Such as your Tully lately dressed in verse,
Like those he made himself, or not much worse;
And Seneca's dry sand unmixed with lime,
Such as you cheat the king with, botched in rhyme.†
Nor were your morals less improved; all pride
And native insolence quite laid aside;
And that ungoverned outrage, that was wont
All, that you durst with safety, to affront;
No China cupboard rudely overthrown;
Nor lady tipped, by being accosted, down;
No poet jeered, for scribbleing amiss,
With verses forty times more lewd than his;+
Nor did your crutch give battle to your duns,
And hold it out, where you had built a sconce;
Nor furiously laid orange-wench aboard,
For asking what in fruit and love you 'ad scored;
But all civility and complacence,
More than you ever used, before or since.
Beside, you never over-reached the king
One farthing, all the while, in reckoning,
Nor brought in false account, with little tricks
Of passing broken rubbish for whole bricks;
False mustering of workmen by the day,
Deduction out of
For those that never lived; all which did come,
By thrifty management, to no small sum. §
* Alluding to Denham's translation, or paraphrase of TULLY de Senectute; a piece of which Dr. Johnson says that it has neither the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.'
†This alludes to what Caligula is recorded by Suetonius to have said of Seneca:-'Lenius comptiusque scribendi genus adeo contemnens, ut Senecam tum maxime placentem, commissiones meras componere, et arenam sine calce esse diceret.'-Vid SUETONII Calig.-T.
There are some prurient passages in Denham's poems; but none that answer to this description.
§ Denham succeeded Inigo Jones in the lucrative office of Surveyor of the king's buildings. Aubrey says, on the authority of Sir Christopher Wren, who was Denham's deputy, that in this situation, which he held till his death, Denham made £7000. The charge insinuated by Butler, that he enriched himself by making false entries in his accounts, cannot be considered entitled to credit. There may have
You pulled no lodgings down, to build them worse;
Nor repaired others, to repair your purse,
As you were wont; till all you built appeared
Like that, Amphion with his fiddle reared:
For had the stones, like his, charmed by your verse
Built up themselves, they could not have done worse:
And, sure, when first you ventured to survey,
You did design to do't no other way.
All this was done before those days began,
In which you were a wise and happy man;
For who e'er lived in such a paradise,
Until fresh straw and darkness oped your eyes?
Who ever greater treasure could command,
Had nobler palaces, and richer land,
Than you had then, who could raise sums as vast,
As all the cheats of a Dutch war could waste,
Or all those practised upon public money?
For nothing, but your cure, could have undone ye.
For ever are you bound to curse those quacks,
That undertook to cure your happy cracks;
For though no art can ever make them sound,
The tampering cost you threescore thousand pound.
How high might you have lived, and played, and lost,
Yet been no more undone by being choused,
Nor forced upon the king's account to lay
All that, in serving him, you lost at play ?*
For nothing, but your brain, was ever found
To suffer sequestration, and compound.
Yet you've an imposition laid on brick,
For all you then laid out, at beast or gleek,†
been some story of that kind current at the time, but it is not mentioned by any of Denham's contemporaries.
* Denham was an inveterate gambler. His passion for cards and dice showed itself at college. When he had played away all his money,' says Aubrey,' he would play away his father's wrought caps with gold.' This fatal propensity, by which he lost large sums of money, exercised a strong influence over him for many years of his life, notwithstanding many penitent resolutions. It was the vice of
† Fashionable games at cards.
And, when you've raised a sum, straight let it fly,
By understanding low, and venturing high;
Until you have reduced it down to tick,
And then recruit again from lime and brick.
PROLOGUE TO THE QUEEN OF ARRAGON.*
ACTED BEFORE THE DUKE OF YORK, UPON HIS BIRTH-DAY.
while so many nations strive to pay
The tribute of their glories to this day,
That gave them earnest of so great a sum
Of glory, from your future acts, to come;
And which you have discharged at such a rate,
That all succeeding times must celebrate;
We, that subsist by your bright influence,
And have no life, but what we own from thence,
Come humbly to present you, our own way,
With all we have, beside our hearts, a play.
But as devoutest men can pay no more
To deities, than what they gave before;
We bring you only, what your great commands
Did rescue for us from engrossing hands,
That would have taken out administration
Of all departed poets' goods i' th' nation;
Or, like to lords of manors, seized all plays,
That come within their reach, as wefts and strays;
And claimed a forfeiture of all past wit,
But that your justice put a stop to it.
'Twas well for us, who else must have been glad
T'admit of all, who now write new,
and bad;
For still the wickeder some authors write,
Others to write worse are encouraged by't.
* A Tragi-Comedy, by William Habingdon, the author of Castara; 1640. It is in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ix.
And though those fierce inquisitors of wit,
The critics, spare no flesh that ever writ;
But, just as tooth-drawers find among the rout
Their own teeth work in pulling others out,
So they, decrying all of all that write,
Think to erect a trade of judging by't.
Small poetry, like other heresies,
By being persecuted multiplies;
But here they're like to fail of all pretence;
For he that writ this play is dead long since,
And not within their power; for bears are said
Το spare those that lie still, and seem but dead.
MADAM, the joys of this great day are due,
No less than to your royal lord, to you;
And, while three mighty kingdoms pay your part,
You have, what's greater than them all, his heart;
That heart, that, when it was his country's guard,
The fury of two elements out-dared,
And made a stubborn haughty enemy
The terror of his dreadful conduct fly;
And yet you conquered it—and made your charms
Appear no less victorious, than his arms:
For which you oft have triumphed on this day,
And many more to come Heaven grant you may.
But, as great princes use, in solemn times
Of joy, to pardon all but heinous crimes,
If we have sinned, without an ill intent,
And done below what really we meant,
We humbly ask your pardon for't, and pray
You would forgive, in honour of the day.
TO HIS MISTRESS.
Do not unjustly blame
My guiltless breast,
For venturing to disclose a flame
It had so long suppressed.
In its own ashes it designed
For ever to have lain,
But that my sighs, like blasts of wind,
Made it break out again.
TO THE SAME.
Do not mine affection slight,
'Cause my locks with age are white:
Your breasts have snow without, and snow within, While flames of fire in your bright eyes are seen.
S misers their own laws enjoin
To wear no pockets in the mine,
For fear they should the ore purloin :
So he that toils and labours hard
To gain, and what he gets has spared,
Is from the use of all debarred.
And though he can produce more spankers
Than all the usurers and bankers,
Yet after more and more he hankers;
And after all his pains are done,
Has nothing he can call his own,
But a mere livelihood alone.
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