The meat-boat of bear's college, Paris-garden,
Stunk not so ill; nor, when she kissed, Kate Arden.
Yet one day in the year for sweet 'tis voiced,
And that is when it is the Lord Mayor's foist.

By this time had they reached the Stygian pool
By which the masters swear, when, on the stool
Of worship, they their nodding chins do hit
Against their breasts. Here, several ghosts did flit,
About the shore, of farts but late departed,
White, black, blue, green, and in more forms out-
Than all those atomi ridiculous,

[started,

Whereof old Democrite, and Hill Nicholas,*
One said, the other swore, the world consists.
These be the cause of those thick frequent mists
Arising in that place, through which, who goes,
Must try the unused valour of a nose :

And that ours did. For yet, no nare † was tainted,
Nor thumb, nor finger, to the stop acquainted,
But open, and unarmed, encountered all:
Whether it languishing stuck upon the wall,
Or were precipitated down the jakes,
And after, swam abroad in ample flakes,
Or that it lay heaped like an usurer's mass,
All was to them the same, they were to pass,
And so they did, from Styx to Acheron,
The ever-boiling flood; whose banks upon
Fair Fleet-lane furies, and hot cooks do dwell,
That with still-scalding steams make the place hell.
The sinks ran grease, and hair of measled hogs,
The heads, houghs, entrails, and the hides of dogs;
For, to say truth, what scullion is so nasty
To put the skins and offal in a pasty?

to the great lumbering lighter which obstructed the course of the wherry.

*Nicholas Hill, a fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, who, according to Antony Wood, adopted the notions of Democritus about atoma, and was a great patron of the Corpuscular philosophy.

† Nose; from nares.

Cats there lay, divers had been flayed and roasted,
And after mouldy grown, again were toasted;
Then, selling not, a dish was ta'en to mince them,
But still, it seemed, the rankness did convince 'em.
For here they were thrown in with the melted pewter,
Yet drowned they not; they had five lives in future.
But 'mongst these tiberts,* who do you think there
Old Banks, the juggler, one Pythagoras, [was?
Grave tutor to the learned horse; both which
Being, beyond sea, burned for one witch,t
Their spirits transmigrated to a cat,
And now, above the pool, a face right fat,
With great grey eyes, it lifted up, and mewed;
Thrice did it spit; thrice dived; at last it viewed

* Cats were called tiberts, or tyberts, of which there is an early example in the story of Reynard the Fox. Shakspeare plays upon the name of Tybalt, from its atlinity to the name given to the cats, and makes Mercutio call him rat-catcher' and 'king of cats. The modern name tabby is, apparently, a descendant of tibert.

+ Banks and his famous horse Marocco, whom he taught to dance and perform a variety of feats, are frequently alluded to by the writers of the time, and had the honour of being specially mentioned by Sir Walter Raleigh in his History of the World. Shakspeare is supposed to refer to Marocco, as the dancing horse' in Love's Labour Lost; but dancing was one of the least of his acquirements. Banks taught him a variety of tricks; and one of his most notable feats was an ascent to the top of St. Paul's. Dekker speaks of this achievement in his Gull's Horn-book: Hence you may descend, to talk about the horse that went up; and strive, if you can, to know his keeper; take the day of the month, and the number of the steps; and suffer yourself to believe verily that it was not a horse, but something else in the likeness of one.' It appears from a passage in the Owle's Almanack (1618) quoted by Nares, that this feat was performed in 1601: 'Since the dancing-horse stood on the top of Powles, whilst a number of asses stood braying below, 17 years.' In consequence of the marvellous stories related about this remarkable horse, poor Banks was considered by many people to be in league with the devil. Carrying his exhibition to Paris, he was there imprisoned, and the horse put under sequestration, upon a suspicion of magic, but liberated when it was shown that the whole was the result of mere training, Banks offering to teach any horse to perform similar feats within a twelvemonth. At Rome, however, his explanations were of no avail; and when he appeared in the Holy City, he was seized, and he and his horse werc burned for witchcraft.

Our brave heroes with a milder glare,
And, in a piteous tune, began: 'How dare
Your dainty nostrils, in so hot a season,
When every clerk eats artichokes and peason,
Laxative lettuce, and such windy meat,
Tempt such a passage? when each privy's seat
Is filled with buttock, and the walls do sweat
Urine and plasters, when the noise doth beat
Upon your ears, of discords so unsweet,
And outcries of the damned in the Fleet?
Cannot the plague-bill keep you back, nor bells
Of loud Sepulchre's, with their hourly knells,
But you will visit grisly Pluto's hall?

Behold where Cerberus, reared on the wall
Of Holborn-height (three sergeants' heads) looks o'er
And stays but till you come unto the door?
Tempt not his fury, Pluto is away;

And Madame Cæsar, great Proserpina,

Is now from home; you lose your labours quite,
Were you Jove's sons, or had Alcides' might.'

They cried out, 'Puss!' He told them he was Banks,
That had so often showed them merry pranks;

They laughed at his laugh-worthy fate; and passed
The triple-head without a sop. At last,
Calling for Rhadamanthus, that dwelt by,
A soap-boiler; and acus him nigh,

Who kept an ale-house; with my little Minos,
An ancient pur-blind fletcher,* with a high-nose;
They took them all, to witness of their action,
And so went bravely back without protraction.
In memory of which most liquid deed,
The city since hath raised a pyramid;
And I could wish for their eternized sakes,
My muse had ploughed with his that sung A-jax.t

* An arrow maker-the person who put on the feather. From flèche, an arrow.

† Sir John Harrington, who wrote a treatise called Misacmos; or, the Metamorphosis of Ajax.

The Forest.*

1. WHY I WRITE NOT OF LOVE.

SOME act of Love's bound to rehearse,
I thought to bind him in my verse;
Which, when he felt, Away!' quoth he,
'Can poets hope to fetter me?
It is enough they once did get
Mars and my mother in their net;
I wear not these my wings in vain.'
With which he fled me; and again
Into my rhymes could ne'er be got
By any art. Then wonder not
That, since, my numbers are so cold,
When Love is fled, and I grow old.

II. TO PENSHURST.†

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row
Of polished pillars or a roof of gold:
Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told;
Or stair, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile,
And these grudged at, are reverenced the while.
Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air,
Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.
Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport:
Thy mount, to which thy Dryads do resort,

* The text is printed from the folio of 1616.

†The seat of the Sidneys; afterwards rendered famous by Waller as the residence of Saccharissa.

Whalley says that touch was the common kind of black marble used in funeral monuments. This is an error; touch was a term applied to costly marble, which is clearly the sense in which it is here employed. Its original and proper application was to the basanites of the Greeks, a hard black marble, which, being used as a test of gold, was hence called touch-stone.

Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made,
Beneath the broad beech and the chesnut shade;
That taller tree, which of a nut was set,

At his great birth, where all the muses met.*
There, in the writhèd bark, are cut the names
Of many a sylvan taken with his flames;
And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke
The lighter fauns to reach thy lady's oak.t
Thy copse, too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,
That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer,
When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends;
The lower land, that to the river bends,

Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;
The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed;
Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops
Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney's copps,
To crown thy open table, doth provide
The purpled pheasant, with the speckled side;
The painted partridge lies in every field,
And for thy mess is willing to be killed;
And if the high-swoln Medway fail thy dish,
Thou hast the ponds that pay thee tribute fish,
Fat agèd carps that run into thy net,
And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,
As loth the second draught or cast to stay,
Officiously at first, themselves betray;
Bright eels that emulate them, leap on land,
Before the fisher, or into his hand.

Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours:
The early cherry, with the later plum,

Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;

* Sir Philip Sidney.

There is an old tradition that a Lady Leicester (the wife undoubtedly of Sir Robert Sidney) was taken in travail under an oak in Penshurst Park, which was afterwards called my lady's oak.'-G.

In this copse, Barbara Gamage, the first wife of Sir Robert Sidney, used to take great delight in feeding the deer from her own hands. Hence the copse was called Lady Gamage's bower.