The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (10 page)

You, goodman wanderer about the world, how do ye spend your time, that you do not rid us of these pestilent members? You are unworthy to have an office if you can execute it no better. Behold another enemy of mankind, besides thyself, exalted in the South, Philip of Spain; who, not content to be the god of gold and chiefest commander of content that Europe affords, but now he doth nothing but thirst after human blood, when his foot is on the threshold of the grave. And as a wolf, being about to devour a horse, doth ballast his belly with earth that he may hang the heavier upon him, and then forcibly flies in his face, never leaving his hold till he hath eaten him up; so this wolvish, unnatural usurper, being about to devour all Christendom by invasion, doth cram his treasures with Indian earth to make his malice more forcible, and then flies in the
bosom of France and Belgia, never withdrawing his forces, as the wolf his fastening, till he hath devoured their welfare, and made the war-wasted carcases of both kingdoms a prey for his tyranny. Only poor England gives him bread for his cake,
¹⁶⁴
and holds him out at the arm's end. His Armadoes, that like a high wood overshadowed the shrubs of our low ships, fled from the breath of our cannons, as vapours before the sun, or as the elephant flies from the ram, or the sea-whale from the noise of parched bones. The winds, envying that the air should be dimmed with such a chaos of wooden clouds, raised up high bulwarks of bellowing waves, whence death shot at their disordered navy; and the rocks with their overhanging jaws eat up all the fragments of oak that they left So perished our foes; so the heavens did fight for us.
Præterit Hippomenes, resonant spectacula plausu
.
¹⁶⁵

I do not doubt, Doctor Devil, but you were present in this action, or passion rather, and helped to bore holes in ships to make them sink faster, and rinse out galley-foists with salt water, that stunk like fusty barrels with their masters' fear. It will be a good while ere you do as much for the king, as you did for his subjects. I would have ye persuade an army of gouty usurers to go to sea upon a boon voyage. Try if you can tempt Envy to embark himself in the maladventure and leave troubling the stream, that poets and good fellows may drink, and soldiers may sing
Placebo
,
¹⁶⁶
that have murmured so long at the waters of strife.

But that will never be; for so long as Pride, Riot, and Whoredom are the companions of young courtiers, they will always be hungry and ready to bite at every dog that hath a bone given him beside themselves. Jesu, what secret grudge and rancour reigns amongst them, one being ready to despair of himself if he see the Prince but give his fellow
a fair look, or to die for grief if he be put down in bravery
¹⁶⁷
never so little. Yet this custom have our false hearts fetched from other countries, that they will swear and protest love, where they hate deadly, and smile on him most kindly, whose subversion in soul they have vowed.
Fraus siblimi regnat in aula:
¹⁶⁸
‘tis rare to find a true friend in kings' palaces. Either thou must be so miserable that thou fall into the hands of scornful pity, or thou canst not escape the sting of envy. In one thought assemble the famous men of all ages, and tell me which of them all sat in the sunshine of his sovereign's grace, or waxed great of low beginnings, but he was spite-blasted, heaved at, and ill spoken of; and that of those that bare them most countenance.

Murder the Companion of Envy

But were Envy nought but words, it might seem to be only women's sin; but it hath a lewd mate hanging on his sleeve, called Murder, a stern fellow, that, like a Spaniard in fight, aimeth all at the heart. He hath more shapes than Proteus, and will shift himself upon any occasion of revengement into a man's dish, his drink, his apparel, his rings, his stirrups, his nosegay.

O Italy,
*
the academy of manslaughter, the sporting place of murder, the apothecary-shop of poison for all nations; how many kind of weapons hast thou invented for malice? Suppose I love a man's wife, whose husband yet lives, and cannot enjoy her for his jealous overlooking: physic, or rather the art of murder, as it may be used, will lend one a medicine, which shall make him away, in the nature of that disease he is most subject to, whether in the space of a year, a month, half a year, or what tract of time you will, more or less.

The Pasquil that was made upon this Last Pope

In Rome the papal chair is washed, every five year at the furthest, with this oil of aconitum. I pray God, the King of Spain feasted not our holy father Sextus,
¹⁶⁹
that was last, with such conserve of henbane; for it was credibly reported he loved him not, and this that is now, is a god made with his own hands; as it may appear by the pasquil
¹⁷⁰
that was set up of him, in manner of a note, presently after his election,
Sol, Re, Me, Fa
, that is to say,
Solus Rex me facit;
‘only the King of Spain made me Pope.' I am no chronicler of our own country, but if probable suspicion might be heard upon his oath I think some men's souls would not be canonized for martyrs, that on the earth did sway it as monarchs.
*

Is it your will and pleasure, noble Lantsgrave of Limbo, to let us have less carousing to your health in poison, fewer underhand conspirings, or open quarrels executed only in words, as they are in the world nowadays: and if men will needs carouse, conspire, and quarrel, that they may make Ruffians' Hall
¹⁷¹
of hell, and there bandy balls of brimstone at one another's head, and not trouble our peacable paradise with their private hurly-burlies about strumpets; where no weapon, as in Adam's Paradise, should be named, but only the angel of Providence stand with a fiery sword at the gate, to keep out our enemies.

The Complaint of Wrath, a Branch of Envy

A perturbation of mind, like unto Envy, is Wrath, which looketh far lower than the former. For, whereas Envy cannot be said to be but in respect of our superiors, Wrath
respecteth no degrees nor persons, but is equally armed against all that offend him. A hare-brained little dwarf
*
it is, with a swarth visage, that hath his heart at his tongue's end, if he be contraried, and will be sure to do no right nor take no wrong. If he be a judge or a justice (as sometimes the lion comes to give sentence against the lamb) then he swears by nothing but Saint Tyburn, and makes Newgate a noun substantive, whereto all his other works are but adjectives.
†
Lightly
¹⁷²
he is an old man, for those years are most wayward and teatish,
¹⁷³
yet be he never so old or so forward, since Avarice likewise is a fellow vice of those frail years, we must set one extreme to strive with another and allay the anger of oppression by the sweet incense of a new purse of angels, or the doting planet may have such predominance in these wicked elders of Israel, that, if you send your wife or some other female to plead for you, she may get your pardon upon promise of better acquaintance. But whist, these are the works of darkness and may not be talked of in the day-time. Fury is a heat or fire, and must be quenched with maid's water.

A Tale of a Wise Justice

Amongst other choleric wise justices, he was one, that having a play presented before him and his township by Tarlton and the rest of his fellows, Her Majesty's Servants, and they were now entering into their first merriment, as they call it, the people began exceedingly to laugh when Tarlton
¹⁷⁴
first peeped out his head. Whereat the Justice, not a little moved, and seeing with his becks and nods he could not make them cease, he went with his staff and beat them round about unmercifully on the bare pates, in that they, being but farmers and poor country hinds, would
presume to laugh at the Queen's Men, and make no more account of her cloth in his presence.

The Nature of the Irishman

The causes conducting unto wrath are as diverse as the actions of a man's life. Some will take on like a madman if they see a pig come to the table. Sotericus,
¹⁷⁵
the surgeon, was choleric at the sight of sturgeon. The Irishman will draw his dagger, and be ready to kill and slay, if one break wind in his company; and so some of our Englishmen that are soldiers, if one give them the lie. But these are light matters, whereof Pierce complaineth not.

Be advertised, Master
Os fœtidum
¹⁷⁶
beadle of the blacksmiths, that lawyers cannot devise which way in the world to beg, they are so troubled with brabblements and suits every term of yeomen and gentlemen that fall out for nothing. If John a Nokes
¹⁷⁷
his hen do but leap into Elizabeth de Gappe's close, she will never leave to haunt her husband till he bring it to a
Nisi prius
.
¹⁷⁸
One while, the parson sueth the parishioner for bringing home his tithes; another while, the parishioner sueth the parson for not taking away his tithes in time.

A Merry Tale of a Butcher and his Calves

I heard a tale of a butcher, who driving two calves over a common, that were coupled together by the necks with an oaken withe, in the way where they should pass, there lay a poor, lean mare, with a galled back; to whom they coming, as chance fell out, one of one side, and the other of the other, smelling on her, as their manner is, the midst of the withe, that was betwixt their necks, rubbed her and
grated her on the sore back, that she started and rose up, and hung them both on her back as a beam; which being but a rough plaster to her raw ulcer, she ran away with them, as she were frantic, into the fens, where the butcher could not follow them, and drowned both herself and them in a quagmire. Now the owner of the mare is in law with the butcher for the loss of his mare, and the butcher interchangeably indites him for his calves. I pray ye, Timothy Tempter, be an arbitrator betwixt them, and couple them both by the necks, as the calves were, and carry them to hell on your back, and then, I hope, they will be quiet

The chief spur unto wrath is Drunkenness, which, as the touch of an ashen bough causeth a giddiness in the viper's head, and the bat, lightly struck with the leaf of a tree, loseth his remembrance, so they, being but lightly sprinkled with the juice of the hop, become senseless, and have their reason strucken blind, as soon as ever the cup scaleth the fortress of their nose. Then run their words at random, like a dog that hath lost his master, and are up with this man and that man and generally inveigh against all men, but those that keep a wet corner for a friend, and will not think scorn to drink with a good fellow and a soldier. And so long do they practise this vein on their alebench, that when they are sober they cannot leave it. There be those that get their living all the year long by nothing but railing.

A Tale of one Friar Charles, a Foul-mouthed Knave

Not far from Chester, I knew an odd, foul-mouthed knave, called Charles the Friar, that had a face so parboiled with men's spitting on it, and a back so often knighted in Bridewell, that it was impossible for any shame or punishment to terrify him from ill-speaking. Noblemen he would liken to more ugly things than himself; some to ‘After my hearty commendations',
¹⁷⁹
with a dash over the head; others to
gilded chines of beef, or a shoemaker sweating when he pulls on a shoe; another to an old verse in Cato,
Ad consilium ne accesseris, antequam voceris
;
¹⁸⁰
another to a Spanish codpiece; another, that his face was not yet finished, with suchlike innumerable absurd allusions. Yea, what was he in the court but he had a comparison instead of a capcase
¹⁸¹
to put him in?

Upon a time, being challenged at his own weapon in a private chamber by a great personage (railing, I mean) he so far outstripped him in villainous words, and over-bandied him in bitter terms, that the name of sport could not persuade him patience, nor contain his fury in any degrees of jest, but needs he must wreak himself upon him. Neither would a common revenge suffice him, his displeasure was so infinite (and, it may be, common revenges he took before, as far as the whipcord would stretch, upon like provokements) wherefore he caused his men to take him, and bricked him up in a narrow chimney, that was
Neque maior neque minor corpore locato
;
¹⁸²
where he fed him for fifteen days with bread and water through a hole, letting him sleep standing if he would, for lie or sit he could not, and then he let him out to see if he could learn to rule his tongue any better.

It is a disparagement to those that have any true spark of gentility, to be noted of the whole world so to delight in detracting, that they should keep a venomous-toothed cur and feed him with the crumbs that fall from their table, to do nothing but bite everyone by the shins that pass by. If they will needs be merry, let them have a fool and not a knave to disport them, and seek some other to bestow their alms on than such an impudent beggar.

As there be those that rail at all men, so there be those that rail at all arts, as Cornelius Agrippa
De Vanitate Scientiarum
, and a treatise that I have seen in dispraise of learning,
where he saith it is the corrupter of the simple, the schoolmaster of sin, the storehouse of treachery, the reviver of vices, and mother of cowardice; alleging many examples, how there was never man egregiously evil but he was a scholar; that when the use of letters was first invented the Golden World ceased,
Facinusque invasit mortales
;
¹⁸³
how study doth effeminate a man, dim his sight, weaken his brain, and engender a thousand diseases. Small learning would serve to confute so manifest a scandal, and I imagine all men, like myself, so unmovably resolved of the excellency thereof, that I will not, by the underpropping of confutation, seem to give the idle-witted adversary so much encouragement, as he should surmise his superficial arguments had shaken the foundation of it; against which he could never have lifted his pen if herself had not helped him to hurt herself.