Lucasta [80]
is concentred in our state: Vandall ore-runners, Goths in literature: Ploughmen that would Parnassus new-manure; Ringers of verse that all-in-chime, And toll the changes upon every rime. A mercer now by th' yard does measure ore An ode, which was but by the foot before; Deals you an ell of epigram, and swears It is the strongest and the finest wears. No wonder, if a drawer verses rack, If 'tis not his, 't may be the spir't of sack; Whilst the fair bar-maid stroaks the muses teat, For milk to make the posset up compleat. Arise, thou rev'rend shade, great Johnson, rise! Break through thy marble natural disguise! Behold a mist of insects, whose meer breath Will melt thy hallow'd leaden house of death. What was Crispinus,<90.24> that you should defie The age for him?<90.25> He durst not look so high As your immortal rod, he still did stand Honour'd, and held his forehead to thy brand. These scorpions, with which we have to do, Are fiends, not only small but deadly too. Well mightst thou rive thy quill up to the back, And scrue thy lyre's grave chords, untill they crack. For though once hell resented musick, these Divels will not, but are in worse disease. How would thy masc'line spirit, father Ben, Sweat to behold basely deposed men, Justled from the prerog'tive of their bed, Whilst wives are per'wig'd with their husbands head? Each snatches the male quill from his faint hand, And must both nobler write and understand, He to her fury the soft plume doth bow: O pen, nere truely justly slit till now! Now as her self a poem she doth dresse. And curls a line, as she would do a tresse; Powders a sonnet as she does her hair, Then prostitutes them both to publick aire. Nor is 't enough, that they their faces blind With a false dye; but they must paint their mind, In meeter scold, and in scann'd order brawl, Yet there's one Sapho<90.26> left may save them all. But now let me recal my passion. Oh! (from a noble father, nobler son) You, that alone are the Clarissimi, And the whole gen'rous state of Venice be, It shall not be recorded Sanazar Shall boast inthron'd alone this new made star; You, whose correcting sweetnesse hath forbad Shame to the good, and glory to the bad; Whose honour hath ev'n into vertue tam'd These swarms, that now so angerly I nam'd. Forgive what thus distemper'd I indite: For it is hard a SATYRE not to write. Yet, as a virgin that heats all her blood At the first motion of bad<90.27> understood, Then, at meer thought of fair chastity, Straight cools again the tempests of her sea: So when to you I my devotions raise, All wrath and storms do end in calm and praise.
<90.1> Louis XI. of France was the prince here intended. See MERY TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, No. 23 (ed. Hazlitt). I fear that if Lovelace had derived his knowledge of this incidentrom the little work mentioned, he would have been still more sarcastic; for Louis, in the TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, is made to give, not 500 crowns for a turnip, but 1000 crowns for a radish.
<90.2> Perhaps Lovelace is rather too severe on Sannazaro. That writer is said to have occupied twenty years in the composition of his poem on the Birth of the Saviour, for which he probably did not receive a sixth part of the sum paid to him for his hexastic on Venice; and so he deserved this little windfal, which came out of the pocket of a Government rich enough to pay it ten times over. See Corniano's VITA DI JACOPO SANNAZARO, prefixed to the edition of his ARCADIA, published at Milan in 1806. Amongst the translations printed at the end of LUCASTA, and which it seems very likely were among the earliest poetical essays of Lovelace, is this very epigram of Sannazaro. As in the case of THE ANT, I have little doubt that the satire was suggested by the translation.
<90.3> The battle of Lepanto, in which Don John of Austria and the Venetians defeated the Turks, 1571.
<90.4> The Turkish crescent.
<90.5> Close, or shut up.
<90.6> i.e. write as a means of subsistence.
<90.7> Unrefined.
<90.8> Flay, excoriate.
<90.9> Original reads ALL MARKS.
<90.10>
<90.1> Louis XI. of France was the prince here intended. See MERY TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, No. 23 (ed. Hazlitt). I fear that if Lovelace had derived his knowledge of this incident
<90.2> Perhaps Lovelace is rather too severe on Sannazaro. That writer is said to have occupied twenty years in the composition of his poem on the Birth of the Saviour, for which he probably did not receive a sixth part of the sum paid to him for his hexastic on Venice; and so he deserved this little windfal, which came out of the pocket of a Government rich enough to pay it ten times over. See Corniano's VITA DI JACOPO SANNAZARO, prefixed to the edition of his ARCADIA, published at Milan in 1806. Amongst the translations printed at the end of LUCASTA, and which it seems very likely were among the earliest poetical essays of Lovelace, is this very epigram of Sannazaro. As in the case of THE ANT, I have little doubt that the satire was suggested by the translation.
<90.3> The battle of Lepanto, in which Don John of Austria and the Venetians defeated the Turks, 1571.
<90.4> The Turkish crescent.
<90.5> Close, or shut up.
<90.6> i.e. write as a means of subsistence.
<90.7> Unrefined.
<90.8> Flay, excoriate.
<90.9> Original reads ALL MARKS.
<90.10>