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Or, mounted on a stool, thy face doth hit
On some new gesture, that's imputed wit?
O, run not proud of this. Yet take thy due.
Thou dost out-zany Cokely, Pod; nay, Gue:
And thine own Coryat too; but,—would'st thou see,
Men love thee not for this;. they laugh at thee.

CXXX.

TO ALPHONSO FERRABOSCO, ON HIS BOOK. 8

O urge, my loved Alphonso, that bold fame
Of building towns, and making wild beasts

tame,

Which music had; or speak her own effects,
That she removeth cares, sadness ejects,
Declineth anger, persuades clemency,
Doth sweeten mirth, and heighten piety,
And is to a body, often, ill inclined,
No less a sovereign cure, than to the mind;
T'allege, that greatest men were not asham'd,
Of old, even by her practice to be fam'd;

8 To Alphonso Ferrabosco, on his book.] This person, descended of Italian parents, was born at Greenwich in Kent: he was much admired, both at home and abroad, for his excellent compositions, and fancies, as they were then called, in music; he was principally employed in setting the songs to music in our poet's masques. WHAL.

Jonson appears to have had an extraordinary regard and affection for this excellent composer. He delights to mention him upon all occasions; and in the Masque of Hymen, hurried away by his feelings, he interrupts the strain of applause in which he was describing Alphonso's exertions, with a genuine burst of tenderness, "Virtuous friend! take well this abrupt testimony: It cannot be flattery in me, who never did it to great ones; and less than love and truth it is not where it is done out of knowledge!"

The learned reader will observe that Jonson had in view Horace's admirable description of the office of the ancient Chorus, in the opening of this epigram.

To say indeed, she were the soul of heaven,
That the eighth sphere, no less than planets seven,
Moved by her order, and the ninth more high,
Including all, were thence call'd harmony;
I yet had utter'd nothing on thy part,
When these were but the praises of the art :
But when I have said, the proofs of all these be
Shed in thy songs; 'tis true: but short of thee.

CXXXI.

TO THE SAME.9

HEN we do give, Alphonso, to the light,
A work of ours, we part with our own right;
For then, all mouths will judge, and their

own way:

The learn'd have no more privilege than the lay.
And though we could all men, all censures hear,
We ought not give them taste we had an ear.
For if the humorous world will talk at large,
They should be fools, for me, at their own charge.
Say this or that man they to thee prefer;

Even those for whom they do this, know they err :

9 TO THE SAME.] The "Book" from which the composer probably expected a large harvest of praise seems to have met with some ungentle critic, and Jonson writes this sensible and manly epigram to his friend, to qualify the excess of his disappointment and mortification. I know not the person meant, unless it be Morley, who is mentioned as dissatisfied with some of his compositions by Peacham :-but I will give the passage:

"Alphonso Ferrabosco the father, while he lived, for judgment and depth of skill, as also his son now living, was inferior to none. What he did was most elaborate and profound, and pleasing in aire; though master Thomas Morley censureth him otherwise. That of his, I saw my ladie weeping, and the Nightingale, upon which dittie master Bird and he in a friendly emulation exercised their invention, cannot be bettered for sweetnesse of aire, or depth of judgment." Compleat Gent. 1622.

And would (being ask'd the truth) ashamed say,
They were not to be nam'd on the same day.
Then stand unto thyself, nor seek without
For fame, with breath soon kindled, soon blown out.

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F to admire were to commend, my praise
Might then both thee, thy work and merit
raise :

But as it is, (the child of ignorance,
And utter stranger to all air of France,)

To Mr. Joshua Silvester.] His translation of the French poem of Du Bartas on the Creation, was esteemed to be well done; but he had little genius or invention of his own. In a censure of the poets, ascribed to Drayton, we have his character given in the following verses :

"And Silvester, who, from the French more weak,

Made Bartas of his six days labour speak

In natural English: who, had he there stay'd,
He had done well; and never had bewray'd

His own invention to have been so poor,

Who still wrote less, in striving to write more."

WHAL.

This epigram was written some years before the folio 1616 appeared, being prefixed to the 4to. edition of Silvester's Du Bartas, which came out in 1605. Jonson declares his ignorance of French, so that his praise must be confined to the poetical merits of the translator, who was pretty generally supposed to have gone beyond his original. When Jonson became acquainted with the French language, and was able to compare the two works, he then discovered, as he told Drummond, that Silvester had not been sufficiently faithful: this censure, however, must be understood with a reference to his own ideas of translation, and we know what they were, from the majority of his professed versions.

Ritson appears to have strangely misunderstood the passage in Drummond. He says, it was Ben Jonson's opinion, "that Silvester's translation of Du Bartas was not well done, and that he wrote his verses before he understood to confer." Bibliographica Poetica,

How can I speak of thy great pains, but err?
Since they can only judge, that can confer.
Behold! the reverend shade of Bartas stands
Before my thought, and, in thy right, commands
That to the world I publish for him, this;
Bartas doth wish thy English now were his.
So well in that are his inventions wrought,
As his will now be the translation thought,
Thine the original; and France shall boast,
No more those maiden glories she hath lost.

N

CXXXIII.

ON THE FAMOUS VOYAGE.2

O more let Greece her bolder fables tell
Of Hercules, or Theseus going to hell,
Orpheus, Ulysses; or the Latin muse,
With tales of Troy's just knight, our faiths abuse.

p. 356. But the HE refers to Jonson not to Silvester, whose knowledge of French was never questioned.

The translation is now little known: an unlucky quotation of Dryden,

Nor, with Du Bartas, "bridle up the floods'

And "periwig with wool the baldpate woods,"

serves as an apology for consigning it to ridicule and neglect ; Silvester wanted taste rather than poetry, and he has many shining passages. Goffe, who had a marvellous love for uncouth and extravagant phraseology, has imitated the line above, with noble emulation, in his Courageous Turke:

"Who set the world on flame? How now, ye heavens,

Grow you so proud as to put on curl'd lockes,

And clothe yourselves in periwigs of fire!"

2 Of this "Voyage," undertaken, as I have already observed, in a mad frolic, and celebrated in no very sane one, I shall only say that more humour and poetry are wasted on it than it deserves. As a picture of a populous part of London, it is not without some interest, and might admit of a few remarks; but I dislike the sub

We have a Shelton, and a Heyden got,3
Had power to act, what they to feign had not.
All that they boast of Styx, of Acheron,

Cocytus, Phlegethon, ours have proved in one;
The filth, stench, noise: save only what was there
Subtly distinguish'd, was confused here.

Their wherry had no sail too; ours had ne'er one :
And in it, two more horrid knaves than Charon.
Arses were heard to croak instead of frogs;
And for one Cerberus, the whole coast was dogs.
Furies there wanted not; each scold was ten,
And for the cries of ghosts, women and men,
Laden with plague-sores, and their sins, were heard,
Lash'd by their consciences, to die affeard.
Then let the former age with this content her,
She brought the poets forth, but ours th' adventer.

THE VOYAGE ITSELF.

SING the brave adventure of two wights,
And pity 'tis, I cannot call them knights:
One was; and he for brawn and brain right
able

To have been styled of king Arthur's table.
The other was a squire, of fair degree;
But, in the action, greater man than he,
Who gave, to take at his return from hell,
His three for one. Now, lordlings, listen well.

ject, and shall therefore leave the reader, who will not follow my example, and pass lightly over it, to the annotations of Whalley.

3 We have a Shelton and a Heyden got.] The names of the persons who embarked in this enterprize. The first, I suppose, is sir Ralph Shelton, to whom the 119th epigram is addressed. The latter is probably sir Christopher Heyden, to whom Davis, in his Scourge of Folly, p. 191, addresses an epigram. WHAL.

Yet Jonson says, in the opening of the Voyage, that the "latter" was a squire.

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