1677. 'children' 1651, 1653: I have been waiting a long time to know what 'children's threes' means. It occurs elsewhere, but to my thinking as an obvious reminiscence of Cleveland.

7 shotten] 'like a herring that has spawned', 'thin'.

8 in cuerpo] 'in body-clothes', 'cloakless'. 1647, 1651, 1653 'Querpo': MS. 'Quirpo', with 'cuerpo' written above it.

12 1677 extends '&c.' to 'et caetera'. This is a mistake, as the actual ampersand occurred in the oath and gave some slight assistance to the cavillers. Cleveland's expressions-'tail tied on a knot' (l. 14), 'curled lock' (l. 26), 'numerous folds' (l. 32)-lose their point without the ampersand. 1677 also has 'may conster', which though possible enough, seems to me neither necessary nor even much of an improvement.

17 1677, less euphoniously, 'Whilst'.

22 A reading of the Rump version, 'Than all the Idolaters of the letter', though almost certainly a mere mistaken correction, has some interest.

23 fell] sett MS.

24 Goliah] This form occurs in all the texts.

25 In this and other lines that follow much of the quaintness is lost by 'extending' the '&c.' of the older editions.

28 were] are 1677, MS.

32 All editions, I think, before 1677 (which substitutes 'false') have 'half'. 'False' is very feeble; 'half' refers picturesquely to the delineation of the Serpent tempting Eve with a human head, being coiled below like the curves of the &c. 'False' MS.

33 1677, MS. 'Accurst Et Caetera! now, now I scent'.

34 I do not know whether these very Livyish oysters have been traced. 1677 and MS. omit 'lately' and read 'prodigious bloody oysters'.

35 John Booker (1603-1677), Manchester man, haberdasher, writing-master, and astrologer, gained a great deal of credit by interpreting an eclipse after the usual fashion as portending disaster to kings and princes, the great Gustavus Adolphus and the unfortunate Frederick, 'Winter'-King of Bohemia, being complaisant enough to die in accordance.

36 This sign] 1677, MS. 'This fiend'-more energetically.

37 ''Tis the dark vault where the' MS.

40 The sting of 'the Father Garnets that stand by it' lies in the words immediately preceding the obnoxious '&c.'-'archbishops, bishops, &c.'-whom the Puritan divine stigmatizes as Jesuits and traitors to Church and State. As has been stated, the oath distinctly, in set terms and twice over, abjured Rome and all things Roman; but the Puritans of those days, like their descendants, paid no attention to trifles of this kind. For 'stand' MS. reads 'stood'.

43 Yet] Nay MS.

44 1647, 1651 'abominous'; 1653 'abhominous'. The 'h' must be kept in 'abhominous', though not unusual for 'abom-', because it helps to explain, and perhaps to justify, 1677 and MS. in reading 'abdominous'. This, though something suggestive of a famous Oxford story, derives some colour from 'untruss' and may be right, especially as I do not know another example of 'abominous' for 'abominable'.

47 Og] v. sup., p. 31. MS. has marginal note 'Roan'.

48 'Skew-bald' is not = 'piebald', though most horses commonly called piebald are skewbalds. 'Pie[magpie]bald' is black and white; skewbald brown (or some other colour not black) and white. The Church-courts were much more unpopular, in these as in mediaeval times, than the Church, and High Commissioners and commissaries and apparitors were alleged to lurk under the guileful and dreadful '&c.'

49 'babes' 1677.

52 Blount's Glossographia (1656), a useful book, shows the ignorance of Northern English then prevailing by supposing 'wea-bit' (the form found in Cleveland originally) to be 'way-bit'. It is, of course, 'little bit', the Scotch 'mile and a bittock'.

53 Here] Then 1647, 1651, 1653. God's diggers] = nails or fingers. Commoner in the corruption 'Ods niggers'.

54 'in words at large' 1647 ('at length', one issue of 1647): 'at words in large' 1651, 1653: 'in words at length, and not in figures' MS.

58 Edd. 'Cataline', as usual, but 1677 'Catiline'. 'He swears he'll be the Synod's' MS.

59 'Thus they drink on, not offering to depart' MS.

60 1677 omits 'quite'-no doubt for the old syllabic reason. MS. substitutes 'fully'.

62 Perhaps nowhere is the comic surprise of the symbol more wanted than here, and more of a loss when that symbol is extended.

Smectymnuus, or the Club-Divines.

Smectymnuus! The goblin makes me start!

I' th' name of Rabbi Abraham, what art?

Syriac? or Arabic? or Welsh? what skill't?

Ap all the bricklayers that Babel built,

Some conjurer translate and let me know it;

Till then 'tis fit for a West Saxon poet.

But do the brotherhood then play their prizes

Like mummers in religion with disguises,

Out-brave us with a name in rank and file?

10A name, which, if 'twere trained, would spread a mile!

The saints' monopoly, the zealous cluster

Which like a porcupine presents a muster

And shoots his quills at bishops and their sees,

A devout litter of young Maccabees!

Thus Jack-of-all-trades hath devoutly shown

The Twelve Apostles on a cherry-stone;

Thus faction 's à la mode in treason's fashion,

Now we have heresy by complication.

Like to Don Quixote's rosary of slaves

20Strung on a chain; a murnival of knaves

Packed in a trick, like gipsies when they ride,

Or like colleagues which sit all of a side.

So the vain satyrists stand all a row

As hollow teeth upon a lute-string show.

Th' Italian monster pregnant with his brother,

Nature's di?resis, half one another,

He, with his little sides-man Lazarus,

Must both give way unto Smectymnuus.

Next Sturbridge Fair is Smec's; for, lo! his side

30Into a five-fold lazar's multiplied.

Under each arm there 's tucked a double gizzard;

Five faces lurk under one single vizard.

The Whore of Babylon left these brats behind,

Heirs of confusion by gavelkind.

I think Pythagoras' soul is rambled hither

With all the change of raiment on together.

Smec is her general wardrobe; she'll not dare

To think of him as of a thoroughfare.

He stops the gossiping dame; alone he is

40The purlieu of a metempsychosis;

Like a Scotch mark, where the more modest sense

Checks the loud phrase, and shrinks to thirteen pence:

Like to an ignis fatuus whose flame,

Though sometimes tripartite, joins in the same;

Like to nine tailors, who, if rightly spelled,

Into one man are monosyllabled.

Short-handed zeal in one hath cramped many

Like to the Decalogue in a single penny.

See, see how close the curs hunt under sheet

50As if they spent in quire and scanned their feet.

One cure and five incumbents leap a truss;

The title sure must be litigious.

The Sadducees would raise a question

Who must be Smec at th' Resurrection.

Who cooped them up together were to blame.

Had they but wire-drawn and spun out their name,

'Twould make another Prentices' Petition

Against the bishops and their superstition.

Robson and French (that count from five to five,

60As far as nature fingers did contrive-

She saw they would be 'sessors, that 's the cause

She cleft their hoof into so many claws)

May tire their carrot-bunch, yet ne'er agree

To rate Smectymnuus for poll-money.

Caligula-whose pride was mankind's bail,

As who disdained to murder by retail,

Wishing the world had but one general neck,-

His glutton blade might have found game in Smec.

No echo can improve the author more

70Whose lungs pay use on use to half a score.

No felon is more lettered, though the brand

Both superscribes his shoulder and his hand.

Some Welshman was his godfather, for he

Wears in his name his genealogy.

The banns are asked, would but the times give way,

Betwixt Smectymnuus and Et Caetera.

The guests, invited by a friendly summons,

Should be the Convocation and the Commons.

The priest to tie the foxes' tails together

80Mosely, or Sancta Clara, choose you whether.

See what an offspring every one expects,

What strange pluralities of men and sects!

One says he'll get a vestry, but another

Is for a synod; Bet upon the mother.

Faith, cry St. George! Let them go to 't and stickle

Whether a conclave or a conventicle.

Thus might religions caterwaul, and spite

Which uses to divorce, might once unite.

But their cross fortunes interdict their trade;

90The groom is rampant but the bride displayed.

My task is done, all my he goats are milked.

So many cards i' th' stock, and yet be bilked?

I could by letters now untwist the rabble,

Whip Smec from constable to constable;

But there I leave you to another dressing;

Only kneel down and take your father's blessing.

May the Queen Mother justify your fears

And stretch her patent to your leather ears!

Smectymnuus, &c. (1647.) Whether this lively skit on the five 'reverend men whose friend' Milton was (as far as he could be proud of being anything but himself) proud of being was in Milton's own mind when he wrote his Apology for the acrostically named treatise, one cannot say. It is a lively 'mime' enough, and he seems to throw back that word with some special meaning. Cleveland's poem may have appeared in the summer of 1641. Naturally, it is in the Rump poems.

3 All editions 'skilt'. It apparently must be as in text: 'skill't' for 'skill'st' = 'dost thou [or 'does it'] signify?'

4 1677, &c. 'Ape', but 'Ap' in the Welsh sense (Welsh having just been mentioned) does well enough. It would go, not too roughly for Cleveland's syntax, with 'conjurer'. Let some wizard, descended from all these, and therefore knowing all tongues, translate.

6 This is rather interesting. Does it refer to Wessex or Devonshire dialect of the day, or to old West Saxon? Junius did not edit C?dmon till fourteen years later, but there was study of Anglo-Saxon from Parker's time at Cambridge.

7 the brotherhood] 'Brother' and 'sister' being constant sneers at the Puritan.

play their prizes] = 'fight'.

10 Perhaps another sneer at the 'train-bands' of the City.

15 'distinctly' 1677.

16 'in a' 1677.

18 I suppose à la mode, which is in 1677, is right; but the 'all-a-mode' of 1647, 1651, 1653 is tempting.

20 'murnival' or 'mournival'. Four aces, kings, &c., especially at gleek.

22 1677, &c. 'Or like the College'.

24 'hallow' 1653.

25 I knew not this monster, and suspected that he would not be a delicate monster to know. But Mr. Thorn-Drury has found him in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1777, p. 482. Lazarus Collondo, a Genoese, had a small brother growing out of his side, with one leg, two arms, &c., &c.

29 'Smec' will now be an even greater attraction at the Sturbridge fair at Cambridge. All fairs rejoiced in monsters.

36 'The change', as in 1647, 1651, 1653 and its group, including the Rump version, is not so good as 'her', which 1677 reads.

38 i.e. 'to go on to any other body'.

40 'Purlieu' seems to be used in the sense of 'precinct' or 'province'.

41-2 These lines are in all the seventeenth-century editions I have seen, but not in Mr. Berdan's. The Scots pound was of course only twenty English pence, and so the mark (two thirds) 'shrank' accordingly.

49 1647, 1651, 1677 insert 'a' before 'sheet'. The metaphor is probably as old as hunting. 'Spend', as Professor Case reminds me, has had already in The Miser, l. 67, the sense of 'give tongue'. 'Scanned their feet' for 'kept pace' is good enough; but why the five should leap a truss, and why this should be litigious, I again frankly confess myself to have been ignorant. Mr. Simpson, however, quotes R. Fletcher in Ex Otio Negotium, 1656, p. 202, 'The model of the new Religion':

How many Queere-religions? clear your throat,

May a man have a penyworth? four a groat?

Or do the Iuncto leap at truss a fayle?

Three tenents clap while five hang on the tayle?

Cleveland seems to have tried in this piece to equal the mystery of the title of 'Smec' by his own matter, and to have succeeded very fairly.

54 1677, &c. 'shall be'. 'at th'' 1647, 1677: 'at the' 1651, 1653.

55 cooped] cooked 1647, 1651.

56 1677, &c. 'the name'.

57 An absurd, but doubtless in the circumstances dangerous, document of the kind was actually disseminated, in which the prentices bold engaged 'to defend his Sacred Majesty against Popish innovations such as archbishops and bishops appear to be'.

63 carrot-bunch] Cant for 'fingers'.

70 'pay' 1653, 1677: 'pays' 1647, 1651. 1677 'and use'.

75 'Banns' 1677: 'Banes' in earlier texts. 1653 'time'.

78 The Convocation which had been guilty of '&c.', and the Commons who mostly sympathized with 'Smec'.

79 foxes' tails] As at Samson's marriage (Judges xv. 4-7.)

80 Mosel[e]y, Milton's printer; and Sancta Clara, the Jesuit?

82 1677 'plurality'.

83 'Vestry, but' 1677: 'Vestery' 1647, 1651, 1653.

84 1677 'Bets'.

90 The heraldic terms are pretty plain, but 1677 reads 'is spade' i.e. 'spayed', as in The Hecatomb to his Mistress, l. 2.

94 Rhyme here really badly managed.

95 1677 'another's'.

97 The fear and dislike of Henrietta Maria (whom Mr. Berdan supposes to be meant) among the disaffected is only too certain: and the fate of Prynne's ears for his scandal of her is notorious. But why at this time she should be called a Queen Mother (it was her proper title afterwards, and she was one of the very few to whom it was actually given), and what the last line means, I know not. Nor does Professor Firth, unless Marie de Médicis (who was Queen Mother in France and had visited England) had, as he suggests, a share in some leather patent, and is meant here. Smec's ears are 'vellum' in Rupertismus, 169 (v. inf., p. 67).

The Mixed Assembly.

Flea-Bitten synod, an assembly brewed

Of clerks and elders ana, like the rude

Chaos of Presbyt'ry, where laymen guide

With the tame woolpack clergy by their side.

Who asked the banns 'twixt these discoloured mates?

A strange grotesco this; the Church and states,

Most divine tick-tack, in a piebald crew,

To serve as table-men of divers hue!

She, that conceived an Ethiopian heir

10By picture, when the parents both were fair,

At sight of you had born a dappled son,

You checkering her imagination.

Had Jacob's flock but seen you sit, the dams

Had brought forth speckled and ring-streakéd lambs.

Like an impropriator's motley kind

Whose scarlet coat is with a cassock lined;

Like the lay-thief in a canonic weed,

Sure of his clergy ere he did the deed;

Like Royston crows, who are (as I may say)

20Friars of both the Orders, Black and Gray;

So mixed they are, one knows not whether 's thicker,

A layer of burgess, or a layer of vicar.

Have they usurped what Royal Judah had,

And now must Levi too part stakes with Gad?

The sceptre and the crosier are the crutches,

Which, if not trusted in their pious clutches,

Will fail the cripple State. And were 't not pity

But both should serve the yardwand of the City?

That Isaac might stroke his beard and sit

30Judge of ε?? ?ιδον and elegerit?

Oh that they were in chalk and charcoal drawn!

The miscellany-satyr and the faun

And all th' adulteries of twisted nature

But faintly represent this riddling feature;

Whose members being not tallies, they'll not own

Their fellows at the Resurrection.

Strange scarlet doctors these! They'll pass in story

For sinners half refined in Purgatory,

Or parboiled lobsters, where there jointly rules

40The fading sables and the coming gules.

The flea that Falstaff damned thus lewdly shows

Tormented in the flames of Bardolph's nose.

Like him that wore the dialogue of cloaks

This shoulder John-a-Stiles, that John-a-Nokes;

Like Jews and Christians in a ship together

With an old neck-verse to distinguish either;

Like their intended discipline to boot,

Or whatsoe'er hath neither head nor foot;

Such may their stript-stuff-hangings seem to be,

50Sacrilege matched with codpiece simony.

Be sick and dream a little, you may then

Fancy these linsey-woolsey vestry-men.

Forbear, good Pembroke, be not over-daring.

Such company may chance to spoil thy swearing,

And thy drum-major oaths, of bulk unruly,

May dwindle to a feeble 'By my truly'!

He that the noble Percy's blood inherits,

Will he strike up a Hotspur of the spirits?

He'll fright the Obadiahs out of tune

60With his uncircumciséd Algernoon;

A name so stubborn, 'tis not to be scanned

By him in Gath with the six-fingered hand.

See, they obey the magic of my words!

Presto! they're gone, and now the House of Lords

Looks like the withered face of an old hag,

But with three teeth like to a triple gag.

A jig! a jig! and in this antic dance

Fielding and Doxie Marshall first advance.

Twisse blows the Scotch-pipes, and the loving brace

70Puts on the traces and treads cinque-a-pace.

Then Saye and Sele must his old hamstrings supple,

And he and rumpled Palmer make a couple.

Palmer 's a fruitful girl if he'll unfold her;

The midwife may find work about her shoulder.

Kimbolton, that rebellious Boanerges,

Must be content to saddle Dr. Burges.

If Burges get a clap, 'tis ne'er the worse,

But the fifth time of his compurgators.

Noll Bowles is coy; good sadness, cannot dance

80But in obedience to the ordinance.

Here Wharton wheels about till mumping Lidy,

Like the full moon, hath made his lordship giddy.

Pym and the members must their giblets levy

T' encounter Madam Smec, that single bevy.

If they two truck together, 'twill not be

A child-birth, but a gaol-delivery.

Thus every Ghibelline hath got his Guelph

But Selden,-he 's a galliard by himself;

And well may be; there 's more divines in him

90Than in all this, their Jewish Sanhedrim:

Whose canons in the forge shall then bear date

When mules their cousin-germans generate.

Thus Moses' law is violated now;

The ox and ass go yoked in the same plough.

Resign thy coach-box, Twisse; Brooke's preacher he

Would sort the beasts with more conformity.

Water and earth make but one globe; a Roundhead

Is clergy-lay, party-per-pale compounded.

The Mixed Assembly (1647.) This was the famous 'Westminster' Assembly which met in July, 1643-a hodge-podge of half a score peers, a score of commoners, and about four times as many divines as laymen. Tanner MS. 465, of the Bodleian, has a poor copy of this poem; but some transpositions and omissions suggest that it preserves an earlier draft. Lines 63-6 follow 52; 71-8, 81-2, are omitted.

1 Flea-bitten] As of a horse-the laymen appearing like specks on the body of clergy.

2 ana] Usually interpreted in the apothecary's sense, 'in equal quantities', written so in prescriptions and said to be from the Greek-?ν? being thus used.

6, 7 'Church and State's, Most divine' MS.

19 In a fable a Royston crow (the town being on the way to Cambridge had probably a bad reputation for fleecing the guileless undergraduate) advised an innocent of his kind to drop a shellfish from a height on rocks where the Royston bird was waiting and secured the meat.

28 1677 changes 'But' to 'That'.

29 1677 inserts 'go' before 'stroke'. But Cleveland probably scanned 'I-sa-ac'. The reference is to Isaac Pennington: cf. The Rebel Scot, l. 79.

30 The phrase is of course Homeric (sc. δ?μου?) and with its companion combines the idea of an ecclesiastical condemnation ('delivering over to Satan') and a civil execution, a writ of elegit.

32 faun] All old editions, I think, and Mr. Berdan, 'fawn'. But the animal (always now indicated by that spelling) is not of a 'twisted nature', the half-god is.

40 One of those that taught Dryden something.

41 Cleveland, like most Royalists and their master, was evidently sound on Shakespeare. A copy of 1677 in my possession has a manuscript list of references on the fly-leaf.

46 'neck-verse'] = for benefit of clergy.

49 'Stript', 1647, 1651, 1653, is evidently 'striped', and is printed 'strip'd' in 1677.

53 Philip Herbert, fourth Earl of Pembroke, though a patron of literature and the arts, was a man of bad character and a virulent Roundhead.

55 'thy' 1677: 'these' 1647, 1651, 1653.

of bulk unruly] if Vulcan rule you MS.

59 1647, 1651 'Obadiahs': 1653 and its group 'Obadiah': 1677 'Obadiah's'.

60 Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland-who repented too late of his rebellion and tried to prevent the consequences-seems to have joined the Roundheads out of pique (his pride was notorious) at neglect of his suggestions and interference with his powers as Lord High Admiral). By putting the fleet into the hands of the Parliament he did the King perhaps more hurt than any other single person at the beginning of the war. 'Algernoon' 1647, 1651: later texts spoil the point of the next line by using the conventional form.

68 Fielding] Basil, the degenerate son of the first Earl of Denbigh. He actually served in the Parliamentary Army, but like Northumberland, who did not go that length, repented too late.

Doxie Marshall] The Stephen Marshall of Smectymnuus and the 'Geneva Bull' of The Rebel Scot, l. 21; exactly why 'Doxie' I do not know. Possibly 'prostitute' from his eager Presbyterianism. It is odd that Anne and Rebecca Marshall, two famous actresses of the Restoration to whom the term might be applied with some direct justification, used to be counted his daughters, though this is now denied.

69 Twisse] William (1578-1646), the Prolocutor of the Assembly.

71 Saye and Sele] William Fiennes, first Viscount (1582-1662). Of very bad reputation as a slippery customer.

72 rumpled] Mr. Berdan 'rumbled', on what authority and with what meaning I do not know. 'Rumpled', which is in 1647, 1651, 1653, and 1677, no doubt refers to the untidy bands, &c. of a slovenly priest. Herbert Palmer (1604-1647) was a man of good family but a bitter Puritan. He was first Fellow and then President of Queens' College, Cambridge, where Cleveland doubtless knew him. The odd description reads like that of a sort of deformed dwarf.

75 Kimbolton] Edward, Lord (1602-1671), just about to become the well-known Earl of Manchester of the Rebellion. Like Northumberland and Denbigh, he repented, but only after he had been not too politely shelved for Fairfax and Cromwell.

76 Cleveland would have been delighted had he known the fate of Cornelius Burges (1589?-1665), of whom he evidently had a pretty bad idea. Burges, a Wadham and Lincoln man, was one of the leaders of the Puritans among the London clergy, and a great favourite with the House of Commons in the Long Parliament. He wanted to suppress cathedrals; and, being a practical man and preacher at Wells during the Commonwealth, did his best by buying the deanery and part of the estates. Wherefore he was promptly and properly ruined by the Restoration, and died in well-deserved poverty. He was vice-president of the Westminster Assembly.

79 Oliver Bowles, a Puritan divine. 1653 omits the comma after 'sadness' found in 1651,-a neat punctuation, meaning 'in good sadness, he cannot dance'. Phrases like 'in good truth', 'in good sadnesse' were the utmost licence of speech which the Puritans permitted themselves.

81 Philip, fourth Lord Wharton (1613-1696) took the anti-Royalist side very early, but cut a very poor figure at Edgehill and abandoned active service. He did not figure under the Commonwealth, but was a zealous Whig after the Restoration, and a prominent Williamite in the last years of his long life. Who 'Lidy' (1653) or 'Lidie' (1677) was seems unknown. Professor Firth suggests a misprint for 'Sidie,' i.e. Sidrach Simpson (1600?-1655), a busy London Puritan and member of the Assembly. Another ingenious suggestion made to me is that 'mumping Lid[d]y' may be one of the queer dance-names of the period, or actually a woman, Wharton being no enemy to the sex. But I do not know that there was such a dance, and as all the other pairs are males, being members of the Assembly, it would be odd if there were an exception here. For 'Here' 1647, 1651 read 'Her'.

88 The exceptional position of Selden is well hit off here. His character and his earning were just able to neutralize, though not to overcome, the curse of Laodicea.

95 'Brooke' is Robert Brooke, second Lord Brooke, cousin and successor of Fulke Greville-the 'fanatic Brooke' who had his 'guerdon meet' by being shot in his attack on Lichfield Cathedral. Mercurius Anti-Britannicus, 1645, p. 23, has:

Like my Lord Brooke's Coachman

Preaching out of a tub.

(I owe this citation to Mr. Simpson.)

The King's Disguise.

And why a tenant to this vile disguise

Which who but sees, blasphemes thee with his eyes?

My twins of light within their penthouse shrink,

And hold it their allegiance now to wink.

O, for a state-distinction to arraign

Charles of high treason 'gainst my Sovereign!

What an usurper to his prince is wont,

Cloister and shave him, he himself hath don' 't.

His muffled feature speaks him a recluse-

10His ruins prove him a religious house!

The sun hath mewed his beams from off his lamp

And majesty defaced the royal stamp.

Is 't not enough thy dignity 's in thrall,

But thou'lt transmute it in thy shape and all,

As if thy blacks were of too faint a dye

Without the tincture of tautology?

Flay an Egyptian for his cassock skin,

Spun of his country's darkness, line 't within

With Presbyterian budge, that drowsy trance,

20The Synod's sable, foggy Ignorance;

Nor bodily nor ghostly negro could

Roughcast thy figure in a sadder mould.

This privy-chamber of thy shape would be

But the close mourner of thy Royalty.

Then, break the circle of thy tailor's spell,

A pearl within a rugged oyster's shell.

Heaven, which the minster of thy person owns,

Will fine thee for dilapidations.

Like to a martyred abbey's coarser doom,

30Devoutly altered to a pigeon-room;

Or like a college by the changeling rabble,

Manchester's elves, transformed into a stable;

Or if there be a profanation higher;

Such is the sacrilege of thine attire,

By which thou'rt half deposed.-Thou look'st like one

Whose looks are under sequestration;

Whose renegado form at the first glance

Shows like the Self-denying Ordinance;

Angel of light, and darkness too, (I doubt)

40Inspired within and yet possessed without;

Majestic twilight in the state of grace,

Yet with an excommunicated face.

Charles and his mask are of a different mint;

A psalm of mercy in a miscreant print.

The sun wears midnight, day is beetle-browed,

And lightning is in kelder of a cloud.

O the accursed stenography of fate!

The princely eagle shrunk into a bat!

What charm, what magic vapour can it be

50That checks his rays to this apostasy?

It is no subtile film of tiffany air,

No cobweb vizard such as ladies wear,

When they are veiled on purpose to be seen,

Doubling their lustre by their vanquished screen.

No, the false scabbard of a prince is tough

And three-piled darkness, like the smoky slough

Of an imprisoned flame; 'tis Faux in grain;

Dark lantern to our bright meridian.

Hell belched the damp; the Warwick Castle vote

60Rang Britain's curfew, so our light went out.

[A black offender, should he wear his sin

For penance, could not have a darker skin.]

His visage is not legible; the letters

Like a lord's name writ in fantastic fetters;

Clothes where a Switzer might be buried quick;

Sure they would fit the body politic;

False beard enough to fit a stage's plot

(For that 's the ambush of their wit, God wot),

Nay, all his properties so strange appear,

70Y' are not i' th' presence though the King be there.

A libel is his dress, a garb uncouth,

Such as the Hue and Cry once purged at mouth.

Scribbling assassinate! Thy lines attest

An earmark due, Cub of the Blatant Beast;

Whose breath, before 'tis syllabled for worse,

Is blasphemy unfledged, a callow curse.

The Laplanders, when they would sell a wind

Wafting to hell, bag up thy phrase and bind

It to the bark, which at the voyage end

80Shifts poop and breeds the colic in the Fiend.

But I'll not dub thee with a glorious scar

Nor sink thy sculler with a man-of-war.

The black-mouthed Si quis and this slandering suit

Both do alike in picture execute.

But since w' are all called Papists, why not date

Devotion to the rags thus consecrate?

As temples use to have their porches wrought

With sphinxes, creatures of an antic draught,

And puzzling portraitures to show that there

90Riddles inhabited; the like is here.

But pardon, Sir, since I presume to be

Clerk of this closet to your Majesty.

Methinks in this your dark mysterious dress

I see the Gospel couched in parables.

At my next view my purblind fancy ripes

And shows Religion in its dusky types;

Such a text royal, so obscure a shade

Was Solomon in Proverbs all arrayed.

Come, all the brats of this expounding age

100To whom the spirit is in pupilage,

You that damn more than ever Samson slew,

And with his engine, the same jaw-bone too!

How is 't he 'scapes your inquisition free

Since bound up in the Bible's livery?

Hence, Cabinet-intruders! Pick-locks, hence!

You, that dim jewels with your Bristol sense:

And characters, like witches, so torment

Till they confess a guilt though innocent!

Keys for this coffer you can never get;

110None but St. Peter's opes this cabinet,

This cabinet, whose aspect would benight

Critic spectators with redundant light.

A Prince most seen is least. What Scriptures call

The Revelation, is most mystical.

Mount then, thou Shadow Royal, and with haste

Advance thy morning-star, Charles, overcast.

May thy strange journey contradictions twist

And force fair weather from a Scottish mist.

Heaven's confessors are posed, those star-eyed sages,

120T' interpret an eclipse thus riding stages.

Thus Israel-like he travels with a cloud,

Both as a conduct to him and a shroud.

But oh, he goes to Gibeon and renews

A league with mouldy bread and clouted shoes!

The Kings Disguise.] That assumed on the fatal journey from Oxford to the camp of the Scots. (First printed as a quarto pamphlet of four leaves; Thomason bought his copy on 21 January, 1647; reprinted in the 1647 Poems. Vaughan wrote a poem on the same subject about the same time.)

1 a tenant to] so coffin'd in 1677.

2 Which] That 1677.

4: 1677 omits 'now', rather to one's surprise, as the value 'allegi-ance' is of the first rather than of the second half of the century. It is therefore probably right.

14 transmute] transcribe 1677. The two readings obviously pertain to two different senses of 'blacks'-'clothes' and 'ink'.

17 for] from 1647 (pamphlet).

18 line 't] lin'de 1647 (pamphlet).

19 The 1677 'Vindicators' had forgotten 'budge' in the sense of 'fur' (perhaps they were too loyal to read Milton) and made it 'badge'.

20 1651, 1653 'Synod', with no hyphen but perhaps meant for a compound. The genitive is perhaps better. The comma at 'sable', which Mr. Berdan omits, is important.

21-2 The error of those who say that such a rhyme points to the pronunciation of the l in words like 'could' is sufficiently shown by the fact that 'coud' is frequent. It is, of course, a mere eye-rhyme, like many of Spenser's earlier. 'No bodily' 1647 (pamphlet).

23 shape] garb 1677.

24 of] to 1677.

25 'Twill break' 1647, 1653. tailor's] jailor's 1647, 1651, 1653.

29 1653, but obviously by a mere misprint, 'courser'.

31 1647, 1651, 1653 'the college'. It is said that the definite article usually at this time designates 'the College of Physicians'. But, as Mr. Berdan well observes, 'the case was unfortunately too common to admit of identification'. Cleveland's restless wit was not idle in calling 'Manchester's elves'-the Parliamentary troops-'changelings'. The soldier ought to be a King's man: and indeed pretended to be.

32 1647 (pamphlet) 'reformed'.

40 This and l. 47 are examples of the Drydenian line before Dryden, so frequent in Cleveland.

46 = 'The unborn child of a cloud'.

47 Alliteration, and some plausibility of verse, seduced 1677 into 'of State', but I think 'fate' is better.

50 checks] shrinks 1647, 1651, 1653.

55-6 1647, 1651, 1653 read

Nor the false scabbard of a Prince's tough

Metal and three-piled darkness like the slough.

Some fight might be made for 'Metal', but 'Nor' is indefensible. I am half inclined to transfer it above to l. 52 and take 'No' thence. The text, which is 1677, is I suppose a correction. Both 1647 texts mark 'slough' with an asterisk, and have a marginal note 'A damp in coal-pits usual'.

57 I cannot understand what Mr. Berdan-who prints 'Fawkes'-means by saying it is not authorized by any edition, whereas his own apparatus gives 'Faux' in every one. It is a mere question of spelling. 'Three-piled darkness' equally surrounds to me his further remark that he 'adopted it as the only reading approximating sense; treason in grain'. The metaphor of the dark lantern cloaked is surely clear enough; and this 'in grain' is one of the innumerable passages showing the rashness of invariably interpreting 'in grain' as = 'with the grain of the cochineal insect'. Beyond all doubt it has the simple sense of penitus, 'inward'.

58 bright] high 1647, 1653.

59 the Warwick Castle vote] The Resolution of the Commons on May 6, 1646, that the King, after the Scots sold him, should be lodged in Warwick Castle.

61-2 Not in 1647, 1651, 1653 and its group, but added in 1677.

63 1647, 1651, 1653 'Thy visage'.

67 1677 has the very considerable and not at once acceptable alteration of 'thatch a poet's plot'. But it may have been Cleveland.

72 1647, 1651, again give an asterisked note, 'Britanicus', showing the definite, not general, reference of 'Hue and Cry'. It seems that Mercurius Britannicus did issue a 'Hue and Cry' after the King, for which the editor, Captain Audley, was put in the Gate-house till he apologized.

75 1651 'wreath', corrupted into 'wrath' in 1653.

76 Blount stupidly thought 'callow' to mean 'lewd or wicked', as if 'unfledged' did not ratify the usual sense.

80 breeds] brings 1647, 1651.

83 Si quis] The first words of a formal inquiry as to disqualifications in a candidate for orders, &c. It would apply to the Hue and Cry itself.

85 It being a favourite Puritan trick to identify 'Royalist' with 'Papist'. 'Date' apparently in the sense of 'begin', which it usually has only as neuter.

89 puzzling] 1677 and its followers 'purling', with no sense.

95 1677 'The second view' and 'wipes'.

106 Bristol] as of diamonds.

109 coffer] cipher 1677, &c.

110 opes] ope 1677.

116 'Charles' 1677: 1647, 1651, 1653, by a clear error 'Charles's'.

120 'T' interpret an' 1647 (pamphlet): 'To interpret an' 1647 (Poems) 1653, 1677. 1651 omits 'To' and reads the 'an' which seems bad in metre and meaning alike.

The Rebel Scot.

How, Providence? and yet a Scottish crew?

Then Madam Nature wears black patches too!

What? shall our nation be in bondage thus

Unto a land that truckles under us?

Ring the bells backward! I am all on fire.

Not all the buckets in a country quire

Shall quench my rage. A poet should be feared,

When angry, like a comet's flaming beard.

And where 's the stoic can his wrath appease,

10To see his country sick of Pym's disease?

By Scotch invasion to be made a prey

To such pigwiggin myrmidons as they?

But that there 's charm in verse, I would not quote

The name of Scot without an antidote;

Unless my head were red, that I might brew

Invention there that might be poison too.

Were I a drowsy judge whose dismal note

Disgorgeth halters as a juggler's throat

Doth ribbons; could I in Sir Emp'ric's tone

20Speak pills in phrase and quack destruction;

Or roar like Marshall, that Geneva bull,

Hell and damnation a pulpit full;

Yet to express a Scot, to play that prize,

Not all those mouth-grenadoes can suffice.

Before a Scot can properly be curst,

I must like Hocus swallow daggers first.

Come, keen iambics, with your badger's feet

And badger-like bite till your teeth do meet.

Help, ye tart satirists, to imp my rage

30With all the scorpions that should whip this age.

Scots are like witches; do but whet your pen,

Scratch till the blood come, they'll not hurt you then.

Now, as the martyrs were enforced to take

The shapes of beasts, like hypocrites, at stake,

I'll bait my Scot so, yet not cheat your eyes;

A Scot within a beast is no disguise.

No more let Ireland brag her harmless nation

Fosters no venom since the Scot's plantation:

Nor can ours feigned antiquity maintain;

40Since they came in, England hath wolves again.

The Scot that kept the Tower might have shown,

Within the grate of his own breast alone,

The leopard and the panther, and engrossed

What all those wild collegiates had cost

The honest high-shoes in their termly fees;

First to the salvage lawyer, next to these.

Nature herself doth Scotchmen beasts confess,

Making their country such a wilderness:

A land that brings in question and suspense

50God's omnipresence, but that Charles came thence,

But that Montrose and Crawford's loyal band

Atoned their sins and christ'ned half the land.

Nor is it all the nation hath these spots;

There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots.

As in a picture where the squinting paint

Shows fiend on this side, and on that side saint.

He, that saw Hell in 's melancholy dream

And in the twilight of his fancy's theme,

Scared from his sins, repented in a fright,

60Had he viewed Scotland, had turned proselyte.

A land where one may pray with cursed intent,

'Oh may they never suffer banishment!'

Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;

Not forced him wander but confined him home!

Like Jews they spread and as infection fly,

As if the Devil had ubiquity.

Hence 'tis they live at rovers and defy

This or that place, rags of geography.

They're citizens o' th' world; they're all in all;

70Scotland's a nation epidemical.

And yet they ramble not to learn the mode,

How to be dressed, or how to lisp abroad;

To return knowing in the Spanish shrug,

Or which of the Dutch States a double jug

Resembles most in belly or in beard,

(The card by which the mariners are steered).

No, the Scots-errant fight and fight to eat,

Their Ostrich stomachs make their swords their meat.

Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt

80Who use to hang their teeth upon their belt.

Yet wonder not at this their happy choice,

The serpent 's fatal still to Paradise.

Sure, England hath the hemorrhoids, and these

On the north postern of the patient seize

Like leeches; thus they physically thirst

After our blood, but in the cure shall burst!

Let them not think to make us run o' th' score

To purchase villenage, as once before

When an act passed to stroke them on the head,

90Call them good subjects, buy them gingerbread.

Not gold, nor acts of grace, 'tis steel must tame

The stubborn Scot; a Prince that would reclaim

Rebels by yielding, doth like him, or worse,

Who saddled his own back to shame his horse.

Was it for this you left your leaner soil,

Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's spoil?

They are the Gospel's life-guard; but for them,

The garrison of New Jerusalem,

What would the brethren do? The Cause! The Cause!

100Sack-possets and the fundamental laws!

Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!

How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts!

They wanted food and raiment, so they took

Religion for their seamstress and their cook.

Unmask them well; their honours and estate,

As well as conscience, are sophisticate.

Shrive but their titles and their money poise,

A laird and twenty pence pronounced with noise,

When construed, but for a plain yeoman go,

110And a good sober two-pence; and well so.

Hence then, you proud impostors; get you gone,

You Picts in gentry and devotion;

You scandal to the stock of verse, a race

Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace.

Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce

The ostracism and shamed it out of use.

The Indian, that Heaven did forswear

Because he heard some Spaniards were there,

Had he but known what Scots in Hell had been,

120He would Erasmus-like have hung between.

My Muse hath done. A voider for the nonce!

I wrong the Devil should I pick their bones;

That dish is his; for, when the Scots decease,

Hell, like their nation, feeds on barnacles.

A Scot, when from the gallow-tree got loose,

Drops into Styx and turns a Solan goose.

The Rebel Scot.] This famous piece is said to be the only one of Cleveland's poems which is in every edition. In 1677 it is accompanied by a Latin version (of very little merit, and probably if not certainly by 'another hand') which I do not give. A poor copy is in Tanner MS. 465 of the Bodleian, at fol. 92, with the title 'A curse on the Scots'. The piece is hot enough, and no wonder; but it would no doubt have been hotter if it had been written later, when Cleveland was actually gagged by Leven's dismissal of him. It is not unnoteworthy that the library of the University of Edinburgh contains not a single one of the numerous seventeenth-century editions of Cleveland. Years afterwards, when a Douglas had chequered the disgrace of 'the Dutch in the Medway' by a brave death, Marvell, who probably knew our poet, composed for 'Cleveland's Ghost' a half palinode, half continuation, entitled 'The Loyal Scot'.

10 It would seem that Pym had not yet gone to his account, as he died on December 6, 1643, after getting Parliament to accept the Covenant and the Scots to invade England.

12 The early texts have Drayton's name correctly: 1677 makes it 'Pigwidgin'.

15 It seems hardly necessary to remind the reader of the well-known habit of painting Judas's hair red.

19 could ... tone] or in the Empiric's misty tone MS.

21 Stephen Marshall, the 'Smec.' man and a mighty cushion-thumper (who denounced the 'Curse of Meroz' on all who came not to destroy those in any degree opposed to the Parliament), actually preached Pym's funeral sermon.

22 'Damnati-on'. But MS. reads 'a whole pulpit full'.

28 1653 has the obvious blunder of 'feet' repeated for 'teeth'. The first 'feet' is itself less obvious, but I suppose the strong claw and grip of the badger's are meant. Some, however, refer it to the supposed lop-sidedness or inequality of badgers' feet, answering to the ?- of the iamb. I never knew but one badger, who lived in St. Clement's, Oxford, and belonged (surreptitiously) to Merton College. I did not notice his feet.

32 The more usual reproach was the other way-that 'the Scot would not fight till he saw his own blood'.

38 1677, less well, 'that Scot'.

39 'ours ... maintain' 1647, 1651, 1653: 'our ... obtain' 1677.

41 The Scot] Sir William Balfour, a favoured servant of the King, who deserted to the other side.

44 A difficulty has been made about 'collegiate', but there is surely none. The word (or 'collegian') is old slang, and hardly slang for 'jail-bird'. The double use of the Tower as a prison and a menagerie should of course be remembered.

45 high-shoes] Country folk in boots.

termly] = 'when they came up to business'.

51 Crawford] Ludovic, sixteenth Earl, who fought bravely all through the Rebellion, served after the downfall in France and Spain, and died, it is not accurately known when or where, but about 1652.

52 A fine line. 1677 does not improve it by reading 'their land'.

63-4 The central and most often quoted couplet.

65-6 follow 70 in the MS.

67 at rovers] Common for shooting not at a definite mark, but at large.

70 epidemical] In the proper sense of 'travelling from country to country', not doubtless without the transferred one of a 'travelling plague'.

74 States] not the Provinces; but the representative Hogan Mogans themselves.

78 'Ostrich' in 1677: 1647, 1651, and 1653 the older 'estrich'.

80 hang] string 1677.

81 'But why should we be made your frantic choice?' MS.

82 'England too hath emerods' MS.

83 1651, 1653 have a middle form between 'emerod' and 'hemorrhoid'-'Hemeroids'. 1647 'Hemerods'.

84 1647, 1651, 1653 and its group, oddly, 'posture'.

89 The Parliamentary bribe or Danegelt of 1641.

95 'left' 1653, &c., 1677: 'gave' 1647, 1651. The MS. reads 'But they may justly quit their leaner soil. 'Tis to lard ...'

101 1651, 1653 'goodly', but here, I think, the old is not the better.

107 'money' 1647, 1651, 1653: 'moneys' 1677.

108 1647, 1653, &c. 'pound', wrongly. Twenty Scots pence = not quite two-pence English. Therefore 'well so'.

118 1641, 1651, and 1653 'the Spaniards', but 'some' (1677) is more pointed.

120 Erasmus] Regarded as neither Papist nor Protestant?

Cleveland never wrote anything else of this force and fire: and it, or parts of it, were constantly revived when the occasion presented itself.

The Scots' Apostasy.

Is 't come to this? What? shall the cheeks of Fame,

Stretched with the breath of learned Loudoun's name,

Be flagged again? And that great piece of sense,

As rich in loyalty as eloquence,

Brought to the test, be found a trick of state?

Like chemists' tinctures, proved adulterate?

The Devil sure such language did achieve

To cheat our unforewarned Grandam Eve,

As this impostor found out to besot

10Th' experienced English to believe a Scot!

Who reconciled the Covenant's doubtful sense,

The Commons' argument, or the City's pence?

Or did you doubt persistence in one good

Would spoil the fabric of your brotherhood,

Projected first in such a forge of sin,

Was fit for the grand Devil's hammering?

Or was 't ambition that this damned fact

Should tell the world you know the sins you act?

The infamy this super-treason brings

20Blasts more than murders of your sixty kings;

A crime so black, as being advis'dly done,

Those hold with this no competition.

Kings only suffered then; in this doth lie

Th' assassination of Monarchy.

Beyond this sin no one step can be trod,

If not t' attempt deposing of your God.

Oh, were you so engaged that we might see

Heaven's angry lightning 'bout your ears to flee

Till you were shrivelled to dust, and your cold Land

30Parched to a drought beyond the Lybian sand!

But 'tis reserved! Till Heaven plague you worse,

Be objects of an epidemic curse.

First, may your brethren, to whose viler ends

Your power hath bawded, cease to count you friends,

And, prompted by the dictate of their reason,

Reproach the traitors though they hug the treason:

And may their jealousies increase and breed

Till they confine your steps beyond the Tweed:

In foreign nations may your loath'd name be

40A stigmatizing brand of infamy,

Till forced by general hate you cease to roam

The world, and for a plague go live at home;

Till you resume your poverty and be

Reduced to beg where none can be so free

To grant: and may your scabby Land be all

Translated to a general hospital:

Let not the sun afford one gentle ray

To give you comfort of a summer's day;

But, as a guerdon for your traitorous war,

50Live cherished only by the Northern Star:

No stranger deign to visit your rude coast,

And be to all but banished men as lost:

And such, in heightening of the infliction due,

Let provoked princes send them all to you:

Your State a chaos be where not the Law,

But power, your lives and liberties may awe:

No subject 'mongst you keep a quiet breast,

But each man strive through blood to be the best;

Till, for those miseries on us you've brought,

60By your own sword our just revenge be wrought.

To sum up all-let your religion be,

As your allegiance, masked hypocrisy,

Until, when Charles shall be composed in dust,

Perfumed with epithets of good and just,

HE saved, incenséd Heaven may have forgot

T' afford one act of mercy to a Scot,

Unless that Scot deny himself and do

(What's easier far) renounce his Nation too.

The Scots' Apostasy was first printed as a broadside in 1646, and assigned at the time to Cleveland by Thomas Old. It was included in 1651, but not admitted by the 'Vindicators' in 1677. But it is in all the central group of editions except Cleaveland Revived, where absence is usually a strong proof of genuineness; and it is extremely like him. Mr. Berdan has admitted it, and so do I. Professor Case has noted a catalogue entry of The Scot's Constancy, an answer to J. C's. [al. Or an Answer to Cleveland's] Scots' Apostasy (G. R. Bastick) [al. Robin Bostock], London April 1647. The 'J. C's' is of course pertinent.

2 John Campbell (1598-1633), from 1620 Baron Loudoun in his wife's right, was, after taking a violent part on the Covenant side in the earlier Scotch-English war, instrumental in concluding peace; and was made in 1641 Chancellor of Scotland and Earl of Loudoun.

4 as] 'and' 1653.

9 'imposture' 1651, 1653.

20 The celebrated and grisly collection of Scottish monarchs in Holyrood was not yet in existence; for its imaginative creator only painted it in 1684, and there are 106, not sixty. But the remoteness of Scottish pedigrees was popularly known: and if it be not true that all Scottish kings were murdered, not a few had been.

24 'Assassination' is valued at six syllables.

28 'to' 1651, &c.: 'into' 1646.

31 Till] and tell 1646, 1651.

34 'count you' 1646, 1651, 1653, &c.: 'be your' 1687. This prayer, at any rate, was heard pretty soon.

38 'steps' 1651, &c.: 'ships' 1646.

42 'go', misprinted 'to' in 1653, &c.

67-8 Not in 1646.

Rupertismus.

O that I could but vote myself a poet,

Or had the legislative knack to do it!

Or, like the doctors militant, could get

Dubbed at adventure Verser Banneret!

Or had I Cacus' trick to make my rhymes

Their own antipodes, and track the times!

'Faces about,' says the remonstrant spirit,

'Allegiance is malignant, treason merit.'

Huntingdon colt, that posed the sage recorder,

10Might be a sturgeon now and pass by order.

Had I but Elsing's gift (that splay-mouthed brother

That declares one way and yet means another),

Could I thus write asquint, then, Sir, long since

You had been sung a great and glorious Prince!

I had observed the language of these days,

Blasphemed you, and then periwigged the phrase

With humble service and such other fustian,

Bells which ring backward in this great combustion.

I had reviled you, and without offence;

20The literal and equitable sense

Would make it good. When all fails, that will do 't;

Sure that distinction cleft the Devil's foot!

This were my dialect, would your Highness please

To read me but with Hebrew spectacles;

Interpret counter what is cross rehearsed;

Libels are commendations when reversed.

Just as an optic glass contracts the sight

At one end, but when turned doth multiply 't.

But you're enchanted, Sir, you're doubly free

30From the great guns and squibbing poetry,

Whom neither bilbo nor invention pierces,

Proof even 'gainst th' artillery of verses.

Strange that the Muses cannot wound your mail!

If not their art, yet let their sex prevail.

At that known leaguer, where the bonny Besses

Supplied the bow-strings with their twisted tresses,

Your spells could ne'er have fenced you, every arrow

Had lanced your noble breast and drunk the marrow.

For beauty, like white powder, makes no noise

40And yet the silent hypocrite destroys.

Then use the Nuns of Helicon with pity

Lest Wharton tell his gossips of the City

That you kill women too, nay maids, and such

Their general wants militia to touch.

Impotent Essex! Is it not a shame

Our Commonwealth, like to a Turkish dame,

Should have an eunuch guardian? May she be

Ravished by Charles, rather than saved by thee!

But why, my Muse, like a green-sickness girl,

50Feed'st thou on coals and dirt? A gelding earl

Gives no more relish to thy female palate

Than to that ass did once the thistle sallet.

Then quit the barren theme and all at once,

Thou and thy sisters like bright Amazons,

Give Rupert an alarum. Rupert! one

Whose name is wit's superfetation,

Makes fancy, like eternity's round womb,

Unite all valour, present, past, to come!

He who the old philosophy controls

60That voted down plurality of souls!

He breathes a Grand Committee; all that were

The wonders of their age constellate here.

And as the elder sisters, Growth and Sense,

Souls paramount themselves, in man commence

But faculties of reasons queen; no more

Are they to him (who was complete before),

Ingredients of his virtue. Thread the beads

Of Caesar's acts, great Pompey's and the Swede's,

And 'tis a bracelet fit for Rupert's hand,

70By which that vast triumvirate is spanned.

Here, here is palmistry; here you may read

How long the world shall live and when 't shall bleed.

What every man winds up, that Rupert hath,

For Nature raised him of the Public Faith;

Pandora's brother, to make up whose store

The gods were fain to run upon the score.

Such was the painter's brief for Venus' face;

Item, an eye from Jane; a lip from Grace.

Let Isaac and his cits flay off the plate

80That tips their antlers, for the calf of state;

Let the zeal-twanging nose, that wants a ridge,

Snuffling devoutly, drop his silver bridge;

Yes, and the gossip spoon augment the sum

Although poor Caleb lose his christendom;

Rupert outweighs that in his sterling self

Which their self-want pays in commuting pelf.

Pardon, great Sir, for that ignoble crew

Gains when made bankrupt in the scales with you.

As he, who in his character of Light

90Styled it God's shadow, made it far more bright

By an eclipse so glorious (light is dim

And a black nothing when compared to Him),

So 'tis illustrious to be Rupert's foil

And a just trophy to be made his spoil.

I'll pin my faith on the Diurnal's sleeve

Hereafter, and the Guildhall creed believe;

The conquests which the Common Council hears

With their wide listening mouth from the great Peers

That ran away in triumph. Such a foe

100Can make them victors in their overthrow;

Where providence and valour meet in one,

Courage so poised with circumspection

That he revives the quarrel once again

Of the soul's throne; whether in heart, or brain,

And leaves it a drawn match; whose fervour can

Hatch him whom Nature poached but half a man;

His trumpet, like the angel's at the last,

Makes the soul rise by a miraculous blast.

Was the Mount Athos carved in shape of man

110As 'twas designed by th' Macedonian

(Whose right hand should a populous land contain,

The left should be a channel to the main),

His spirit would inform th' amphibious figure

And, strait-laced, sweat for a dominion bigger.

The terror of whose name can out of seven,

Like Falstaff's buckram men, make fly eleven.

Thus some grow rich by breaking. Vipers thus,

By being slain, are made more numerous.

No wonder they'll confess no loss of men,

120For Rupert knocks 'em till they gig again.

They fear the giblets of his train, they fear

Even his dog, that four-legged cavalier;

He that devours the scraps that Lunsford makes;

Whose picture feeds upon a child in steaks;

Who, name but Charles, he comes aloft for him,

But holds up his malignant leg at Pym.

'Gainst whom they have these articles in souse:

First, that he barks against the sense o' th' House;

Resolved delinquent, to the Tower straight,

130Either to th' Lions' or the Bishop's Grate:

Next, for his ceremonious wag o' th' tail.

(But there the sisterhood will be his bail,

At least the Countess will, Lust's Amsterdam,

That lets in all religions of the game.)

Thirdly, he smells intelligence; that 's better

And cheaper too than Pym's from his own letter,

Who 's doubly paid (Fortune or we the blinder!)

For making plots and then for fox the finder:

Lastly, he is a devil without doubt,

140For, when he would lie down, he wheels about,

Makes circles, and is couchant in a ring;

And therefore score up one for conjuring.

'What canst thou say, thou wretch!' 'O quarter, quarter!

I'm but an instrument, a mere Sir Arthur.

If I must hang, O let not our fates vary,

Whose office 'tis alike to fetch and carry!'

No hopes of a reprieve; the mutinous stir

That strung the Jesuit will dispatch a cur.

'Were I a devil as the rabble fears,

150I see the House would try me by my peers!'

There, Jowler, there! Ah, Jowler! 'st, 'tis nought!

Whate'er the accusers cry, they're at a fault:

And Glyn and Maynard have no more to say

Than when the glorious Strafford stood at bay.

Thus libels but annexed to him, we see,

Enjoy a copyhold of victory.

Saint Peter's shadow healed; Rupert's is such

'Twould find Saint Peter's work and wound as much.

He gags their guns, defeats their dire intent;

160The cannons do but lisp and compliment.

Sure, Jove descended in a leaden shower

To get this Perseus; hence the fatal power

Of shot is strangled. Bullets thus allied

Fear to commit an act of parricide.

Go on, brave Prince, and make the world confess

Thou art the greater world and that the less.

Scatter th' accumulative king; untruss

That five-fold fiend, the State's Smectymnuus,

Who place religion in their vellum ears

170As in their phylacters the Jews did theirs.

England's a paradise (and a modest word)

Since guarded by a cherub's flaming sword.

Your name can scare an atheist to his prayers,

And cure the chincough better than the bears.

Old Sibyl charms the toothache with you; Nurse

Makes you still children; and the ponderous curse

The clowns salute with is derived from you,

'Now, Rupert take thee, rogue, how dost thou do?'

In fine the name of Rupert thunders so,

180Kimbolton's but a rumbling wheelbarrow.

Rupertismus] 'To P. Rupert' in the 1647 texts (Bodley and Case copies). The odd title Rupertismus was first given in 1651. This poem expresses the earlier and more sanguine Cavalier temper, when things on the whole went well. Rupert's admirable quality as an officer naturally made him a sort of Cavalier cynosure and (with his being half a foreigner) a bugbear to the Roundheads; while neither party had yet found out his fatal defects as a general. Hence 'Rupertismus' not ill described the humour of both sides. The dog who figures so largely was a real dog (said of course to be a familiar spirit), and Professor Firth tells me that he has a pamphlet (1642) entitled Observations upon P. R.'s white dog called Boy, carefully taken by T. B., with a picture of the animal. It was replied to by The Parliament's Unspotted Bitch next year.

1, 2 The 'legislative knack' to vote oneself everything good and perfect has always been a gift of Houses of Commons. It was rather shrewd of Cleveland to formulate it so early and so well.

4 Bannerets being properly dubbed on the field of battle. 'Adventure' 1677: 'Adventures' 1647, 1651, 1687: 'adventurers' 1653 and its group.

5 Cacus' trick] of dragging his cattle by the tails.

7 spirit] A word their abuse of which was constantly thrown in the face of the Puritans till Swift's thrice rectified vitriol almost destroyed the abuse itself.

8 malignant] in the technical Roundhead sense.

9 The gibe at Huntingdon, clear enough from the passage, is one of many old local insults. I can remember when it was a little unsafe, in one of the Channel islands, to speak of a donkey. This particular jest recurs in Pepys (May 22, 1677), who was in a way a Huntingdon man.

11 Elsing] Clerk to the House of Commons.

13 'thus' 1677: 'but' 1647 and the earlier texts. write] 1653, 'right'-evidently one of the numerous mistakes due to dictating copy.

14 'The Prince' was a title which Rupert monopolized early and kept till his death.

15 'these' 1677: 'the' 1647, 1651, 1653, 1687.

20 1677 'th' equitable'.

24 The rhyme of '-cles' to an ee syllable occurs in Dryden.

31 'Who' 1653 and its group.

35 Carthage. Rupert's devotion to ladies was lifelong.

39 'White' or noiseless powder was a constant object of research.

45 Essex was twice divorced on the ground mentioned, and his efficiency in the field was not to be much greater than that in the chamber.

53 1677, &c., 'his barren theme'.

65 1654 'faculty'. 1677 'Reason Queen'. I am not sure which is right.

66-7 So punctuated in 1677. Earlier texts and 1687 'who were to him complete before. Ingredients of his virtue thread' ... 1677 reads 'virtues'.

68 'the Swede': of course Gustavus Adolphus.

73 1647, 1651, 1653 'Whatever'.

74 1677, apparently alone, 'on the'].

78 1653, evidently by slip, 'for Jane'.

79 1647, 1651, 1653 'Cit'z' (not quite bad for 'citizens) and 'flea of the place'. 'Flea' for 'flay' is not uncommon: the rest is absurd. 'Isaac' was Isaac Pennington, father of that Judith whose obliging disposition Mr. Pepys has commemorated.

80 'Antlets', which occurs in all, is not impossible for 'antlers' (the everlastingly ridiculed citizen 'horns'). But 1647, 1651, 1653 forgot the Golden Calf altogether in their endeavour to provide a rhyme for their own misprint (l. 79) by reading 'Stace'.

83 'Gossip's' (1651, 1677) is not wanted and hisses unnecessarily.

86 'self-wants' 1647, 1651, 1653, 1687. 1677, most improbably, 'committee'. The whole passage refers to the subscriptions of plate and money in lieu of personal service which Pennington, as Lord Mayor, promised 'on the Public Faith'. Rupert's self outweighs all this vicarious performance.

89 'whom' 1653, 1654.

92 to] with 1677.

95 Diurnal] Which Cleveland satirized in his first published (prose) work.

98 As Wharton at Edgehill. 'Mouths' 1647, 1687.

100 them] men 1677.

109 Was the] 'Twas the 1647, 1651, 1653: Was that 1677. 'Was' = 'if it were'.

110 designed] 1647, 1651, 1653 'defin'd', with a clear f, not long s.

113 would] 1647, 1651, 1653 might.

114 The text is 1677, which, however, reads (with the usual want of strait-lacedness) 'straight'. 1651, 1653, have 'Yet' for 'And', which is corrected in some of their own group, and 'sweats'.

117 some] Like Mr. Badman a little later.

120 gig] = 'spin like a top'. Dryden uses the word in the same sense and almost in the same phrase in the Prologue to Amphitryon, l. 21: v. sup., p. 17.

121 giblets] Apparently in the sense of 'offal', 'refuse'.

123 Lunsford] Sir Thomas, 1610?-1653. The absurd legends about this Cavalier's 'child-eating' are referred to in, originally, Hudibras and in Lacy's Old Troop, and at second-hand (probably from the text also, though it is not quoted) in the notes to Scott's Woodstock. 1651 and 1653 have 'which' for second 'that'.

124 steaks] All old editions 'stakes'-a very common spelling, which Mr. Berdan keeps. As he modernizes the rest, his readers may be under the impression that the ogre impaled the infants before devouring them, which was not, I think, alleged by the most savoury professor on the Roundhead side.

127 souse] = 'pickle'. 'they have these' 1677: 'they've several' 1647, 1651: 'they have several' 1653.

130 Bishop's] 1677, 1687 editions have the apostrophe. Laud is probably referred to in 'Bishop's'. The force of all this, and its application to other times, are admirable.

133 The Countess-pretty clearly Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle (1599-1660)-beauty, wit, harlot, and traitress (though, too late, she repented). Amsterdam] The religious indifference of the Dutch being a common reproach. 1677 and its followers read 'with' for 'will', which would alter the sense completely.

134 1647, 1651, 1653 have 'religious' in the well-known noun sense, and it is possibly better.

144 Sir Arthur Haselrig (died 1661)-a very busy person throughout the troubles, but not considered as exactly a prime mover.

148 1677 'the cur'.

149 'rabble' is 1677 and seems good, though the earlier 'rebel' might do.

152 a fault] 1677 default-not so technical.

153 Serjeants John Glyn[ne] (1607-66) and John Maynard (1602-90) were well-known legal bandogs on the Roundhead side in the earlier stages; but both trimmed cleverly during the later, and sold themselves promptly to the Crown at the Restoration. Glynne died soon. Maynard lived to prosecute the victims of the Popish Plot, and to turn his coat once more, at nearly ninety, for William of Orange.

155 1647, 1651, 1653 'labels': 1677 'Thus libels but amount to him we see T' enjoy'.

158 1677 'St. Peter', which looks plausible, though I am not sure that it is better than the genitive. 1647, 1651, 1653 have 'yet' for 'and' as in other cases.

167 the accumulative king] Pym? who was nicknamed 'king' Pym, and if not exactly 'accumulative' (for his debts were paid by Parliament) must have been expensive and was probably rapacious. Others think it means 'the Committee', 'accumulative' being = 'cumulative' (or rather 'plural'). They quote, not without force, our poet's prose Character of a Country Committee man, 'a Committee man is a name of multitude', the phrase 'accumulative treason' occurring in the context.

175 1677 transfers 'the' to before 'Nurse'-a great loss, the unarticled and familiar 'Nurse' being far better-and reads 'Sibils charm'.

176 'and' 1653, 1677: 'nay and' 1647, 1651, 1687.

177 1677 'Clown salutes'.

Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford.

Here lies wise and valiant dust

Huddled up 'twixt fit and just;

Strafford, who was hurried hence

'Twixt treason and convenience.

He spent his time here in a mist;

A Papist, yet a Calvinist;

His Prince's nearest joy and grief

He had, yet wanted all relief;

The prop and ruin of the State;

10The People's violent love and hate;

One in extremes loved and abhorred.

Riddles lie here, or in a word,

Here lies blood; and let it lie

Speechless still and never cry.

Epitaph, &c. In the Bodleian copy of 1647 and in Professor Case's (3rd issue) and in all others except Cleaveland Revived (1659) and 1677; but in some of the earliest classed with the work of 'Uncertain Authors'. Winstanley (no very strong authority, it is true) calls it Cleveland's and 'excellent'. It is perhaps too much to say with Mr. Berdan, that it is 'unlike his manner'. There is certainly in it a manner which he does not often display, but the pity and the terror of that great tragedy might account for part of this, and the difficulty (for any Royalist) of speaking freely of it for more. It is rather fine, I think.

4 The pitiful truth could hardly be better put.

6 Obscure, but not un-Clevelandish.

7-8 Punctuation altered to get what seems the necessary sense. A comma which 1653 has at 'grief' (not to mention a full stop in the 1647 texts) obscures this, and a comma at 'wanted', which Mr. Berdan puts, does so even more. The phrase is once more fatally just and true. He enjoyed all his master's affection and received all his grief, but 'wanted' his support and relief. Professor Case, however, would cling to the stop, at least the comma, at 'grief'.

12 or] Other editions 'and'. For 'Riddles' cf. The King's Disguise, ll. 89-90.

13-14 For the third time 'he says it', and there is no more to say.-In 1653 there follows a Latin Epitaph on Strafford which has nothing to do with this. It is in some phrases enigmatic enough to be Cleveland's, but it is not certainly his, and as it is neither English nor verse we need hardly give it.

An Elegy upon the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I need no Muse to give my passion vent,

He brews his tears that studies to lament.

Verse chemically weeps; that pious rain

Distilled with art is but the sweat o' th' brain

Whoever sobbed in numbers? Can a groan

Be quavered out by soft division?

'Tis true for common formal elegies

Not Bushel's Wells can match a poet's eyes

In wanton water-works; he'll tune his tears

10From a Geneva jig up to the spheres.

But then he mourns at distance, weeps aloof.

Now that the conduit head is our own roof,

Now that the fate is public, we may call

It Britain's vespers, England's funeral.

Who hath a pencil to express the Saint

But he hath eyes too, washing off the paint?

There is no learning but what tears surround,

Like to Seth's pillars in the Deluge drowned.

There is no Church; Religion is grown

20So much of late that she 's increased to none,

Like an hydropic body, full of rheums,

First swells into a bubble, then consumes.

The Law is dead or cast into a trance,-

And by a law dough-baked, an Ordinance!

The Liturgy, whose doom was voted next,

Died as a comment upon him the text.

There's nothing lives; life is, since he is gone,

But a nocturnal lucubration.

Thus you have seen death's inventory read

30In the sum total,-Canterbury's dead;

A sight would make a Pagan to baptize

Himself a convert in his bleeding eyes;

Would thaw the rabble, that fierce beast of ours,

(That which hyena-like weeps and devours)

Tears that flow brackish from their souls within,

Not to repent, but pickle up their sin.

Meantime no squalid grief his look defiles.

He gilds his sadder fate with nobler smiles.

Thus the world's eye, with reconciléd streams,

40Shines in his showers as if he wept his beams.

How could success such villanies applaud?

The State in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud;

The twins of public rage, adjudged to die

For treasons they should act, by prophecy;

The facts were done before the laws were made;

The trump turned up after the game was played.

Be dull, great spirits, and forbear to climb,

For worth is sin and eminence a crime.

No churchman can be innocent and high.

50'Tis height makes Grantham steeple stand awry.

An Elegy, &c. (1647.) If the Strafford epitaph seemed too serious, as well as too concentrated and passionate, for Cleveland, this on Strafford's fellow worker and fellow victim may seem almost a caricature of our author's more wayward and more fantastic manner. Yet there are fine lines in it, and perhaps nowhere else do we see the Dryden fashion of verse (though not of thought) more clearly foreshadowed. It appears to come under 'Uncertain Authors' in some 1647 texts, but 1677 gives it. Title in 1647, 1651, 1653 'On the Archbishop of Canterbury' only.

4 1677 'by art'.

6 1677 'in soft'.

8 Thomas Bushel[l] or Bushnell (1594-1674) was a page of Bacon's and afterwards a great 'projector' in mining and mechanical matters generally. He dabbled largely in fancy fountains and waterworks-a queer taste of the seventeenth century in which even the sober Evelyn records his own participation.

9-10 Cf. the opening of the elegy on King, 'I like not tears in tune'.

11 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. 'when he mourns', which is hardly so good.

18 Seth's pillars] A tradition, preserved in Josephus, that the race of Seth engraved antediluvian wisdom on two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone, the latter of which outlasted the Deluge.

20 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. 'From much'.

34 1647, 1651 misprint 'Agena-like.

35 1653 misprints 'blackish'.

38 1647, 1651, 1653 'noble'.

44 1677, omitting the comma at 'act', makes something like nonsense; 'by prophecy' goes, I think, with 'adjudged to die'.

50 One would expect 'Chesterfield', for Grantham nowadays does not look very crooked-at least from the railway. But Fuller in the Worthies quotes this as a proverb. Some take it as referring to the height and slenderness of the steeple and an optical illusion. They might quote 'The high masts flickered as they lay afloat'. But few travellers had the excuse of Iphigenia.

*On I. W. A. B. of York.

Say, my young sophister, what think'st of this?

Chimera's real, Ergo falleris.

The lamb and tiger, fox and goose agree

And here concorp'rate in one prodigy.

Call an Haruspex quickly: let him get

Sulphur and torches, and a laurel wet,

To purify the place: for sure the harms

This monster will produce transcend his charms.-

'Tis Nature's masterpiece of Error, this,

10And redeems whatever she did amiss

Before, from wonder and reproach, this last

Legitimateth all her by-blows past.

Lo! here a general Metropolitan,

And arch-prelatic Presbyterian!

Behold his pious garbs, canonic face,

A zealous Episcopo-mastix Grace-

A fair blue-apron'd priest, a Lawn-sleeved brother,

One leg a pulpit holds, a tub the other.

Let 's give him a fit name now if we can,

20And make th' Apostate once more Christian.

'Proteus' we cannot call him: he put on

His change of shapes by a succession,

Nor 'the Welsh weather-cock', for that we find

At once doth only wait upon the wind.

These speak him not: but if you'll name him right,

Call him Religion's Hermaphrodite.

His head i' the sanctified mould is cast,

Yet sticks th'abominable mitre fast.

He still retains the 'Lordship' and the 'Grace',

30And yet hath got a reverend elder's place.

Such acts must needs be his, who did devise

By crying altars down to sacrifice

To private malice; where you might have seen

His conscience holocausted to his spleen.

Unhappy Church! the viper that did share

Thy greatest honours, helps to make thee bare,

And void of all thy dignities and store.

Alas! thine own son proves the forest boar,

And, like the dam-destroying cuckoo, he,

40When the thick shell of his Welsh pedigree

By thy warm fostering bounty did divide

And open-straight thence sprung forth parricide:

As if 'twas just revenge should be dispatched

In thee, by th' monster which thyself hadst hatched.

Despair not though, in Wales there may be got,

As well as Lincolnshire, an antidote

'Gainst the foul'st venom he can spit, though 's head

Were changed from subtle grey to pois'nous red.

Heaven with propitious eyes will look upon

50Our party, now the curséd thing is gone;

And chastise Rebels who nought else did miss

To fill the measure of their sins, but his-

Whose foul imparalleled apostasy,

Like to his sacred character, shall be

Indelible. When ages, then of late

More happy grown, with most impartial fate

A period to his days and time shall give,

He by such Epitaphs as this shall live.

Here York's great Metropolitan is laid,

60Who God's Anointed, and His Church, betrayed.

On I. W. A. B. of York. (1647.) This vigorous onslaught on the trimmer John Williams, Archbishop of York, who began public life as a tool of Buckingham's and ended it as a kind of tolerated half-deserter to the Parliament, was turned out by the 'Vindicators' in 1677. There may, however, have been reasons for this, other than certain spuriousness. Williams, though driven to doubtful conduct by his enmity with Laud, never called himself anything but a Royalist, was imprisoned as such, and is said to have died of grief (perhaps of compunction) at the King's execution. Also both Lake and Drake were Yorkshire men. The piece is vigorous, if not quite Clevelandish in the presence of some enjambment, and the absence of extravagant conceit.

2 falleris] In advancing the general observation that 'twy-natured is no nature'.

10 whatever] Perhaps we should read 'whatsoe'er'.

15 'garb' 1653.

16 A parody of course on Prynne's Histrio-mastix.

21 'he' = Proteus. Williams went right over.

23 Williams was very popular with his fellow provincials. He took refuge in Wales when the war broke out, and was made a sort of mediator by the Welsh after Naseby.

26 'Religion's' 1647; 'Religious' 1651, 1653.

27 1651, 1653, 'I' th'': but here, as often, the apostrophation ruins the verse.

30 'hath' 1653: 'has' 1647, 1651.

32 Williams had been chairman of the Committee 'to consider innovations' in 1641. His private malice was to Laud.

46 I am not certain of the meaning. But Lincolnshire (at least Lindsey) was strongly Royalist early in the war till Cromwell's successes at Grantham, Lea Moor, and Winceby in 1643.

53 1647, 1651 'unparalleled'.

Mark Antony.

When as the nightingale chanted her vespers,

And the wild forester couched on the ground,

Venus invited me in th' evening whispers

Unto a fragrant field with roses crowned,

Where she before had sent

My wishes' compliment;

Unto my heart's content

Played with me on the green.

Never Mark Antony

10Dallied more wantonly

With the fair Egyptian Queen.

First on her cherry cheeks I mine eyes feasted,

Thence fear of surfeiting made me retire;

Next on her warmer lips, which, when I tasted,

My duller spirits made active as fire.

Then we began to dart,

Each at another's heart,

Arrows that knew no smart,

Sweet lips and smiles between.

20Never Mark, &c.

Wanting a glass to plait her amber tresses

Which like a bracelet rich deckéd mine arm,

Gaudier than Juno wears when as she graces

Jove with embraces more stately than warm,

Then did she peep in mine

Eyes' humour crystalline;

I in her eyes was seen

As if we one had been.

Never Mark, &c.

30Mystical grammar of amorous glances;

Feeling of pulses, the physic of love;

Rhetorical courtings and musical dances;

Numbering of kisses arithmetic prove;

Eyes like astronomy;

Straight-limbed geometry;

In her art's ingeny

Our wits were sharp and keen.

Never Mark Antony

Dallied more wantonly

With the fair Egyptian Queen.

Mark Antony. The unusual prosodic interest of this piece, and its companion, has been explained in the Introduction. The pair appeared first in 1647 (3rd), where they follow The Character of a London Diurnal and precede the Poems.

14 'warmer' some copies of 1653: 1647, 1651 'warm'. Cf. 'bluer' in the 'Mock Song', l. 14 (below).

15 1677, &c. 'made me active'-a bad blunder.

35 'Straight limb' 1647.

36 'art's' is 1677 for 'heart's' in 1647, 1651, 1653. I rather prefer it, but with some doubts.

37 1677, &c. emends by substituting 'were' for 1647, 1651, 1653 'are'.

The Author's Mock Song to Mark Antony.

When as the night-raven sung Pluto's matins

And Cerberus cried three amens at a howl,

When night-wandering witches put on their pattens,

Midnight as dark as their faces are foul;

Then did the furies doom

That the nightmare was come.

Such a misshapen groom

Puts down Su. Pomfret clean.

Never did incubus

10Touch such a filthy sus

As this foul gypsy quean.

First on her gooseberry cheeks I mine eyes blasted,

Thence fear of vomiting made me retire

Unto her bluer lips, which when I tasted,

My spirits were duller than Dun in the mire.

But then her breath took place

Which went an usher's pace

And made way for her face!

You may guess what I mean.

20Never did, &c.

Like snakes engendering were platted her tresses,

Or like the slimy streaks of ropy ale;

Uglier than Envy wears, when she confesses

Her head is periwigged with adder's tail.

But as soon as she spake

I heard a harsh mandrake.

Laugh not at my mistake,

Her head is epicene.

Never did, &c.

30Mystical magic of conjuring wrinkles;

Feeling of pulses, the palmistry of hags;

Scolding out belches for rhetoric twinkles;

With three teeth in her head like to three gags;

Rainbows about her eyes

And her nose, weather-wise;

From them the almanac lies,

Frost, Pond, and Rivers clean.

Never did incubus

Touch such a filthy sus

40As this foul gypsy quean.

The Author's Mock Song. In 1647 this runs on as a continuation of 'Mark Anthony'.

1 1677 putidissime 'nightingale', as in the preceding poem. 'Night-raven' 1647, 1651, 1653 is certainly right. Mr. Berdan's copy seems to have 'But as', which I rather like; but mine has 'When'.

2 howl] hole 1647.

16 1677 'when', not impossibly.

21 platted] placed 1647.

22 1647, 1651 'the': omitted in 1653: 'to' inserted in 1677.

37 Cf. A Young Man, &c., l. 13.

How the Commencement grows new.

It is no coranto-news I undertake;

New teacher of the town I mean not to make;

No New England voyage my Muse does intend;

No new fleet, no bold fleet, nor bonny fleet send.

But, if you'll be pleased to hear out this ditty,

I'll tell you some news as true and as witty,

And how the Commencement grows new.

See how the simony doctors abound,

All crowding to throw away forty pound.

10They'll now in their wives' stammel petticoats vapour

Without any need of an argument draper.

Beholding to none, he neither beseeches

This friend for venison nor t'other for speeches,

And so the Commencement grows new.

Every twice a day teaching gaffer

Brings up his Easter-book to chaffer;

Nay, some take degrees who never had steeple,-

Whose means, like degrees, comes from placets of people.

They come to the fair and, at the first pluck,

20The toll-man Barnaby strikes 'um good luck,

And so the Commencement grows new.

The country parsons come not up

On Tuesday night in their old College to sup;

Their bellies and table-books equally full,

The next lecture-dinner their notes forth to pull;

How bravely the Margaret Professor disputed,

The homilies urged, and the school-men confuted;

And so the Commencement grows new.

The inceptor brings not his father the clown

30To look with his mouth at his grogoram gown;

With like admiration to eat roasted beef,

Which invention posed his beyond-Trent belief;

Who should he but hear our organs once sound,

Could scarce keep his hoof from Sellenger's round,

And so the Commencement grows new.

The gentleman comes not to show us his satin,

To look with some judgment at him that speaks Latin,

To be angry with him that marks not his clothes,

To answer 'O Lord, Sir' and talk play-book oaths,

40And at the next bear-baiting (full of his sack)

To tell his comrades our discipline's slack;

And so the Commencement grows new.

We have no prevaricator's wit.

Ay, marry sir, when have you had any yet?

Besides no serious Oxford man comes

To cry down the use of jesting and hums.

Our ballad (believe 't) is no stranger than true;

Mum Salter is sober, and Jack Martin too,

And so the Commencement grows new.

How the Commencement, &c., belongs to the same group as the Mark Antony poems and Square-Cap, and there is the same ambiguity between four anapaests and five iambs. You would certainly take line 1 as it stands in 1677 with ''Tis' for 'It is', and probably as it stands here, for a heroic if line 2 did not come to undeceive you. And this line 2 is bad as either.

First printed in 1653. MS. copies are found in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 147, pp. 48-9, and Tanner MS. 465, fol. 83, of the Bodleian. Neither copy is good, but each helps to restore the text (see ll. 18 and 38). The Tanner MS. also has on fol. 44 an indignant poem 'Upon Mr. Cl. who made a Song against the DDrs', beginning

Leave off, vain Satirist, and do not think,

To stain our reverend purple with thy ink.

It adds the interesting evidence that the poem became a popular song at Cambridge:

Must gitterns now and fiddles be made fit,

Be tuned and keyed to sweake [?squeak] a Johnian wit?

Must now thy poems be made fidlers' notes,

Puffed with Tobacco through their sooty throats?

. . . . . . . . . .

Are thy strong lines and mighty cart-rope things

Now spun so small, they'll twist on fiddle strings?

Canst thou prove Ballad-poet of the times?

Can thy proud fancy stoop to penny rimes?

(This latter information, as to MSS., is Mr. Simpson's.)

5 out] but 1653.

9 forty pound] Still the regular doctorate fee, though relatively three or four times heavier then than now.

10 stammel] Properly a stuff; but, as generally or often red in colour, the colour itself.

11 I am not certain of the meaning of this line though I could conjecture.

13 nor t'other for speeches] MS. 'that for his breeches'.

15 1677 inserts 'the' before 'teaching', but the absence of the article is much more characteristic.

18 The 'Vindicators', in the new bondage of grammar, 'come'.

Placets] both MSS.: places 1653: placers 1677. 'Placets', evidently right, would baffle a non-university printer; probably the editors of 1677 attempted to correct it, but were again baffled by the printer.

22 1677 'they do not come up'-a natural but unnecessary patching of the line.

23 old] 1677 own-less well, I think.

Both MSS. read in ll. 22-3:

The country parson cometh not up,

Till Tuesday night in his old College to sup.

26 'Margeret' 1653: Marg'ret' 1677.

29 inceptor] = 'M.A. to be'.

30 'o' of 'grog[o]ram' usually omitted, but both 1653 and 1677 have it here.

32 The North usually salting and boiling its beef?

38 Tanner MS. has the metrical punctuation 'To be'angry' found occasionally in texts of the time: 'marks' Tanner MS., all the texts have 'makes'.

40 at the next bear-baiting] in his next company MSS.

44 1653 'we' for 'you', less pointedly, I think.

45 Cleveland lived to think better of Oxford-at least to take refuge and be warmly welcomed there. There has probably been no time at which either University was not convinced that the other, whatever its merits, could not see a joke.

48 1665 (not a very good edition) and the MSS. read 'Mun', which was of course the usual short for Edmund. But 'Mum' in the context is appropriate enough and generally read.

The intense Cambridge flavour of this seems to require special comment by a Cambridge man. For the duties of the 'Prevaricator' refer to Peacock's Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge, 1841 (information kindly furnished by Mr. A. J. Bartholomew).

The Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbyter.

With hair in characters and lugs in text;

With a splay mouth and a nose circumflexed;

With a set ruff of musket-bore that wears

Like cartridges or linen bandoleers

Exhausted of their sulphurous contents

In pulpit fire-works, which that bomball vents;

The Negative and Covenanting Oath,

Like two mustachoes issuing from his mouth;

The bush upon his chin like a carved story,

10In a box-knot cut by the Directory:

Madam's confession hanging at his ear,

Wire-drawn through all the questions, how and where;

Each circumstance so in the hearing felt

That when his ears are cropped he'll count them gelt;

The weeping cassock scared into a jump,

A sign the presbyter's worn to the stump,-

The presbyter, though charmed against mischance

With the divine right of an Ordinance!

If you meet any that do thus attire 'em,

20Stop them, they are the tribe of Adoniram.

What zealous frenzy did the Senate seize,

That tare the Rochet to such rags as these?

Episcopacy minced, reforming Tweed

Hath sent us runts even of her Church's breed,

Lay-interlining clergy, a device

That 's nickname to the stuff called lops and lice.

The beast at wrong end branded, you may trace

The Devil's footsteps in his cloven face;

A face of several parishes and sorts,

30Like to a sergeant shaved at Inns of Courts.

What mean the elders else, those Kirk dragoons,

Made up of ears and ruffs like ducatoons;

That hierarchy of handicrafts begun;

Those New Exchange men of religion?

Sure, they're the antick heads, which placed without

The church, do gape and disembogue a spout.

Like them above the Commons' House, have been

So long without; now both are gotten in.

Then what imperious in the bishop sounds,

40The same the Scotch executor rebounds;

This stating prelacy the classic rout

That spake it often, ere it spake it out.

(So by an abbey's skeleton of late

I heard an echo supererogate

Through imperfection, and the voice restore,

As if she had the hiccough o'er and o'er.)

'Since they our mixed diocesans combine

Thus to ride double in their discipline,

That Paul's shall to the Consistory call

50A Dean and Chapter out of Weavers' Hall,

Each at the ordinance for to assist

With the five thumbs of his groat-changing fist.

Down, Dagon-synod, with thy motley ware,

Whilst we do swagger for the Common Prayer

(That dove-like embassy that wings our sense

To Heaven's gate in shape of innocence)

Pray for the mitred authors, and defy

These demicastors of divinity!

For, when Sir John with Jack-of-all-trades joins,

60His finger 's thicker than the prelates' loins.'

The Hue and Cry. (1653.) 1 'in characters' = in shorthand: 1677 has 'character', wrongly. 'lugs' = ears. 'in text' = in capitals.

Cf. Clievelandi Vindiciae, 1677, p. 122 (Cleveland's letter on a Puritan who had deserted to the Royalists. His officer complained that he had absconded with official money): 'I doubt not, but you will pardon your Man. He hath but transcribed Rebellion, and copied out that Disloyalty in Shorthand, which you have committed in Text.'

6 bomball] A compound of 'bomb' and 'ball'.

20 Adoniram] Byfield, a clerk of the Westminster Assembly whose minutes have been published in modern times. A great ejector of the clergy, who unfortunately did not live long enough to be ejected himself.

26 This stuff does not by any means sound nice.

32 ducatoons] One would take it that the ducatoon had a back view of some one's head; but a passage of Hudibras, and Grey's note on it, have complicated the matter with a story about the Archduke Albert of Austria, which seems to have little if any relevance here.

35 antick heads] = 'gargoyles'.

41 classic] As in Milton. Nor is this the only point in which the two old Christ's men, now on such opposite sides, agree in the 'New Forcers of Conscience' and this piece.

52 1653 great-changing-a mere misprint.

54 do swagger for] 1677 most suspiciously improves to 'are champions for'.

From l. 43 onwards 1653 has the whole in italics, and it is pretty clear that after the first four lines the Echo speaks to the end. The 'Vindicators' do not seem to have seen this, though the absence of the quotes above would not prove it. Professor Case, however, thinks that 'So' refers to what precedes, and that in l. 47 and onwards the author and Echo speaks. It is possible.

The Antiplatonic.

For shame, thou everlasting wooer,

Still saying grace and never falling to her!

Love that 's in contemplation placed

Is Venus drawn but to the waist.

Unless your flame confess its gender,

And your parley cause surrender,

Y' are salamanders of a cold desire

That live untouched amidst the hottest fire.

What though she be a dame of stone,

10The widow of Pygmalion,

As hard and unrelenting she

As the new-crusted Niobe,

Or (what doth more of statue carry)

A nun of the Platonic quarry?

Love melts the rigour which the rocks have bred-

A flint will break upon a feather-bed.

For shame, you pretty female elves,

Cease for to candy up your selves;

No more, you sectaries of the game,

20No more of your calcining flame!

Women commence by Cupid's dart

As a king hunting dubs a hart.

Love's votaries enthral each other's soul,

Till both of them live but upon parole.

Virtue's no more in womankind

But the green-sickness of the mind;

Philosophy (their new delight)

A kind of charcoal appetite.

There 's no sophistry prevails

30Where all-convincing love assails,

But the disputing petticoat will warp,

As skilful gamesters are to seek at sharp.

The soldier, that man of iron,

Whom ribs of horror all environ,

That's strung with wire instead of veins,

In whose embraces you're in chains,

Let a magnetic girl appear,

Straight he turns Cupid's cuirassier.

Love storms his lips, and takes the fortress in,

40For all the bristled turnpikes of his chin.

Since love's artillery then checks

The breastworks of the firmest sex,

Come, let us in affections riot;

Th' are sickly pleasures keep a diet.

Give me a lover bold and free,

Not eunuched with formality,

Like an ambassador that beds a queen

With the nice caution of a sword between.

The Antiplatonic. (1653.) This is a sort of half-way house between Cleveland's burlesques and his serious or semi-serious poems like Fuscara. It is also nearer to Suckling and the graceful-graceless school than most of his things. It is good.

2 The alteration of 1677 'and ne'er fall to her' may be only an example of the tendency to 'regularize' (in this case by the omission of an extra foot). But I confess it seems to me better: for the slight irregularity of the construction replaces that of the line to advantage.

10 I don't know whether the conceit of 'Pygmalion's widow' returning to marble (or ivory) when her husband-lover's embraces ceased is original with Cleveland. If it is, I make him my compliment. There is at any rate no hint of it in Ovid.

18 1677 changed the good old 'for' to 'thus'.

19 sectaries of] = 'heretics in'.

20 This is good: 'calcining flame' is good.

22 'dubs' is said to mean 'stabs', as it certainly means 'strikes'; but this seems to have little or no appropriateness here and to ignore the quaint conceit of 'commence' in its academic meaning. 'Women take their degrees by Cupid's dart: as the fact of being hunted by a king ennobles a hart.' Cupid = the King of Love.

24 'parole' too has a very delectable double meaning. This poem is really full of most excellent differences.

25-9 The lesson of the unregenerate Donne and the never-regenerate Carew.

32 gamesters] = 'fencers'. to seek at sharp] = 'not good at sword-play'.

33 'The sol-di-er'. By the way, did Butler borrow this 'iron' and 'environ' rhyme from Cleveland?

43 The apostrophating mania made 1653 contract to 'let's' and spoil the verse.

44 Th'] here of course = 'they'.

Fuscara, or the Bee Errant.

Nature's confectioner, the bee

(Whose suckets are moist alchemy,

The still of his refining mould

Minting the garden into gold),

Having rifled all the fields

Of what dainties Flora yields,

Ambitious now to take excise

Of a more fragrant paradise,

At my Fuscara's sleeve arrived

10Where all delicious sweets are hived.

The airy freebooter distrains

First on the violets of her veins,

Whose tincture, could it be more pure,

His ravenous kiss had made it bluer.

Here did he sit and essence quaff

Till her coy pulse had beat him off;

That pulse which he that feels may know

Whether the world 's long-lived or no.

The next he preys on is her palm,

20That alm'ner of transpiring balm;

So soft, 'tis air but once removed;

Tender as 'twere a jelly gloved.

Here, while his canting drone-pipe scanned

The mystic figures of her hand,

He tipples palmistry and dines

On all her fortune-telling lines.

He bathes in bliss and finds no odds

Betwixt her nectar and the gods',

He perches now upon her wrist,

30A proper hawk for such a fist,

Making that flesh his bill of fare

Which hungry cannibals would spare;

Where lilies in a lovely brown

Inoculate carnation.

He argent skin with or so streamed

As if the milky way were creamed.

From hence he to the woodbine bends

That quivers at her fingers' ends,

That runs division on the tree

40Like a thick-branching pedigree.

So 'tis not her the bee devours,

It is a pretty maze of flowers;

It is the rose that bleeds, when he

Nibbles his nice phlebotomy.

About her finger he doth cling

I' th' fashion of a wedding-ring,

And bids his comrades of the swarm

Crawl as a bracelet 'bout her arm.

Thus when the hovering publican

50Had sucked the toll of all her span,

Tuning his draughts with drowsy hums

As Danes carouse by kettle-drums,

It was decreed, that posie gleaned,

The small familiar should be weaned.

At this the errant's courage quails;

Yet aided by his native sails

The bold Columbus still designs

To find her undiscovered mines.

To th' Indies of her arm he flies,

60Fraught both with east and western prize;

Which when he had in vain essayed,

Armed like a dapper lancepresade

With Spanish pike, he broached a pore

And so both made and healed the sore:

For as in gummy trees there 's found

A salve to issue at the wound,

Of this her breach the like was true:

Hence trickled out a balsam, too.

But oh, what wasp was 't that could prove

70Ravaillac to my Queen of Love!

The King of Bees now 's jealous grown

Lest her beams should melt his throne,

And finding that his tribute slacks,

His burgesses and state of wax

Turned to a hospital, the combs

Built rank-and-file like beadsmen's rooms,

And what they bleed but tart and sour

Matched with my Danae's golden shower,

Live-honey all,-the envious elf

80Stung her, 'cause sweeter than himself.

Sweetness and she are so allied

The bee committed parricide.

Fuscara. (1651.) Cleveland's most famous poem of the amatory, as The Rebel Scot is of the political, kind. In 1677 and since it has been set in the forefront of his Poems, and Johnson draws specially on it for his famous diatribe against the metaphysicals in the 'Life of Cowley'. It seems to me inferior both to The Muses' Festival and to The Antiplatonic, and, as was said in the Introduction, it betrays, to me, something of an intention to fool the lovers of a fashionable style to the top of their bent. But it has extremely pretty things in it; and Mr. Addison, who denounced and scorned 'false wit', never 'fair-sexed it' in half so poetical a manner.

2 'Suckets' or 'succades' should need interpretation to no reader of Robinson Crusoe: and no one who has not read Robinson Crusoe deserves to be taken into consideration.

13 tincture] Said to be used here in an alchemical sense for 'gold'. But the plain meaning is much better.

18 Although the sense is not quite the same as, it is much akin to, that of Browning's question-

'Who knows but the world may end to night?'

20 Cleveland of course uses the correct and not the modern and blundering sense of 'transpire'.

22 This 'jelly gloved' is not like 'mobled queen' or 'calcining flame'.

25-6 1653 and its group have a queer misprint (carried out so as to rhyme, but hardly possible as a true reading) of 'dives' and 'lives'. If they had had 'In' instead of 'On' it would have been on the (metaphysical) cards, especially with 'bathes' following.

28 1653, less well, 'the nectar'.

30 Neat, i' faith!

33 'a lovely brown' as being Fuscara.

35 Here Cleveland dares his 'ill armoury again'; v. sup., p. 25. 'He' 1651, 1653: 'Her' 1677.

48 as] 1677, unnecessarily, 'like'. Some (baddish) editions 'on a bracelet'.

52 Hardly necessary to notice as another of Cleveland's Shakespearian touches.

62 The correcter form is 'lancepesade'.

70 'Ratillias' 1651: 'Ratilias' 1653: corrected in 1677.

71 1677, dropping the verb from 'now's', improves the sense very much.

*An Elegy upon Doctor Chad[d]erton, the first Master

of Emanuel College in Cambridge, being above

an hundred years old when he died.

(Occasioned by his long-deferred funeral.)

Pardon, dear Saint, that we so late

With lazy sighs bemoan thy fate,

And with an after-shower of verse

And tears, we thus bedew thy hearse.

Till now, alas! we did not weep,

Because we thought thou didst but sleep.

Thou liv'dst so long we did not know

Whether thou couldst now die or no.

We looked still when thou shouldst arise

10And ope the casements of thine eyes.

Thy feet, which have been used so long

To walk, we thought, must still go on.

Thine ears, after a hundred year,

Might now plead custom for to hear.

Upon thy head that reverend snow

Did dwell some fifty years ago:

And then thy cheeks did seem to have

The sad resemblance of a grave.

Wert thou e'er young? For truth I hold

20And do believe thou wert born old.

There 's none alive, I'm sure, can say

They knew thee young, but always grey.

And dost thou now, venerable oak,

Decline at Death's unhappy stroke?

Tell me, dear son, why didst thou die

And leave 's to write an elegy?

We're young, alas! and know thee not.

Send up old Abram and grave Lot.

Let them write thy Epitaph and tell

30The world thy worth; they kenned thee well.

When they were boys, they heard thee preach

And thought an angel did them teach.

Awake them then: and let them come

And score thy virtues on thy tomb,

That we at those may wonder more

Than at thy many years before.

An Elegy, &c. This and the following piece are among the disputed poems, but as they occur in 1653 I give them, with warning and asterisked. The D.N.B. allows (with a ?) 104 years (1536?-1640) to Chadderton. As the first Master of the House of pure Emmanuel he might be supposed unlikely to extract a tear from Cleveland. But he had resigned his Mastership nearly twenty years before his death, and that death occurred before the troubles became insanabile vulnus. There is nothing to require special annotation in it, or indeed in either, though in Doctor Chadderton, l. 23, one may safely guess that either 'thou' or 'now' is an intrusion; in l. 25 of the same that 'son' should be 'sir', 'sire', 'saint', &c.; and in l. 29 that 'th' Epitaph' is likelier.

*Mary's Spikenard.

Shall I presume,

Without perfume,

My Christ to meet

That is all sweet?

No! I'll make most pleasant posies,

Catch the breath of new-blown roses,

Top the pretty merry flowers,

Which laugh in the fairest bowers,

Whose sweetness Heaven likes so well,

10It stoops each morn to take a smell.

Then I'll fetch from the Ph?nix' nest

The richest spices and the best,

Precious ointments I will make;

Holy Myrrh and aloes take,

Yea, costly Spikenard in whose smell

The sweetness of all odours dwell.

I'll get a box to keep it in,

Pure as his alabaster skin:

And then to him I'll nimbly fly

20Before one sickly minute die.

This box I'll break, and on his head

This precious ointment will I spread,

Till ev'ry lock and ev'ry hair

For sweetness with his breath compare:

But sure the odour of his skin

Smells sweeter than the spice I bring.

Then with bended knee I'll greet

His holy and belovéd feet;

I'll wash them with a weeping eye,

30And then my lips shall kiss them dry;

Or for a towel he shall have

My hair-such flax as nature gave.

But if my wanton locks be bold,

And on Thy sacred feet take hold,

And curl themselves about, as though

They were loath to let thee go,

O chide them not, and bid away,

For then for grief they will grow grey.

Mary's Spikenard (1652) of course suggests Crashaw; and yet when one reads it the thought must surely occur, 'How differently Crashaw would have done it!' I do not think either is Cleveland's, though the odd string of unrelated conceits in the Chadderton piece is not unlike him. In the other there is nothing like his usual style; but it is very pretty, and I will not say he could not have done it as an exception. But in that case it is a pity he did not make it a rule.

To Julia to expedite her Promise.

Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve,

Why this reprieve?

Why doth my she-advowson fly

Incumbency?

Panting expectance makes us prove

The antics of benighted love,

And withered mates when wedlock joins,

They're Hymen's monkeys, which he ties by th' loins

To play, alas! but at rebated foins.

10To sell thyself dost thou intend

By candle end,

And hold the contract thus in doubt,

Life's taper out?

Think but how soon the market fails;

Your sex lives faster than the males;

As if, to measure age's span,

The sober Julian were th' account of man,

Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.

Now since you bear a date so short,

20Live double for 't.

How can thy fortress ever stand

If 't be not manned?

The siege so gains upon the place

Thou'lt find the trenches in thy face.

Pity thyself then if not me,

And hold not out, lest like Ostend thou be

Nothing but rubbish at delivery.

The candidates of Peter's chair

Must plead grey hair,

30And use the simony of a cough

To help them off.

But when I woo, thus old and spent,

I'll wed by will and testament.

No, let us love while crisped and curled;

The greatest honours, on the agéd hurled,

Are but gay furloughs for another world.

To-morrow what thou tenderest me

Is legacy.

Not one of all those ravenous hours

40But thee devours.

And though thou still recruited be,

Like Pelops, with soft ivory,

Though thou consume but to renew,

Yet Love as lord doth claim a heriot due;

That 's the best quick thing I can find of you.

I feel thou art consenting ripe

By that soft gripe,

And those regealing crystal spheres.

I hold thy tears

50Pledges of more distilling sweets,

The bath that ushers in the sheets.

Else pious Julia, angel-wise,

Moves the Bethesda of her trickling eyes

To cure the spital world of maladies.

To Julia, &c. Johnson singled out the opening verse of this as a special example of 'bringing remote ideas together'.

1 'Shrieve' of course = 'Sheriff'.

3-4 'advowson' (again of course, but these things get curiously mistaken nowadays) = 'right of presenting to or enjoying a benefice'. 'Incumbency' = 'the actual occupation or enjoyment'. Cf. Square-Cap, ll. 37-8.

9 rebated] The opposite of 'unbated' in Hamlet-with the button on.

11 Mr. Pepys on November 6, 1660, watched this process (which was specially used in ship-selling) for the first time and with interest. 'candle' 1653: 'candle's' 1677.

17-18 Not a very happy 'conceiting' of the fact that in a millennium and a half the Julian reckoning had got ten days behindhand.

27 The siege of Ostend (1601-4) lasted three years and seventy-seven days.

34 Did a far greater Cambridge poet think of this in writing

'When the locks are crisp and curl'd?'

(The Vision of Sin.)

48 regealing] Cleveland seems to use this unusual word in the sense of 'unfreezing'.

51 1677 spoils sense and verse alike by beginning the line with 'Than'. The 'tears' are the 'bath'.

Poems in 1677 but not in 1653.

Upon Princess Elizabeth, born the night before New Year's Day.

Astrologers say Venus, the self-same star,

Is both our Hesperus and Lucifer;

The antitype, this Venus, makes it true;

She shuts the old year and begins the new.

Her brother with a star at noon was born;

She, like a star both of the eve and morn.

Count o'er the stars, fair Queen, in babes, and vie

With every year a new Epiphany.

Upon Princess Elizabeth. Not before 1677. This slight thing is inaccurately entitled, for the Princess was born on December 26, 1638.

1 The rhyme of 'star' and 'Lucifer', which occurs (with 'traveller') in Dryden, is-like all Cleveland's rhymes, I think without exception-perfectly sound on the general principle then observed, and observed partly at all times, that a vowel may, for rhyming purposes, take the sound that it has in a similar connexion but in another word.

5 brother] Charles II.

The General Eclipse.

Ladies that gild the glittering noon,

And by reflection mend his ray,

Whose beauty makes the sprightly sun

To dance as upon Easter-day,

What are you now the Queen 's away?

Courageous Eagles, who have whet

Your eyes upon majestic light,

And thence derived such martial heat

That still your looks maintain the fight,

10What are you since the King's good-night?

Cavalier-buds, whom Nature teems

As a reserve for England's throne,

Spirits whose double edge redeems

The last Age and adorns your own,

What are you now the Prince is gone?

As an obstructed fountain's head

Cuts the entail off from the streams,

And brooks are disinherited,

Honour and Beauty are mere dreams

20Since Charles and Mary lost their beams!

Criminal Valours, who commit

Your gallantry, whose paean brings

A psalm of mercy after it,

In this sad solstice of the King's,

Your victory hath mewed her wings!

See, how your soldier wears his cage

Of iron like the captive Turk,

And as the guerdon of his rage!

See, how your glimmering Peers do lurk,

30Or at the best, work journey-work!

Thus 'tis a general eclipse,

And the whole world is al-a-mort;

Only the House of Commons trips

The stage in a triumphant sort.

Now e'en John Lilburn take 'em for't!

The General Eclipse. The poem is of course a sort of variation or scherzo on 'You meaner beauties of the night'.

20 We are so accustomed to the double name 'Henrietta Maria' that the simple 'Queen Mary' may seem strange. But it was the Cavalier word at Naseby.

32 al-a-mort] Formerly quite naturalized, especially in the form all-amort. See N.E.D., s.v. 'Alamort'.

Upon the King's Return from Scotland.

Returned, I'll ne'er believe 't; first prove him hence;

Kings travel by their beams and influence.

Who says the soul gives out her gests, or goes

A flitting progress 'twixt the head and toes?

She rules by omnipresence, and shall we

Deny a prince the same ubiquity?

Or grant he went, and, 'cause the knot was slack,

Girt both the nations with his zodiac,

Yet as the tree at once both upward shoots,

10And just as much grows downward to the roots,

So at the same time that he posted thither

By counter-stages he rebounded hither.

Hither and hence at once; thus every sphere

Doth by a double motion interfere;

And when his native form inclines him east,

By the first mover he is ravished west.

Have you not seen how the divided dam

Runs to the summons of her hungry lamb;

But when the twin cries halves, she quits the first?

20Nature's commendam must be likewise nursed.

So were his journeys like the spider spun

Out of his bowels of compassion.

Two realms, like Cacus, so his steps transpose,

His feet still contradict him as he goes.

England 's returned that was a banished soil.

The bullet flying makes the gun recoil.

Death 's but a separation, though endorsed

With spade and javelin; we were thus divorced.

Our soul hath taken wing while we express

30The corpse, returning to our principles.

But the Crab-tropic must not now prevail;

Islands go back but when you're under sail.

So his retreat hath rectified that wrong;

Backward is forward in the Hebrew tongue.

Now the Church Militant in plenty rests,

Nor fears, like th' Amazon, to lose her breasts.

Her means are safe; not squeezed until the blood

Mix with the milk and choke the tender brood.

She, that hath been the floating ark, is that

40She that 's now seated on Mount Ararat.

Quits Charles; our souls did guard him northward thus

Now he the counterpart comes south to us.

Upon the King's Return, &c. In 1641-an ill-omened and unsuccessful journey, which lasted from August to November. The piece is one of the very few of those in Cleaveland Revived acknowledged and admitted by Clievelandi Vindiciae.

3 1659 'ghests'; 1662, 1668 'guests'; 1677 'gests'. See N.E.D., s.v. 'gest' sb.4. which defines it as 'the various stages of a journey, especially of a royal progress; the route followed or planned'.

20 commendam] (misprinted '-dum' from 1659 to 1677). A benefice held with another; something additional.

21: 'spider' 1677; 'spider's' 1659, 1662, 1668.

25 'banished' 1677: 'barren' 1659, 1662, 1668.

30 In this very obscure and ultra-Clevelandian line 1677 reads 'their'. I think 'our'-the reading of Cleaveland Revived, followed by 1662 and 1668-is better. But the whole poem (one of Cleveland's earliest political attempts) is weak and pithless.

33 'that' 1687: 'the' 1659, 1662, 1668.

42 'counterpart' 1677: 'counterpane' 1659, 1662, 1668.

Poems certainly or almost certainly Cleveland's but not included in 1653 or 1677.

Poems, &c. I have been exceedingly chary of admission under this head, for there seems to me to be no reasonable via media between such severity and the complete reprinting of 1687-with perhaps the known larcenies in that and its originals left out. Thus, of eleven poems given-but as 'not in 1677'-by Mr. Berdan I have kept but three, besides one or two which, though not in 1677, are in 1653, and so appear above. Of these the Jonson Elegy from Jonsonus Virbius is signed, and as well authenticated as anything can be; News from Newcastle is quoted by Johnson and therefore of importance to students of the Lives. The Elegy upon Charles I is in 1654 among the poems which that collection adds to 1653, is very like him, and relieves Cleveland partly, if not wholly, from the charge of being wanting to the greatest occasion of his life and calling.

Poems certainly or almost certainly Cleveland's

but not included in 1653 or 1677.

An Elegy on Ben Jonson.

Who first reformed our stage with justest laws,

And was the first best judge in his own cause;

Who, when his actors trembled for applause,

Could (with a noble confidence) prefer

His own, by right, to a whole theatre;

From principles which he knew could not err:

Who to his fable did his persons fit,

With all the properties of art and wit,

And above all that could be acted, writ:

10Who public follies did to covert drive,

Which he again could cunningly retrive,

Leaving them no ground to rest on and thrive:

Here JONSON lies, whom, had I named before,

In that one word alone I had paid more

Than can be now, when plenty makes me poor.

J. Cl.

An Elegy, &c. Although this appears neither in 1653 nor in 1677, it is included, with some corruptions not worth noting, in some editions both before and after the latter. Gifford ascribed to Cleveland another unsigned Elegy in Jonsonus Virbius and one of the Odes to Ben Jonson on his own Ode to himself, 'Come, quit the loathèd stage'. There is no authority for the ascription in either case, and the styles of both pieces are as unlike as possible to Cleveland's.

2 Orig., by a slip, 'your own cause'. Cleveland may have meant to address the poet throughout, or till the last verse; but, if so, he evidently changed his mind.

News from Newcastle:

Upon the Coal-pits about Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

England 's a perfect world, has Indies too;

Correct your maps, Newcastle is Peru!

Let th' haughty Spaniard triumph till 'tis told

Our sooty min'rals purify his gold.

This will sublime and hatch the abortive ore,

When the sun tires and stars can do no more.

No! mines are current, unrefined, and gross;

Coals make the sterling, Nature but the dross.

For metals, Bacchus-like, two births approve;

10Heaven's heat 's the Semele, and ours the Jove.

Thus Art doth polish Nature; 'tis her trade:

So every madam has her chambermaid.

Who'd dote on gold? A thing so strange and odd,

'Tis most contemptible when made a god!

All sins and mischiefs thence have rise and swell;

One Indies more would make another Hell.

Our mines are innocent, nor will the North

Tempt poor mortality with too much worth.

Th' are not so precious; rich enough to fire

20A lover, yet make none idolater.

The moderate value of our guiltless ore

Makes no man atheist, nor no woman whore.

Yet why should hallowed Vesta's glowing shrine

Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?

These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,

Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire

No sun, but warm 's devotion at our fire.

He'd leave the trotting Whipster, and prefer

30This profound Vulcan 'bove that Wagoner.

For wants he heat, or light? would he have store

Of both? 'Tis here. And what can suns give more?

Nay, what 's that sun but, in a different name,

A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame?

Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The sun 's Heaven's coalery, and coals our sun;

A sun that scorches not, locked up i' th' deep;

The bandog 's chained, the lion is asleep.

That tyrant fire, which uncontrolled doth rage,

40Here 's calm and hushed, like Bajazet i' th' cage.

For in each coal-pit there doth couchant dwell

A muzzled Etna, or an innocent Hell.

Kindle the cloud, you'll lightning then descry;

Then will a day break from the gloomy sky;

Then you'll unbutton though December blow,

And sweat i' th' midst of icicles and snow;

The dog-days then at Christmas. Thus is all

The year made June and equinoctial.

If heat offend, our pits afford us shade,

50Thus summer 's winter, winter 's summer made.

What need we baths, what need we bower or grove?

A coal-pit's both a ventiduct and stove.

Such pits and caves were palaces of old;

Poor inns, God wot, yet in an age of gold;

And what would now be thought a strange design,

To build a house was then to undermine.

People lived under ground, and happy dwellers

Whose jovial habitations were all cellars!

These primitive times were innocent, for then

60Man, who turned after fox, but made his den.

But see a fleet of rivals trim and fine,

To court the rich infanta of our mine;

Hundreds of grim Leanders dare confront,

For this loved Hero, the loud Hellespont.

'Tis an armado royal doth engage

For some new Helen with this equipage;

Prepared too, should we their addresses bar,

To force their mistress with a ten years' war,

But that our mine 's a common good, a joy

70Made not to ruin but enrich our Troy.

Thus went those gallant heroes of old Greece,

The Argonauts, in quest o' th' Golden Fleece.

But oh! these bring it with 'em and conspire

To pawn that idol for our smoke and fire.

Silver 's but ballast; this they bring ashore

That they may treasure up our better ore.

For this they venter rocks and storms, defy

All the extremities of sea and sky.

For the glad purchase of this precious mould,

80Cowards dare pirates, misers part with gold.

Hence 'tis that when the doubtful ship sets forth

The knowing needle still directs it north,

And Nature's secret wonder, to attest

Our Indies' worth, discards both east and west.

For 'tis not only fire commends this spring,

A coal-pit is a mine of everything.

We sink a jack-of-all-trades shop, and sound

An inversed Burse, an Exchange under ground.

This Proteus earth converts to what you'd ha' 't:

90Now you may weave 't to silk, then coin 't to plate,

And, what 's a metamorphosis more dear,

Dissolve it and 'twill melt to London beer.

For whatsoe'er that gaudy city boasts,

Each month derives to these attractive coasts.

We shall exhaust their chamber and devour

Their treasures of Guildhall, the Mint, the Tower.

Our staiths their mortgaged streets will soon divide,

Blathon owe Cornhill, Stella share Cheapside.

Thus will our coal-pits' charity and pity

100At distance undermine and fire the City.

Should we exact, they'd pawn their wives and treat

To swap those coolers for our sovereign heat.

'Bove kisses and embraces fire controls;

No Venus heightens like a peck of coals.

Medea was the drudge of some old sire

And Aeson's bath a lusty sea-coal fire.

Chimneys are old men's mistresses, their inns,

A modern dalliance with their measled shins.

To all defects the coal-heap brings a cure,

110Gives life to age and raiment to the poor.

Pride first wore clothes; Nature disdains attire;

She made us naked 'cause she gave us fire.

Full wharfs are wardrobes, and the tailor's charm

Belongs to th' collier; he must keep us warm.

The quilted alderman with all 's array

Finds but cold comfort on a frosty day;

Girt, wrapped, and muffled, yet with all that stir

Scarce warm when smoth'red in his drowsy fur;

Not proof against keen Winter's batteries

120Should he himself wear all 's own liveries,

But chilblains under silver spurs bewails

And in embroid'red buckskins blows his nails.

Rich meadows and full crops are elsewhere found:

We can reap harvest from our barren ground.

The bald parched hills that circumscribe our Tyne

Are no less fruitful in their hungry mine.

Their unfledged tops so well content our palates,

We envy none their nosegays and their sallets.

A gay rank soil like a young gallant grows

130And spends itself that it may wear fine clothes,

Whilst all its worth is to its back confined.

Our wear 's plain outside, but is richly lined;

Winter 's above, 'tis summer underneath,

A trusty morglay in a rusty sheath.

As precious sables sometimes interlace

A wretched serge or grogram cassock case.

Rocks own no spring, are pregnant with no showers,

Crystals and gems grow there instead of flowers;

Instead of roses, beds of rubies sweat

140And emeralds recompense the violet.

Dame Nature not, like other madams, wears,

Where she is bare, pearls on her breasts or ears.

What though our fields present a naked sight?

A paradise should be an adamite.

The northern lad his bonny lass throws down

And gives her a black bag for a green gown.

News from Newcastle, if not Cleveland's, is infinitely more of a Clevelandism than any other attributed piece, either in the untrustworthy (or rather upside-down-trustworthy) Cleaveland Revived or elsewhere. It first appeared as a quarto pamphlet, 'London. Printed in the year 1651. By William Ellis', and with a headline to the poem 'Upon the Coalpits about Newcastle-upon-Tyne'. This quarto furnishes the only sound text. It was reprinted very corruptly in Cleaveland Revived, 1660, and thence in the editions of 1662, 1668, 1687, and later. A collation of 1660 is given. Title in 1660 'News from Newcastle, Or, Newcastle Coal-pits'. MS. Rawlinson Poet, 65 of the Bodleian has a version agreeing in the main with 1660.

1 has] hath 1660, MS.

5 'obortive' 1668.

7 1651, later texts, and MS. 'No mines', which has no meaning without a stop or interjection.

8 'nature's' MS.

10 'Heaven heats' 1660. The mine is the womb of Semele warmed by the sun: the furnace the thigh of Jove heated by coal.

11 her] the 1660: its MS.

12 has] hath 1660, MS.

15 'sin and mischief hence' 1660: 'sin and mischief thence' MS.

16 Indies] India 1660.

17 mines] times MS.

19 1660 'so': 1651 'too', unconsciously repeating the 'too much' of l. 18.

20 none] no MS.

22 Simply an adaptation of the earlier conclusion-

'Should make men atheists and not women whores'.

23 Vesta's glowing] Vestals' sacred 1660. shrine] shine MS.

29 trotting Whipster] Phoebus, of course.

30 This] Our 1660, MS.

31 light? would he] light, or would 1660. store] Misprinted 'more' in 1651.

32 suns] Sun MS.

33 that] the 1660.

34 on flame] or flame 1660.

36 coalery] Original and pleasing. 'Collier' is used below.

37 scorches] scorcheth 1660, MS.

38 bandog's] lion's 1660. lion] bandog 1660.

42 or] and MS.

43 the] this MS.

45 'Unbottom,' by evident error, in 1668.

47 Thus] Then MS.

49 'offends' 1660. 'affords' 1660.

60 but made] made but 1660, MS.

61 rivals] vitals 1660.

63 dare] do 1660.

68 their] this 1660, MS.

71-2 Omitted in 1660 and all later texts. 1651 misprints 'Argeuauts'.

73 'em] them 1660, MS.

75 ashore] on shore 1660, MS.

76 better] richer MS.

78 extremities] extremity 1660.

81 'tis that] is it 1660, MS.

82 knowing] naving 1660: knavish MS.

83 wonder] wonders 1660.

84 both] with MS.

85 For 'tis not] For Tyne. Not 1660 (without the period at l. 84), MS.

86 of] for 1660.

87 1651 mispunctuates with a comma at 'sink'; 1660 adds comma at 'jack-of-all-trades' and 'sound': MS. punctuates correctly.

88 inversed] inverse 1660.

89 you'd] you'l 1660.

90 weave 't] wear't 1660. then] now 1660. coin 't] com't 1660.

91 And] Or MS.

92 melt] turn 1660, MS.

93 boasts] boast 1660.

94 derives] doth drive 1660, MS. these] our 1660, MS. coasts] coast 1660.

96 treasures] treasure 1660, MS. the Mint, the] and mint o' th' 1660, MS.

97 staiths] Wooden erections projecting into the river, which were used to store the coal and fitted with spouts for shooting it into the ships. divide] deride 1660.

98 'Blathon their Cornhill, Stella' MS: 'Blazon their Cornhill-stella,' 1660.] Blathon, now Blaydon, the mining district. 'owe' = own. 'Stella' Hall, near Blaydon, was a nunnery before the Dissolution, when it passed into the hands of the Tempests. (Mr. Nichol Smith kindly supplied this information.)

102 swap] swop 1660.

105 drudge] drugge 1660, MS.

109 the] a 1659. brings] gives 1660, MS.

110 life] youth 1660.

113 tailor's] sailor's MS.

115 with] in 1660.

116 on] in 1660, MS.

117 that] this 1660.

119 Not] Nor'st MS. 'proof enough' 1651: 'enough' is omitted in 1660, and deleted by a seventeenth-century corrector in the Bodleian copy of 1651.

121 chilblains] chilblain 1660.

126 fruitful] pregnant 1660.

128 and] or MS.

134 Cleveland has used 'morglay', Bevis's sword, as a common noun elsewhere; but of course an imitator might seize on this.

138 grow] are 1660.

139 sweat] sweet 1668, 1687, MS.

142 on] in 1660. or] and 1660. 'breasts, not ears' MS.

145-6 Or as a modern Newcastle song, more decently but less picturesquely, puts it in the lass's own mouth-

'He sits in his hole,

As black as a coal,

And brings the white money to me-O!'

An Elegy upon King Charles the First,

murdered publicly by his Subjects.

Were not my faith buoyed up by sacred blood,

It might be drowned in this prodigious flood;

Which reason's highest ground doth so exceed,

It leaves my soul no anch'rage but my creed;

Where my faith, resting on th' original,

Supports itself in this, the copy's fall.

So while my faith floats on that bloody wood,

My reason 's cast away in this red flood

Which near o'erflows us all. Those showers past

10Made but land-floods, which did some valleys waste.

This stroke hath cut the only neck of land

Which between us and this red sea did stand,

That covers now our world which curséd lies

At once with two of Egypt's prodigies

(O'ercast with darkness and with blood o'errun),

And justly since our hearts have theirs outdone.

Th' enchanter led them to a less known ill

To act his sin, than 'twas their king to kill;

Which crime hath widowed our whole nation,

20Voided all forms, left but privation

In Church and State; inverting every right;

Brought in Hell's state of fire without light.

No wonder then if all good eyes look red,

Washing their loyal hearts from blood so shed;

The which deserves each pore should turn an eye

To weep out even a bloody agony.

Let nought then pass for music but sad cries,

For beauty bloodless cheeks and blood-shot eyes.

All colours soil but black; all odours have

30Ill scent but myrrh, incens'd upon this grave.

It notes a Jew not to believe us much

The cleaner made by a religious touch

Of this dead body, whom to judge to die

Seems the Judaical impiety.

To kill the King, the Spirit Legion paints

His rage with law, the Temple and the saints.

But the truth is, he feared and did repine

To be cast out and back into the swine.

And the case holds, in that the Spirit bends

40His malice in this act against his ends;

For it is like the sooner he'll be sent

Out of that body he would still torment.

Let Christians then use otherwise this blood;

Detest the act, yet turn it to their good;

Thinking how like a King of Death he dies

We easily may the world and death despise.

Death had no sting for him and its sharp arm,

Only of all the troop, meant him no harm.

And so he looked upon the axe as one

50Weapon yet left to guard him to his throne.

In his great name then may his subjects cry,

'Death, thou art swallowed up in victory.'

If this, our loss, a comfort can admit,

'Tis that his narrowed crown is grown unfit

For his enlargéd head, since his distress

Had greatened this, as it made that the less.

His crown was fallen unto too low a thing

For him who was become so great a king.

So the same hands enthroned him in that crown

60They had exalted from him, not pulled down.

And thus God's truth by them hath rendered more

Than e'er man's falsehood promised to restore;

Which, since by death alone he could attain,

Was yet exempt from weakness and from pain.

Death was enjoined by God to touch a part,

Might make his passage quick, ne'er move his heart,

Which even expiring was so far from death

It seemed but to command away his breath.

And thus his soul, of this her triumph proud,

70Broke like a flash of lightning through the cloud

Of flesh and blood; and from the highest line

Of human virtue, passed to be divine.

Nor is 't much less his virtues to relate

Than the high glories of his present state.

Since both, then, pass all acts but of belief,

Silence may praise the one, the other grief.

And since upon the diamond no less

Than diamonds will serve us to impress,

I'll only wish that for his elegy

80This our Josias had a Jeremy.

An Elegy, &c. See above. First printed in Monumentum Regale, 1649, p. 49; then in the 1654 edition of Cleveland.

3 1654, 1657, 1669 'doth'. Other (it is true inferior) texts, such as 1659, 1665, and the successors of 1677, 'do': which any one who has ever read his Pepys must know to be possible in the singular.

33 'this' 1649: 'their' 1653 and later editions.

35: paints = 'tries to disguise'.

Since these sheets were last revised, and when they were ready for press, Mr. Simpson discovered and communicated to me some variants (from Bodley MSS.) of Cleveland's pieces on Chadderton (v. sup. p. 81) and Williams (p. 69). His note is as follows:

"There is a version of the Elegy upon Doctor Chadderton (page 81) in Ashmole MS. 36-7, fol. 263. After l. 14 four lines are inserted:

We thought, for so we would it have,

Thou hadst outlived death and the grave,

Hadst been past dying, and by thine own

Brave virtue been immortal grown.

Not very brilliant, but no one would have any motive for interpolating such lines. Further, ll. 17-18 are omitted.

25 'dear Snt.' i.e. as conjectured in the note, 'Saint.'

30 'Kend' written in a larger hand, with a view to emphasis. Query, a favourite word of Chadderton?

In the same MS. is a version of the poem on Archbishop Williams (p. 69). Most readings are bad, but the following are noteworthy:

4 concorporate one.

11 And vindicate whate'er.

55 when happier ages (which of late

The viper cherish'd) with unpartial fate."

***

POEMS

AND

TRANSLATIONS.

BY

THOMAS STANLEY

Esquire.

Qu? mea culpa tamen, nisi si lusisse vocari

Culpa potest: nisi culpa potest & amasse, vocari?

Tout vient a poinct qui peut attendre.

Printed for the Author,

and his Friends, 1647.

Cover

POEMS,

BY

THOMAS STANLEY

Esquire.

Qu? mea culpa tamen, nisi si lusisse vocari

Culpa potest: nisi culpa potest & amasse, vocari?

Printed in the Year,